The Turkish consultate in Rotterdam has written a second letter to Turkish organisations in the Netherlands, saying the call to report insults to president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was based on a misunderstanding.

On Thursday Dutch media reported that various Turkish organisations in the Netherlands had been emailed by the consulate, urging them to make a note of the insults. The call came a day after the Dutch government said it would scrap legislation which makes insulting a friendly head of state a criminal offence.

The consulate said on Thursday evening that the original email had been clumsily worded by its writer and this had led people to wrongly interpret it. But if people notice that hate campaigns are being waged against Dutch-Turkish nationals, they can let the consulate know, the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, the Volkskrant reports that the Turkish embassy in The Hague has noted a surge in hate mail in recent days.

Hate mail

Press attache Emrullah Cuma Akgündüz told the paper hate mail is not new, but that there has been ‘a considerable increase’ since the Böhmermann case in Germany. Turkey has been given the green light to take legal action against Jan Böhmermann, a comedian who read out an offensive poem about Erdogan on German television.

Turkey has no plans to make similar complaints in the Netherlands, Akgündüz told the Volkskrant, but could not explain why this was the case.

The diplomat did show the paper a selection of emails describing Erdogan as ‘a fascist like Hitler’, ‘fucking faggot’ who deserved to be killed and a ‘goat-fucking pig’.

Diplomatic job

The call by the consulates to report insults is simply meant to monitor the situation in the Netherlands, Akgündüz said. ‘This is what embassies do all over the world. It is our job,’ the diplomat told the paper.

MPs have called for a debate on the Turkish consultate’s email in the near future. In addition, the Netherlands has made a formal protest to Ankara about the email, foreign minister Bert Koenders said.