Liever Turks dan Paaps

During the Dutch Revolt, the Dutch were under such a desperate situation that they looked for help from many places no matter their religion, and "indeed even a Turk", as wrote the secretary of Jan van Nassau. In 1566, diplomat Joseph Nasi contacted Protestants in Antwerp to discuss an Ottoman offer of assistance against the Spaniards. In 1569, William of Orange sent a secret envoy to Nasi asking the Ottomans to support the Dutch Revolt against their common Spanish enemies. Orange had already sent ambassadors to the Ottoman Empire for help in 1566, and it is speculated that it was in response to William's request that Selim II sent his fleet to attack the Spanish at Tunis in 1574. The phrase "Liever Turks dan Paaps" was coined as a way to express that life under the Muslim Ottoman Sultan would have been more desirable than life under the Catholic King of Spain. The Flemish noble D'Esquerdes wrote to this effect that he: ==Meaning==

While the Turks were known for having religious tolerance within their dominions, king Philip II of Spain did not tolerate Protestant faiths. Furthermore, various religious refugees, such as the Huguenots, some Anglicans, Quakers, Anabaptists and even Jesuits and Capuchins were able to find refuge at Constantinople and elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, where they were given rights of residence and worship. Further, the Ottomans supported the Calvinists, not only in their territories of Transylvania and Hungary, but also in France. The slogan Liever Turks dan Paaps did not mean the Dutch seriously contemplated coming under Ottoman suzerainty, as they were far away from that empire's sphere of influence; rather, it was an expression of their antipathy to the Catholic regime they had been subjected to. ==Similar uses==

A similar statement, "It would be better to see the turban of the Turks reigning in the center of the City (i.e., Constantinople) than the Latin mitre" () is ascribed by the historian Doukas to the last megas doux of the Byzantine Empire, Loukas Notaras, as an expression of Eastern Orthodox hostility to the Latin Church and the attempts at a union of the Churches. The veracity of the attribution of the quote to Notaras is unlikely, but it does reflect the views of some members of the anti-Unionist party in Constantinople, even at the eve of the Fall of Constantinople. ==See also==