#Dutch expatriates in France

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The signs as Dutch expatriates in France:

Aries: Anouk Dekker

Taurus: Jessy Kramer

Gemini: Rydell Poepon

Cancer: Giorgi Tskitishvili

Leo: Thomas Koelewijn

Virgo: Lourens Baas Becking

Libra: Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries

Scorpio: Esther Schop

Sagittarius: Gregory van der Wiel

Capricorn: Frans Timmermans

Aquarius: Henric Piccardt

Pisces: Kiki Musampa

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I loved your fantastic account of the battle of Waterloo and how each nation came to define the rest of the century for all the European countries in different ways. However what are your thoughts about the battle itself? Did Wellington win it or did Napoleon lose it? What were the turning points that you think determined the fate of the battle?

Thank you for reading and liking my previous post on Waterloo. I did heavily lean into studying ancient classical warfare when I was studying Classics but I only got into Napoleonic warfare because of a father who was (and still remains) big Napoleonic warfare military enthusiast. Through his keen eyes as a former serving military man, I also looked at the battle as a soldier might as well putting on my academic critical thinking cap. It’s a popular parlour game not just in Sandhurst but also in the officers’ mess (where those regiments actually fought at Waterloo) and around dinner tables - in my experience anyway.

I’ve always seen such speculative and counterfactual questions as an amusing diversion. I’ve never seriously looked at the detail until I came to France and unexpectedly interacted with Napoleonic scholars as well as soldiers (the cultured and historically well read ones at least) that forced me to think more about it. I’ve always been of the ‘if the Prussians hadn’t arrived in time to save Wellington’ school; and this was always enough to get me by in any conversation.

But my vanity was stung by interacting with one of my downstairs neighbours, a high decorated retired army general, with whom I played a weekly game of chess over a glass of wine during the Covid lockdown in Paris. He didn’t spare me as he knew so much detail about the battle. But a typical failing of French thinking is to pontificate around generalities rather than specific reasons. So for him it came down to pooh-poohing the generalship of Wellington (the rain saved him) and lauding the emperor (he had haemorrhoids and thus a bad day at the office). So rain and haemorrhoids were the decisive factors in determining the outcome of the battle of Waterloo.

It was clear I had to raise my game. So I’ve been reading more when I could.

I had recently finished reading a wonderful book ‘The Longest Afternoon: The 400 Men Who Decided the Battle of Waterloo’ by the Cambridge historian Brendan Simms. The book came out in 2015 but it’s been lying on my shelf for these past few years until I actually took this slim book to read on my one of my business trips.  

The idea behind this short book is so superbly useful. It places to one side the huge, cinematic panorama of history and instead concentrates on one particular farmhouse, on one particular day: 18 June 1815. History is vivified, lifts itself off the page and into the mind, when a historian of Brendan Simm’s immense stature zooms in on the details - and here the details are compelling.

For the course of one day, 400 soldiers, wet, cold, in some cases hungover, who had bivouacked for the night in an abandoned farmhouse at La Haye Sainte, near a crucially strategic crossroads, found themselves staring down the massed barrels of Napoleon’s vanguard – and held them off.  On June 18, 1815, Wellington established his position and sent one battalion and part of a second to the farmhouse under the command of Major Baring. Napoléon’s initial attack was a direct assault that surrounded the house and came near to breaking Wellington’s line; but it held, and the legendary charge of two British heavy cavalry brigades drove back the French.

This is a detailed account of the defence of La Haye Sainte, a walled stone farmhouse forward of Wellington’s centre. Its defenders were the King’s German Legion, which (despite the British army’s penchant for oddball names) was genuinely German. Britain harboured many German expatriates who detested Napoléon, a number augmented in 1803 when he occupied Hanover and disbanded its army. That very year two ambitious officers recruited the first members of the King’s German Legion, which grew into a corps of some 14,000 men and served with distinction at Copenhagen, Walcheren and in Spain before its apotheosis at Waterloo.

