An open letter to my fellow Dutchies

A gentle warning: If you take this message personally or feel offended after reading it, perhaps it is worth reflecting on where you stand, not only within Dutch society, but also in the world.

Yesterday, I asked my fellow Dutchies and those who consider the Netherlands their home where they stand regarding the recent NATO summit and the position taken by their prime minister.

The silence speaks volumes.

This silence summarizes what I have been experiencing over the past two years, but could never quite put into words.

Before moving forward, I want to clarify that my post was not intended to demand that every individual publicly declare their political opinions. My intention was to be seen and heard, and to draw attention to something largely absent from the Dutch news narrative.

I also know that many people share my values and have made their positions clear to me. They have made me feel that we are in this together, resisting the rise of right-wing politics and the oppression, fear, and violence it spreads across the world. This open letter is not addressed to them.

In criminal law, mens rea refers to intention, while actus reus refers to action. I am not comparing social exclusion or microaggressions to criminal acts. However, this distinction between intention and action helps me explain something I have struggled with during my two years in the Netherlands.

I have always tried to assume that the people around me have good intentions, even when they unintentionally hurt or offend me. But good intentions do not erase the consequences of repeated actions or repeated inaction. Over the past two years, I have experienced many subtle forms of exclusion and microaggressions that revealed assumptions beneath those “good intentions.”

I experienced this in many forms: not being taken seriously, not being invited to social gatherings, and not being asked, even once, what I was going through, despite being quite vocal about my “Middle Eastern” struggles. People corrected me when I mispronounced Dutch words and told me how I should pronounce their names, yet they rarely made the same effort to learn how to pronounce my Turkish name correctly. I was even called lazy for not learning Dutch, without any curiosity about the circumstances, pressures, and struggles shaping my life.

You withheld your empathy and compassion. You did not necessarily silence me, but you also never created a space in which I could speak and truly be heard.

One unanswered Instagram story would mean very little on its own. But within the context of two years of similar experiences, that silence becomes part of a much larger pattern. The same people who remained silent were often the people who had never made an active effort to include me in their communities.

What made it even more painful was that, even after I explicitly addressed the post to them, some people did not care enough to read the whole text. They stopped viewing after the second or third story.

That, too, taught me something.

I am proud to call myself a psychologist, sociologist, social psychologist, and activist. These titles mean something to me. They represent professional codes of conduct, ethical responsibilities, and a commitment to careful consideration of how we use our knowledge and our platforms.

I have come to realize that parts of the Dutch academic culture I encountered do not align with my values. There is more to these titles than producing publications, repeating institutional language, or claiming to generate “objective knowledge.”

Our disciplines also require us to reflect on how power, exclusion, and inequality shape our everyday relationships.

If you prefer to remain within the fetishization of quantitative research, the pursuit of supposedly objective knowledge, and the separation of your academic work from your personal life, that is your choice. But perhaps you should also engage seriously with intersectionality, postcolonial studies, feminist theory, critical sociology, and the many epistemologies that challenge whose knowledge is recognized and whose experiences are ignored.

I am done trying to prove myself and the value of my work to an audience with a limited worldview. I am done listening to people speak about intersectionality, diversity, and inclusion while their everyday actions or inactions continue to make me feel like “the Other”.

I do not accept being treated as a diversity hire, a token, or evidence that an institution or social circle is inclusive.

At the same time, this is not an indictment of everyone I have met in the Netherlands. Over the past two years, I have encountered many wonderful people, both within and beyond the university, with integrity, compassion, and a sincere commitment to becoming responsible academics, community leaders, activists, and policymakers.

They have made me feel seen, supported, and hopeful.

Many of my Instagram followers are social science students and researchers. Many of you are activists and queer people who claim to value intersectionality, diversity, and collective action toward building a better world.

Over the past two years, however, I have come to understand more clearly that someone’s profession does not necessarily mean that they embody the knowledge, ethics, or responsibilities associated with that profession in their everyday life.

Thank you to everyone who taught me this valuable lesson at the age of 25.

Apparently, I failed to “integrate,” which often seems to be the more socially acceptable way of saying “assimilate,” into Dutch society and Dutch academia. Oops.

Feel free to call me an ungrateful migrant who had the privilege of living in the Netherlands for two years. I will not be offended. My own government calls me a terrorist every day simply because I advocate for equality and liberation for all. I will now try my chances in Copenhagen, Denmark. And if I cannot make it there either, perhaps “I am the problem”.

I am done facing this hypocrisy in my personal life.

In professional settings, I will continue to engage respectfully, challenge ideas, and invite people into honest and sometimes uncomfortable conversations. My door will remain open to anyone who sincerely wants to contribute to the good we owe our communities.

I will never reproduce what I experienced here:

Being neither explicitly excluded nor genuinely included. I was welcomed on paper, but kept in a limbo where I was visible enough to represent diversity, yet never embraced enough to truly belong.

I will continue searching for my people across the world. I will no longer tear myself into pieces for people who do not want to listen to me, or to any voice that challenges their limited understanding of diversity.

Until then, we can remain colleagues connected on LinkedIn. My Instagram, however, is a personal space reserved for people who make me feel that I belong, who uplift me, and who share the values that guide my life.

I learned a great deal during my time here, and I will carry these lessons with me wherever I go.

But I want to leave you with a question:

What have you learned, and are you living those lessons in your everyday life?

Mertcan Mutlu

09/07/2026

Groningen, The Netherlands