NETHERLANDS & INTEGRATION

Soon after reading news and watching videos about the events happened following Ajax - Maccabi Tel-Aviv football match on 7th November 2024 night in Amsterdam, I remembered the song by Bob Marley:

And verily, verily, I'm saying unto thee

Unite yourself and love humanity

Cause puss and dog, they get together

What's wrong with loving one another?

Puss and dog, they get together

What's wrong with you, my brother?

So, what is the problem between Israelis and Arabs in the Netherlands or in the other countries? No enough air in this World? No enough food? No enough land? Is this a race of whose God being better? Aren’t they (Jews and Muslims) actually following same God of Abraham? Aren’t they from the same language group of Semitic? Who was Abraham, an Akkadian from Mesopotamia? Why Israelis football fans chanted so much ugly and negative words about Arabs? Why did Arabs attack Israelis in an aggressive and violent way that night?

I guess, the answers are both easy and not easy. But I would like to connect this topic to two major issues. First one is the integration of society and second one is the planting toxic ideas by populist politicians to society.

When I was born in Diyarbakir/Turkey, my name (Baran) was not accepted by Turkish government because it is a Kurdish name (it means rain). There are/were a lot of discrimination towards Kurds in Turkey, thousands of people were killed, the oppression is still ongoing. When I experienced Dutch culture, I thought (and I still think) what an amazing country with such level of freedom, democracy and respect. I believe, many people thought in the same way and moved to Netherlands. But there is a huge integration problem in this country in both ways. The society/culture does not include other country originated people easily and newcomers do not prefer to integrate fully into the Dutch culture. I guess, these two are feeding each other. Government should introduce strict rules for the integration, otherwise the grouping (by religion, by race, by country, etc.) will increase day by day and it will harm the harmony and the country.

One of the most dangerous groupings is the religious one. Netherlands constitution (article 6) is clear: ‘’Everyone shall have the right to profess freely his religion or belief, either individually or in community with others, without prejudice to his responsibility under the law.’’ So, Netherlands is secular by constitution. But why do politicians talk so much about religion and especially about Islam? At the end, religion is a belief between a human being and creator (if there is any). It should not be the topic of politics and politicians should be careful with their speech not to cause any hatred towards any race, country or religion. Society needs to be careful by not letting politicians to plant wrong ideas in their minds.

However, day by day, I observe the plantation of wrong (sometimes toxic) ideas into the society by politicians. As an example, there are some Dutch people who defend that the government should let Dutch companies such as ASML to leave Netherlands so that there will be less immigrants. But what is better for the country and society? Letting companies and factories leave the country? Will this add more value to the country? This is a long-term deep calculation that I cannot analyze easily.

If keeping, even growing such international companies in the Netherlands will add more value the country and society in the long term, can the Netherlands manage workload with current people in the country? Or do we need more immigrants from other countries? Why do we need more immigrants? Which professions are lacking? What is short-term solution and long-term solution? Should we make the requirements more attractive to attract skilled labor? How can we integrate all these newcomers? The solutions start with asking right questions.

There is another fact, we are in 21st century, no more colonialism, no more slavery. Skilled people do not migrate only for a job, they move for a life. It is responsibility of society and government to make people feel like Netherlands is their home country, this should the first step, welcoming…

Who are we? What do we need? If we wake up, if we stop being brainwashed by (political) populism and fake (religious) information, if we understand who we are, what the universe is, and what we really need; we can really transform this country into heaven...

Serkan Baran OZ

11 November 2024