Ordered to capture the farmhouse, Marshal Michel Ney - commanding Napoléon’s left wing - obeyed but became preoccupied with his famously unsuccessful cavalry attack. Reminded of the order two hours later, he dispatched infantry that reached the house and set it on fire. The men inside controlled the blaze and continued to fight until Ney took personal charge of a furious assault that succeeded only when the defenders ran out of ammunition and withdrew, having held out for six hours. Had they not defended it so stoutly and if the farm had fallen any sooner then Napoleon would have been able to get at Wellington’s troops before his Prussian reinforcements arrived, and in all likelihood Waterloo would have been a French victory instead; it would now be the name of a train station in Paris rather than London.

I doubt there is a definitive answer to this question which is why certain people love arguing about it because it’s so open ended in terms of cause and effect. You can pick on any episodic event and hail that as the decisive turning point. It’s one reason why we are so fortunate to have so many well researched history books on the battle of Waterloo to replenish the issues for a newer generation to argue with past generations.

If I were to go beyond the ‘if the Prussians hadn’t arrived to save Wellington’ line then I would point to ten decisive turning points which in themselves might not have changed the outcome but taken together certainly influenced the final outcome of one of the most important and iconic battles in history.

Napoleon gives Marshal Davout a desk job

6 June 1815 – All commanders need a good chief of staff to ensure that their intentions are translated into clear orders. Unfortunately for Napoleon – as what is arguably one of the most decisive battles in European history loomed – his trusted chief of staff, Marshal Berthier, was no longer available. Berthier had sworn an oath of loyalty to Louis XVIII – and then fallen to his death from a window – so the job was given to Marshal Soult.

Soult was an experienced field commander but he was certainly no Berthier. Napoleon’s two main field commanders were also far from ideal. Emmanuel Grouchy had little experience of independent command. Michel Ney’s heroic command of the French rear-guard during the retreat from Moscow led Napoleon to dub him “the bravest of the brave”, but by 1815 he was clearly burnt out.

Worse still, when on 6 June Napoleon ordered his generals to assemble with their troops on the Belgian border he chose to leave behind Louis-Nicolas Davout, his ‘Iron Marshal’, as minister of war. The emperor needed someone loyal to oversee affairs at home but the decision not to take with him the ablest general at his disposal would deprive him of the one commander who might have made a difference.

Constant Rebecque ignores orders

15 June – In June 1815 Napoleon assembled 120,000 men on the Belgian border. Opposing him were 115,000 Prussians under  Field Marshal Blücher and an allied force of about 93,000 men under Wellington. Faced with such odds, Napoleon’s best chance of victory was to get his army between his two enemies and defeat one before turning on the other. On 15 June his army crossed the frontier at Charleroi and headed straight for the gap between the two allied armies.

Wellington was taken completely by surprise: “Napoleon has humbugged me” he said. Uncertain what Napoleon’s intentions were, he ordered his army to concentrate around Nivelles, over 12 miles away from the Prussian position at Ligny. This would have left the two allied armies dangerously separated but fortunately for Wellington, a staff officer in the Dutch army, Baron Constant Rebecque, understood what was actually needed. He disregarded Wellington’s order and instead sent a force to occupy the key crossroads of Quatre Bras, much nearer to the Prussians.

D’Erlon misses the show

16 June – Two battles were fought on 16 June. While Marshal Ney took on Wellington’s army as it hurriedly tried to concentrate around Quatre Bras, Napoleon led the main French force against the Prussians at Ligny. Blücher’s inexperienced Prussians were given a severe mauling but despite this they managed to fall back in relatively good order.

This was partly due to a disastrous mix-up on the part of the French. Confusion over orders saw General D’Erlon’s corps instructed to leave Ney’s army at Quatre Bras and join the fighting at Ligny only to be recalled as soon as they got there. The result was that 16,000 Frenchmen who could have intervened decisively actually took part in neither battle.

Blücher stays in touch

17 June – Wellington succeeded in beating back Ney at Quatre Bras but Blücher’s defeat left the British general with a large French army on his eastern flank. He was forced to fall back northwards towards Brussels. The Prussians were retreating as well. Normally a retreating army tries to withdraw along its lines of communication (ie the route back to its base). Had the Prussians done this they would have headed eastwards. The two allied armies would then have been even further apart and Wellington would have been overwhelmed. But instead of doing that, the Prussians retreated northwards towards Wavre. It was to be a crucial move. The two allied armies stayed in contact and on 17 June Wellington was able to fall back to the ridge at Mont St Jean, and prepare to make a stand there until Blücher’s Prussians could come to his aid.

