Wednesday Weirdness-Placement Debacle in Netherlands UPDATED

Welcome to Wednesday Weirdness, a recurring theme where we post something truly weird and wacky in adoption or child welfare.

“A lesbian couple and their nine-year-old foster child have gone into hiding because of the row in Turkey about Muslim children being cared for by gay or Christian couples.

The couple have looked after Yunus since he was five months old but his mother has long campaigned for his return. Last week she made an emotional television appeal, leading to widespread debate in Turkey itself.

Next week, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit the Netherlands and some expect him to raise the fostering issue.

A Turkish parliamentary commission is currently researching the fostering of Muslim children by gay or Christian couples, which they say will lead to them becoming estranged from their cultural background.

School

Child social services in The Hague say they are extremely concerned about the ongoing debate. ‘The situation means Yunus cannot go to school,’ one official told Nos television.

No direct threats have been made but the family have now been moved to a different address, officials say.

The two mothers have done a fantastic job, one told the Volkskrant. ‘They have explored his ethnic background, visited Turkey and are learning Turkish. But this witch hunt means they are continually being questioned, at school, in the street, in the bakers,’ a spokeswoman said.

Family

The boy’s natural parents took their two other children to family in Turkey to avoid them being fostered by the same couple, the Volkskrant reported. This led to the parents spending a short time in prison for kidnapping, the paper said.

It is not clear from the media coverage why the children were taken into care.”

Lesbian couple go into hiding with Turkish foster child

[Dutch News 3/15/13]

 

 

Update: “A nine-year-old boy in the Netherlands is at the centre of a row between Turkey  and European countries over non-Muslims fostering Muslim children and eroding  their “moral values and religious beliefs”.

Yunus, a Dutch citizen of Turkish origin, was removed from his Turkish  parents as a four-month-old by Dutch authorities over suspicions of child abuse  and neglect. He was given to lesbian foster parents who have raised him ever  since.

Several court rulings have confirmed that Yunus’s biological parents were  unfit to care for him, a Dutch official said last week. He said the boy had not  been adopted by his foster parents.

The case has become the focal point of a campaign by the Turkish government  to prevent Muslim children of Turkish families in European countries from being  raised by non-Muslim or homosexual foster parents.

If a child is given to a homosexual family, then this runs counter to general  moral values and religious beliefs of [Turkish] society,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan  said during a visit to the Netherlands this month.

At the core of the row lies Ankara’s view that the about four million Turkish  citizens and people of Turkish descent in European countries are exposed to  threats to their cultural or religious identity – and that Turkey has the right,  and the duty, to act.

Mr Erdogan suggested that cooperation between the Turkish and Dutch  governments could prevent similar problems in the future and said Turkish  non-government organisations in the Netherlands could also help.

Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, dismissed the idea of any Turkish  intervention, saying the case was a domestic issue.

Mr Erdogan’s government regards itself as responsible for the welfare of  Turks abroad, even if they have foreign passports. But this clashes with  Europeans’ view of their sovereignty and ideas of integration, as well as with  the continent’s more liberal values.

Bekir Bozdag, a Turkish deputy prime minister who oversees Turkish  expatriates, told parliament late last year that there were about 4,000 cases of  children who had been forcibly taken away from Muslim-Turkish families in Europe  and given to non-Muslim foster parents.

He suggested that religious reasons were behind the trend, but offered no  proof to back up the accusation.

“These children are really Christianised,” Mr Bozdag said. “We are faced with  a big tragedy.”

Mr Bozdag called on European countries to have Turkish children raised by  Turkish families if possible and promised that his government would do  everything to “save our little ones”.

Faruk Sen, chairman of the German-Turkish Foundation for Education and  Scientific Research and an expert on the Turkish community in western Europe,  said the Turkish government was partly to blame.

“There are 700,000 Turkish families in Germany, but not enough come forward  to take children” as foster families, Mr Sen said last week. He said Turkey’s  diplomatic missions in Europe had failed to provide authorities with lists of  potential Turkish foster parents.

Referring to local, parliamentary and presidential elections coming up next  year and in 2015, Mr Sen said efforts to please the conservative voter base of  the Erdogan government were also shaping Ankara’s position on the issue. “They  want to tell voters at home: ‘I am making sure that no Muslim child is raised by  a Christian family’.”

A lack of Muslim foster families had also been an issue in the case of Yunus  in the Netherlands, the Dutch official said.

“He was initially placed in a foster home and given to the couple after a  while,” the official said. He also said that the biological parents of the boy  had tried and failed to get Yunus back through the courts.

As the case became public, the lesbian couple in the Netherlands went into  hiding with Yunus. Dutch officials said there had been no specific threats, but  the move to “another address” had been organised as a precaution.

The Turkish family has turned to the Turkish government for help. Following  Mr Erdogan’s visit to the Netherlands, Nurgul Azeroglu, Yunus’s biological  mother, praised the stance taken by Ankara.

“Our prime minister’s statement took a weight off my mind,” she told the  Turkish Cihan news agency. “Now I have new hope that I can embrace Yunus again  after nine years.”

Ms Azeroglu appeared on Turkish television this month and called on Mr  Erdogan to intervene in the case. She said she accidentally dropped the child  from a poorly fastened carrying bag once – part of the reason he was removed  from her care.

Dutch news reports said the authorities in the Netherlands decided in 2008 to  remove two of Yunus’s siblings from the Azeroglu family and place them in the  same family with the boy, but that the children had been sent to Turkey by their  family before the decision was implemented.”

Turkish child fostered by Dutch lesbians sparks diplomatic row

[The National 3/31/13 by Thomas Seibert]