Turkish demonstrators burn the French flag by mistake, thinking it is the Dutch one
In March 2017, during the protests over the tension with the Netherlands, some Turkish demonstrators burned the French flag by mistake. How to tell the two flags apart.
In March 2017 there were diplomatic tensions between Turkey and the Netherlands: the Dutch government banned the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, from entering to stop him campaigning for President Erdoğan, and afterwards his colleague Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya was held and escorted by police out of the country. There were protests both by Turks living in the Netherlands and in Turkey.
In one of them, some demonstrators burned the wrong flag by mistake: the French flag, thinking it was the Dutch one.
The flag burned was the French one.
How to tell the two flags apart
- The Netherlands: horizontal tricolour: red, white and (cobalt) blue, in a 2:3 proportion.
- France: vertical tricolour: blue, white and red, with the blue next to the pole.
The Netherlands: horizontal stripes: red, white and blue.
France: vertical stripes, with the blue next to the pole.
They have a shared past: the Dutch flag comes from the Prince’s Flag, orange, white and blue, from the late 16th century, and red gradually replaced orange during the 17th century. The French one, after the Revolution of 1789, adopted vertical stripes influenced by the Dutch horizontal design. The Dutch flag is considered the oldest tricolour flag in continuous use, and its colours were officially set by decree on 19 February 1937.
Trick: think “horizontal = Netherlands; vertical = France”.