The weather takes a hand

17 June – The night before the battle was marked by a thunderstorm of biblical proportions. Rain lashed down, turning roads into quagmires and trampled fields into seas of mud.

It was a night of tremendous rain and cloudbursts. Wellington said that even in the monsoons in India, he’d never known rain like it. To wake up cold and damp, wet and terrified, then you have this slaughter in a very small space. By evening there were over 200,000 men struggling to kill each other within four square miles.

Private Wheeler of the 51st Regiment later wrote: “The ground was too wet to lie down… the water ran in streams from the cuffs of our Jackets… We had one consolation, we knew that the enemy were in the same plight.” Wheeler was right of course – the rain would inconvenience all three armies, not least the Prussians as they struggled along narrow country lanes to link up with Wellington.

It’s often said that Napoleon delayed starting the battle in order to allow the ground to dry out but the chief cause of the delay was probably the need to allow his units, many of whom had bivouacked some distance away, to take up their allotted places. Napoleon enjoyed a considerable advantage in artillery at Waterloo but this was lessened by the fact that the mud made it difficult to move his guns around and that cannonballs, normally designed to bounce along until they hit something, or someone, often disappeared harmlessly into the soggy ground. Macdonnell closes the gates

11:30am, 18 June – On 18 June the two armies prepared to do battle. Most of Wellington’s troops were sheltered from enemy fire on the reverse slope of the Mont St Jean ridge. The position was protected by three important outposts: a group of farms to the left, the farm of La Haye Sainte in front and the farmhouse of Hougoumont to the right.

At about 11.30am the French launched their first attack – an assault on Hougoumont. This soon developed into a battle within a battle as the French threw in ever more men in a bid to capture the vital chateau. They nearly succeeded: led by a giant officer nicknamed ‘the Smasher’, a group of French soldiers worked their way round to the rear of the chateau, forced open its north gate and burst inside.

James Macdonnell, the garrison commander, acted quickly. He gathered a group of men and they heaved the gate shut again. The French inside the chateau were then hunted down and killed. Only a young drummer boy was spared. Hougoumont was to remain in allied hands all day and Wellington later commented that the entire result of the battle depended on the closing of those gates.

Ney loses his head after his cavalry founders

1.30pm – The infantry of D’Erlon’s corps finally saw action as they attacked the left wing of Wellington’s army. As they reached the crest of the ridge they were met by the infantry of Sir Thomas Picton’s division. Picton, a foul-mouthed Welshman who rode into battle in a civilian coat and round-brimmed hat, was shot dead but his men stopped the French, who were then driven back by Wellington’s cavalry.

The next major French attack was very different. Ney unleashed his cavalry in a mass frontal attack, and thousands of Napoleon’s famous cuirassiers – big men in steel breastplates riding big horses – thundered up the hill. But Wellington’s infantry stayed calm. Forming squares, they presented in all directions a hedge of bayonets that no horse could be made to charge.

Ney needed to call the cavalry off or support them with infantry but he lost his head and threw more horsemen into the fray. When he abandoned these fruitless attacks, Wellington’s line was still unbroken, two hours had been wasted, and the Prussians were arriving in force.

The Prussians arrive

4.30pm – Blücher had promised to come to Wellington’s aid, and kept his word. Napoleon had detached nearly a third of his army under Grouchy to prevent the Prussians joining up with Wellington but Grouchy failed to do this and, by mid-afternoon, the first Prussian units were in action on the battlefield.

At about 4.30pm they launched their first attack upon the key village of Plancenoit near the rear of Napoleon’s main position. This savage battle would rage for over three hours. Faced with this, Napoleon was forced to send many of his remaining reserves to shore up his position – leaving him with precious few troops to exploit any success his troops might enjoy against Wellington.

