Dutch journalist Fréderike Geerdink received death threats following her critical comment on a photo taken by Selçuk Bayraktar, the Chairman of Turkish drone manufacturing company Baykar, during his visit to Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeastern city of Hakkari (Colemerg). Geerdink’s comment, “Defol Kürdistan’dan” (Get out of Kurdistan), ignited a hostile reaction from Turkish nationalists.
On 14 April, Bayraktar shared a photo posing with inverted tulips in Hakkari, to which Geerdink responded critically, provoking a fierce backlash on social media. Over three days, she endured extreme attacks from Turkish nationalists, including death threats.
Geerdink reported the threats to social media platform X, but her concerns were rejected. The threats included graphic images of weapons and body bags, alongside explicit threats stating, “We’ll come and get you in Utrecht.”
Geerdink, a journalist focusing on the Kurdish issue and living in Turkey between 2006 and 2015, expressed her distress in an interview with Medya News. “I was just really angry and I always try to add something not just express anger…but this time I was so angry that I just said, ‘Defol Kurdistan’dan’,” she said.
Geerdink drew a stark comparison between Bayraktar and Israeli soldiers in Gaza, accusing him of celebrating actions she equated with war crimes. “That’s what he’s doing. He’s kneeling down with this upside-down tulip, saying he cleared the place of terrorists,” Geerdink commented.
She strongly criticised his presence in Kurdish territories and described his actions as bombings that target civilians and children, “He’s been bombing the children of Kurdistan and he’s proud of it,” she asserted.
Geerdink also voiced a demand for legal accountability against what she described as war crimes. “I want to see him prosecuted,” she explained, drawing attention to what she perceives as a broader pattern of disregard for civilian life in conflict zones, likening Turkish actions to those criticised internationally in other regions: “If you develop drones that can instantly kill, you need to really assess who you’re targeting.”
