The Dutch - Ottoman Alliance

in history •  6 years ago  (edited)

IMG_20180925_093533.jpg
Silver rescents worn by the Dutch from 1566 to 1574, reading ‘Rather Turk than Pope’. (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam)

Prince William of Orange ruled the Netherlands in name of the Spanish king Philip II, but experienced moral difficulty in the execution of the persecution laws. Orange appealed many a time to Philip to moderate the persecution bills, but when this proved unsuccesful, he allied with the Protestants in a war of independence against the Spanish Empire.

Just after the 'Beeldenstorm', in October 1566, Joseph Nasi, a Jewish friend of Orange from Antwerp who had fled from the Inquisition and now worked for the Sultan, arranged for a letter from Süleyman I promising the Netherlands financial and military support. Dueto the demise of Süleyman I at the end of the same year, and the attack on the Ottoman Empire by the Ivan the Terrible in 1568, the aid had to wait until 1574.

In that year, Sultan Selim II sent a secret agent who established contact between the emerging Dutch Republic, the pirates of Algiers and the Morisco’s, the Spanish Muslims who had progressively been forced to profess Christianity after the final occupation of Muslim Spain by the Catholics in 1492. The plan was to attack different parts of the Spanish Empire at the same time. In October of 1574, the Sultan sent a giant fleet into the Mediterranean, which conquered Tunis. At the same time, the Dutch attacked the city of Leiden. The Dutch freedom fighters were flying Ottoman flags on their ships,wore silver Crescents with pro-Turkis slogans and were even wearing Turkish moustaches to fool the Spanish into thinking the feared Turks had come all the way North.

The count of Anjou who governed Flanders (the Southern part of the Netherlands) between 1581 an 1584, coöperated with Sultan Murat III for an exchange project which hosted an Ottoman community in Antwerp anda Dutch community in Istanbul between 1582 and 1584. Some say the Ottoman fleet attacked the Armada, the Spanish fleet which was to strike down the Dutch uprising forever, crippling it before it could even leave the Mediterranean.

Even after a treaty was signed between the Netherlands and the Spanish Empire in 1609, a negotiation took place between Prince Maurice, successor to William of Orange, and Al-Hajari, ambassador of Morocco. It was discussed how Morocco, the Netherlands and the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I could jointly attack and retake Spain for the Muslims. King Philip III of the Spanish Empire refers to the military alliance between the Morisco’s, the Ottomans, the Dutch and the English in his Edict of the Expulsion of the Morisco’s of 1609.

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in:
https://www.alislam.org/library/articles/Celebrations-400-yrs-Turkey-Netherlands.pdf