Napoleon says no, and von Zeithen turns back

6.30pm – At about 6.30pm the French captured La Haye Sainte. Posting artillery and skirmishers around the farm, they unleashed a storm of shot, shell and musketry into Wellington’s exposed centre. The regiments there suffered horrendous casualties, but Wellington’s line held – just.

Ney asked for reinforcements to press home his advantage but Napoleon refused. Instead he sent troops to recapture Plancenoit which had just fallen to the Prussians. Von Zeiten’s Prussian I Corps arrived on the scene. These much-needed reinforcements were set to join Wellington when a Prussian aide de camp rode up with an order from Blücher instructing them to head south and support his troops at Plancenoit. Von Zeiten obeyed. Realising that Von Zeiten’s troops were desperately needed on the ridge, Baron von Müffling, Wellington’s Prussian liaison officer, galloped after Von Zeiten and pleaded with him to ignore this new order and stick to the original plan. The Prussian general turned back and took his place on Wellington’s left, enabling the duke to shift troops over to reinforce his crumbling centre. The crisis had passed.

Napoleon’s last roll of the dice ends in panic

7.30pm – With Plancenoit back in French hands the stage was set for the final act in the drama. At about 7.30pm Napoleon unleashed his elite imperial guard in a last desperate bid for victory. But it was too late – they were hopelessly outnumbered and Wellington was ready for them. His own troops had been sheltering from the French fire by lying down but when the two large columns of French guardsmen reached the crest of the ridge Wellington ordered his own guards to stand up. One British guardsman describes the scene: “Whether it was (our) sudden appearance so near to them, or the tremendously heavy fire we threw into them but La Garde, who had never previously failed in an attack, suddenly stopped.”

Meanwhile Sir John Colborne of the 52nd Light Infantry wheeled his regiment round to attack the flank of the first French column while General Chasse ordered his Dutch and Belgian troops forward against the other. Soon both French columns had withered away under the deadly fire. Their defeat led to widespread panic in the French army: amid cries of “La Garde recule” (“the Guard is retreating”) it dissolved into a disorderly retreat mercilessly harried by the Prussians. “The nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life,” as Wellington described the battle, was over.

This isn’t an exhaustive list but it will do.

Waterloo was a watershed moment for Europe, and indeed the world. The end of the Napoleonic Wars heralded a peace in Europe which was not broken until the outbreak of World War One in 1914. In the century following the Battle of Waterloo an increased respect developed for the figure of the soldier. True the Battle became mythologised in the nineteenth century and is now embedded in our cultural memory as one of the great British success stories.

We still celebrate Waterloo because it was a great British victory - even if we had a little bit of help from the Prussians. It embodied the British bulldog spirit and marked the moment we finally overcame Napoleon and his empire after a decade of being at war.

The ramifications from Waterloo and the Napoleonic Wars are still felt today in contemporary European politics. I think because of this the battle continues to fascinate and to court intense discussion and disagreement.

No doubt my French neighbour the retired army general and I will continue to stubbornly argue our differing viewpoints until the wine bottle empties. But we both agree that we would enjoy having dinner with Napoleon and talk about his military campaigns. I admire Napoleon a little more having read more and for living in France. He’d be a very amusing and stimulating companion.

In many ways, he was also an enlightened and intelligent ruler. His Code Napoleon is an extremely enlightened law code. At the same time this is a man who had a very, very low threshold for boredom. I think he was addicted to war.

General Robert E. Lee, at Fredericksburg said, “It is well that war is so dreadful, otherwise we would grow too fond of it.”

Napoleon would never have agreed with that. War was his drug. There’s no evidence that Wellington enjoyed war. He said after Waterloo, and I believe him, “I pray to God that I have fought my last battle.” He spent much of the battle saying to the men, “If you survive, if you just stand there and repel the French, I’ll guarantee you a generation of peace.” He thought the point of war was peace. And he sure gave not just Britain but also an entire European continent some respite from the spilling of blood on a battlefield.

Thanks for your question.

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Prince Bernard of Lippe-Beisterfeld: A German Prince in the RAF

by Linda Fetterly Root

A replica of the Beech 17S flown by Prince Bernard of the Netherlands in WWII; Courtesy of Mike Freer, Touchdown Aviation, with Robert Lamblough in the cockpit

When I discovered the post I had planned to display on my birthday was too similar to one I had published here two years ago, I frantically searched for another event occurring on the 24th of April which readers might find equally interesting.

In desperation, I researched the date on several sites including www. OnThisDay, and found an intriguing snippet there: on April 24, 1941, Prince Bernard of the Netherlands became a pilot in the RAF.  I had never heard of the gentleman and would have glossed had it not juggled a personal memory. My  Cleveland-born cousin Guy Patterson had joined the RCAF as a glider pilot in April, 1940. In my family, everything about Guy became a legend.  He had been a musician in the 30's, a bassist in the George Duffy Orchestra, who expatriated a few weeks after his heiress wife, my godmother Helen Cooper Patterson, died of tuberculosis. Their tragic romance had a very Eddie Duchin Story tone to it. Although I knew what had prompted my kinsman to renounce his citizenship and risk his life, I wondered what might have precipitated such a move on the part of a European royal. I searched further and discovered Prince Bernard was German by birth, and in his youth had been a National Socialist. I was hooked.

Ian Fleming, by Andrew Lycett

The more I read, the more I became convinced I had uncovered the material for a blockbuster historical novel. I did not discover until much later that a British spymaster and author named Ian Fleming had beat me to it. The Early Life of Bernard (Bernhard) Lippe

Prince Bernard (Bernhard) of Lippe-Biesterfeld was born in Jena, Germany, in 1911. He was the elder son of the brother of Leopold, Prince of Lippe, an independent German principality until the disasters of WWI. Bernard's parent's marriage was morganatic, that is a royal marriage between people of divergent social classes, which did not effect Bernard's legitimacy but did limit him from the succession unless there were no other Lippes left. At birth, he was given the title of Count, but he was not considered a prince. That deficit was remedied in 1916, when Leopold elevated Bernard and his mother to royal status. The figure at the right is his Coat of Arms. The family principality and its related revenues were lost at the end of World War I, but the Lippes were far from destitute. Prince Bernard's branch established a base in East Brandenburg in what now is modern Poland, where Bernard was home schooled until age twelve, possibly due to his fragile health. According to an obituary published in the Telegraph in 2004, his nurse was Chinese and English, and English became his first language Thereafter, he attended gymnasiums in Switzerland and Berlin before advancing to the University of Lausanne in Switzerland to study law in 1929. At some point, he studied in Munich and later transferred to The Humboldt University Unter den Linden in Berlin. At this time, his life took a turn that continued to vex him whenever his character came under scrutiny. The Political Metamorphosis of Bernard Lippe While Bernard was a law student at Humboldt, he joined the Nazi Party and was a member of its paramilitary wing, the S.A., commonly known as the Brownshirts. He also was on the rolls of the Reiter-SS. Although he had not yet resigned his membership, he ceased his participation in the movement when he graduated and went to work for I.G. Farben in Paris in 1934. His membership in Nazi organizations during his years as a student has been one of several sources of controversy, especially since he denied them when his participation was well documented. He later excused them as necessary if he wished to earn a law degree, although he conceded that space to garage his car was a compelling perk of membership. There is some evidence he harbored a growing concern about Hitler's seizure of power well before he resigned his membership in the Nazi party. Apparently by 1935-36, his apprehensions had grown to a point where he considered leaving Europe. Acquaintances described the youthful Bernard Lippe as a nationalist but not a racist. Although he had met Hitler on at least two occasions, he was never considered a protégé. One story has Hitler referring to him an an idiot. Bernard had not spoken out publicly against Hitler at the time he formally resigned from the party in 1937, and he signed the letter 'Heil Hitler.' When asked about it later, he confessed to being an pragmatist, not a Nazi. How Bernhard Lippe Became Bernard of the Netherlands In 1936 while attending the Olympics, Bernard met Princess Juliana of the Netherlands. After serious vetting by Queen Wilhelmina, he and Juliana became engaged. Not all Dutch were enthusiastic about the match, but there was a paucity of suitable Protestant royals on the horizon, and the forceful queen had her way. She is quoted as stating: "This is the marriage of my daughter to the man she loves...not the marriage of the Netherlands to Germany."

Following the engagement, Bernard became a Dutch citizen and changed the spelling of his names to the Dutch versions. He avoided speaking German on public occasions. Living in the Netherlands, he was comfortable going public with his criticism of Adolf Hitler. Once married to Princess Juliana, he adopted the attitudes of a royalist Dutchman, and severed all connections with members of his family who were Nazis. Insofar as his politics were concerned, it appeared Queen Wilhelmina had chosen well.

WWII and the Birth of James Bond: The British Connection There were other causes of concern beyond Bernard's political past, not the least of which was the bridegroom's tendency toward acts of derring-do. Some analysts speculate that he translated his survival of poor health in childhood as a victory over death. Whatever the case may be, Prince Bernard enjoyed living on the edge of the abyss. He raced, collected and demolished expensive high-powered race cars. Ferraris were his favorites. He crashed two airplanes. In one of his misadventures, he broke his back and fractured ribs. He had at least two extramarital affairs yielding daughters, risky business when your mother-in-law is the queen. He showed no fear in confronting Hitler's advancing army. When Hitler's forces invaded the Netherlands, Bernard organized the Palace Guard into a fighting force to shoot at German airplanes with machine guns. He was critical of the queen when she elected to flee to England. He preferred to stay and fight. But, when Hitler's forces overran the country and German victory seemed inevitable, he escorted his family to England but returned to lead the resistance. When the overwhelmed Dutch defenders surrendered, he escaped to England with a remnant of his men.

During the Blitz, Bernard escorted Princess Juliana and their daughters to safety in Canada, but he returned to England to resume the fight. He learned to fly a variety of fighters and bombers and sought a commission with the RAF. At first the English did not trust him quite enough for that, but trained pilots were scarce and eventually they relented. During his days with the RAF, the Prince flew thousands of air miles of missions into occupied Europe under the alias Wing Commander Gibbs. Among his many medals are English campaign ribbons for service in France and Germany. He was an advisor on the Allied War Council, and the military head of the Royal Dutch Army in exile. However, not all of his wartime exploits were in the air. When Prince Bernard expressed a desire to aid the intelligence efforts, the request met with the same reluctance he had experienced earlier. Flying was one thing, but trusting a former member of the S.A. with military secrets was quite another. However, Sir Winston Churchill was reluctant to let a man of such obvious talent and connections go to waste so he ordered him assessed by his famous spymaster, Ian Fleming. Fleming was impressed and cleared him for work at the highest levels of planning of the Allied Offensive. There are rumors that the suave Fleming and fearless Bernard were combined to give life to the spy James Bond. In an article that appeared at the MI6 Community site [1], Gustav Graves recalled an incident from Andrew Lycett's biography Ian Fleming, describing a caper of Bernard's during a dinner with Fleming at the Lincoln Inn. A German bomb exploded, destroying a 200 year old staircase leading to the entrance of the hotel. Bernard descended with great panache to the lowest point and loudly thanked Fleming for 'a most enjoyable evening,' as if the incident was an everyday occurrence. Fleming does not report how Bernard made it down to the demolished lobby. Gingerly, I presume. Lycett also notes that according to Fleming, Prince Bernard's cocktail of choice was a martini made with 'Wodka' rather than gin, an unusual cocktail made to His Highness's exacting specifications. Bernard served on the Allied War Council and personally led the Dutch forces during the Allied Offensive in the Netherlands. He was present at the negotiations for the Armistice and the surrender of Germany. Throughout the proceedings, he spoke English and Dutch, but not a word of German. He was highly decorated by governments throughout the world, was friendly with Harry S. Truman and a colleague of the usually distant Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, as seen in the photo below.

In spite of post war scandals regarding his financial dealings and a reluctance of some to overlook the affiliations of his youth, he remains a popular hero in the Netherlands and a larger-than-life character of flamboyance and charm to the rest of us--the quintessential sophisticated man of action who took his vodka martinis straight up, always shaken, not stirred, a deviation from the customary martini of which Ian Fleming took note and used. How much else of Commander Bond is borrowed from the Prince is a matter of conjecture?

Prince Bernard followed Princess Juliana in death by mere months in 2004 [2]. There is no question that he suffered from an advanced cancer, nor is there any doubt his remaining days were shorten by Princess Juliana's death. I am delighted to have made his acquaintance.

Queen Juliana and Prince Bernard Sculpture by Kees Verkade

Author's Note

There is much more to Prince Bernard Lippe-Biesterfeld's story after WWII. However, this chapter is the one most appropriate to the timeline and subject matter of the English Historical Fiction Author's blog. As stated above, both he and Juliana died in 2004. Referring to Juliana as a Princess in this post and not as a queen is not an error. The times mentioned are before she succeeded her mother or after she abdicated in favor of her daughter Queen Beatrix.

References

[1] MI6 Community: The Largely Unknown 'Ian Fleming- Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands' Connection.

[2] BBC Obituary of Prince Bernard, December 2004 ~~~~~~~~~~

Linda Fetterly Root is a retired major crimes prosecutor and a historical novelist writing of events in 16th and 17th century Scotland, France and England. She lives in the Morongo Basin area of the California desert with two wooly malamutes, a flock of chickens and assorted wild things. Her books are on Amazon.

Hat Tip To: English Historical Fiction Authors

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With fiery insults and petty slights, Turkey and Europe reach a moment of reckoning

By Kareem Fahim, Washington Post, April 1, 2017

ISTANBUL--Confetti and fireworks greeted Recep Tayypip Erdogan when he returned to Turkey in December 2004, flush with the good news that his country had been invited to start talks to join the European Union.

Addressing cheering crowds in the capital, Erdogan, then the prime minister, said the invitation was a sign of Turkey’s growing international clout.

After decades of effort, Turkey “will take its rightful place among modern and civilized countries,” he said at the time. “From now on, democracy will have a different meaning, and human rights and freedoms will be practiced in a more meaningful manner.”

But 13 years later, Turkey and Europe are locked in the bitterest of feuds, marked by threats, fiery epithets and petty slights that could mark the end of Turkey’s ambitious national project to gain coveted privileges as a full member of the European Union. Erdogan, who is now the president, suggested as much last month, telling CNN Turk that while Turkey could maintain its economic relations with Europe, “we may have the need to review ties at the political and administrative level.”

Beyond the heated rhetoric, both parties have much to lose from their fight, which threatens to further isolate Europe and Turkey at a moment when both are turning inward and succumbing to xenophobia and nationalist rhetoric, analysts said. The breakup would leave the European Union bereft of a Muslim-majority partner that might have served as a hopeful sign of inclusion and diversity, including for millions of Muslim immigrants living in Europe, and a counterbalance to right-wing, anti-immigrant parties that are gaining in prominence.

And as the distance between Turkey and its democratic allies grows, the Turkish state’s institutions are becoming more rigidly authoritarian, as its prisons fill and the tolerance for dissenting voices evaporates.

The schism could have also immediate repercussions, most notably for a European Union deal with Turkey to stem the passage of migrants headed to Europe. Turkish officials have repeatedly threatened to scuttle the deal. Last week, in a grim warning about the possible consequences, 11 Syrian refugees trying to reach Greece drowned when their boat sank off the Turkish coast, according to Turkey’s Dogan news agency.

The latest arguments have been sparked by recent events, including a referendum in Turkey this month that could change its system of government from a parliamentary system to what is known as an “executive presidency.” A “yes” vote in the referendum would allow Erdogan to run for an additional term, and possibly remain in office until 2029.

Turkish officials supporting the change have been prevented in recent weeks from addressing expatriate Turkish voters in Europe, drawing a furious reaction from Erdogan and his government that has included accusing the German and Dutch governments of Nazism. European officials, in turn, have become more openly critical of Erdogan’s government.

Ambassadors have been summoned and national leaders vilified on front pages from Ankara to Amsterdam. The frenzied rhetoric has also raised safety concerns, for Turks living in Europe and for Westerners residing in Turkey. Erdogan issued a vague warning last month, saying that unless the Europeans changed their behavior, “no European, no Westerner will be able to take steps on the streets safely and peacefully,” local media reported.

As the frequency of the insults has moved beyond diplomatic crisis to unbridled hostility, it has laid bare tensions that had been building for years, analysts said.

Asli Aydintasbas, a Turk and a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the recent, unusual flare-up was a sign of how severely the bond between Turkey and Europe has deteriorated. “There is room for controlled tension, but not this kind of out-of-control spat,” she said. “I think this relationship has very much changed course. It is no longer a real partnership.”

Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, said the referendum campaign in Turkey “is accelerating this moment of reckoning--laying bare the perennially unbridgeable inconsistencies in the relationship.”

“It is becoming very difficult to continue with the pretense of Turkish accession” into the E.U. for several reasons, he said, including democratic backtracking in Turkey and the political dynamics in Europe. “Unfortunately, we have reached a possible turning point in the Turkey-European relationship.”

Turkey’s entry into the E.U. was always going to be a difficult proposition, he said. Turkey--a Muslim-majority country of 71 million people that was referred to derisively by many European leaders as “too big, too poor, too different”--always had more to prove than Eastern European countries that were incorporated in the E.U. enlargement process, he said.

Turkey’s effort to formally become part of Europe stretches back decades, to 1959, when the country first applied to join the European Economic Union, the precursor to the European Union, which was formed in 1993. European critics of Turkey’s accession highlighted “cultural difference”--a euphemism for its status as a Muslim-majority country--as well as its ongoing dispute with Cyprus and its human rights abuses.

After Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party took power in 2002, the government renewed its push for membership and took steps, including abolishing the death penalty, that led to the beginning of formal negotiations in 2005.

Over the next decade, Turkey’s bid proceeded in fits and starts, facing stiff resistance especially from Germany, the Netherlands and France. The moribund negotiations led to an “an accumulation of tension, frustration and disillusionment,” said Ulgen.

There are differences of opinion about where to lay blame for the current impasse.

Despite the obstacles, Turkey could have taken measures, including consistently upgrading its democratic standards, that would have thwarted the naysayers in Europe, Ulgen said. Instead, “the exact opposite happened. The obstructionism on the European side strengthened the hand of those in Turkey skeptical of this vision, for a variety of reasons that have to do with ideology, governance, culture and so on. Over time, they came to be more influential in charting the course for Turkey.”

Aydintasbas said the present, worsening relationship “was not a foregone conclusion” but rather the result of misunderstandings and missed opportunities over years.

“What would have happened had the Europeans been more willing to open the doors for Turkey, at a time when Turkey was desperately carrying out reforms?” she said. The last decade was an especially critical moment--a “high point” for Turkish democracy, between 2000 and 2008, when civilian leaders gained the upper hand over Turkey’s powerful military and enthusiasm for the European project in Turkey was at an all-time high.

But national leaders in Europe, including Angela Merkel in Germany and Nicolas Sarkozy in France, decided that Turkish accession was “not a good idea,” and in the years that followed, the accession effort stalled.

In July, a failed coup attempt in Turkey further doomed the relationship, as the Turkish government embarked on wide-ranging crackdown on enemies and dissidents while castigating Europe for not expressing a sufficient amount of solidarity. In November, the European Parliament passed a nonbinding resolution freezing the accession talks with Turkey.

After a visit to Turkey in March, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on Turkey, Kati Piri, wrote that “talking about Turkey joining the bloc under the current circumstances would lack credibility--especially in the wake of Erdogan’s unwarranted accusations that German and Dutch governments were following ‘Nazi practices.’”

For now, the two sides have settled on a transactional relationship that includes the migrant deal and a possible customs union that would promote free trade.

“Both sides know this is going to be it,” Aydintasbas said. “It suits the Turkish government because they don’t have to worry about building a democracy, at a time when they are waging battles against all enemies domestic and foreign.

“And it suits Europe,” she said. “There is domestic pressure in each and every country not to embrace Turkey.”