A Glimpse of Life of the Turk

"HIS FACE was like a wolf, his gaze was sharp," said military observer Salim Said, who interviewed Raymond Westerling for Ekspress magazine in June 1970. After days of searching, Salim finally managed to get the landline of the controversial former Dutch commando captain.

"But I don't want to be interviewed at home. My house is messy, let's go to a restaurant," said Westerling, subsequently pinpointing a restaurant where he and his former men always gathered.

"I came to the restaurant, and in front of it a big man was already waiting. He glared at me, as if he couldn't believe I was a journalist," said Salim, who was then invited into the restaurant after Westerling's bodyguard was convinced he was indeed a journalist.

In the interview, which lasted over an hour, Westerling answered all of Salim's questions, including about the number of victims in South Sulawesi during his operation. Salim described the meeting as "tense" at first, but the atmosphere became more relaxed as Westerling answered Salim's questions in a friendly manner. "The table where we sat became the center of attention, because all Westerling's men who were present there were staring at us," Salim recalled when met by Historia at the Indonesian Defense University campus, Salemba, Central Jakarta.

Westerling was indeed hailed by his supporters, who mostly consisted of former members of the KNIL, Royal Netherlands East Indies Army who chose to return to the Netherlands, and later remained in contact with Westerling. "Some of them are Ambonese," said Salim.

After a failed coup attempt on January 23-24, 1950 against the government of the Republic of the United States of Indonesia, Westerling fled. A conspiracy by the Dutch elite saved him from capture by the Indonesians. After hiding in the house of the De Nijs family in Kebon Sirih No. 62A, Central Jakarta and in the homes of several other Dutch families, Westerling established contact with the Dutch in Indonesia to plan his escape. "My escape from Indonesia was arranged with the aid of one of my friends," said Westerling in his memoir, Challenge to Terror.

According to Poncke Princen, a former soldier of the Royal Netherlands Army who switched sides to the Republican, Westerling couldn't adjust to the political developments taking place in Indonesia. After the Round Table Conference on December 27, 1949 and the enactment of the federal state of the Republic of Indonesia, there were many movements that wanted to return to a unitary state. "But he refused to submit to the development and the dissolution of the states," said Poncke in his autobiography Kemerdekaan Memilih (Freedom to Choose).

Unsuccessful, Westerling fled to Europe. He stopped in Singapore and was arrested by the British authorities there. However, he managed to fly back to Belgium, where he hid for some time before finally being captured again and was brought to Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Despite being widely reported as a fugitive and sadistic butcher in the South Sulawesi incidents, Westerling retained the support of his former soldiers and the majority of the Dutch who were still frustrated by the loss of their former colony. Westerling was considered a hero to the Dutch at the time.

The Childhood

Westerling was born in Istanbul, Turkey on August 31, 1919 to Paul Westerling and Sophia Moutzou. The only account of Westerling's childhood can be found in the first seven pages of his own memoir, in which he declared his fondness for taming animals. In his room, five-year-old Westerling kept several snakes, some mice that were terrified of the snakes, and a considerable number of lizards.

Westerling claimed to be more advanced for his age at the time. He was only six when he grew bored of pirate stories or Wild West adventures, which according to him, were liked by most children until they turned 20 years old. Instead, he was drawn to detective stories, particularly the bloodiest ones. Whenever he discovered things that didn't make sense, which he said were abundant in detective stories, he'd immediately ask his father about it, giving his father a hard time with his insignificant questions. For some reason, Westerling thought of his father as an expert on murder and other crimes. He realized it was a mistake; overestimating what his father was capable of.

By the time he was seven years old, Westerling declared himself a good shot. However, he admitted to no longer remembering how he got permission from his parents to play with guns at that age. "I could hit a coin at twenty yards with a six-millimeter cartridge," Westerling recalled.

Young Westerling didn't only possess physical agility, but also proficiency in at least three languages. Despite being Dutch, his family had lived in Istanbul for three generations. His father, Paul Westerling, an antique dealer and furniture manufacturer, spoke fluent English, French, German and Italian. At his workshop, Paul spoke Turkish, while to his wife, Westerling's mother, he spoke Greek.

The Romance

Before entering the army, Westerling had a relationship with a Turkish girl, who was unnamed in his memoirs. But while in Cairo, Egypt, where he was awaiting his assignment to Europe, Westerling fell in love with an Egyptian girl. "I had had flirtations in Turkey, and had had girl friends there, but this time I felt that everything was different. This was the girl of my life. This was the girl I never wanted to leave," said Westerling.

Westerling decided to marry the girl. Everything had been prepared for the wedding, which was to be conducted according to Catholic rites. But the love affair soon came to an end when the call of duty arrived. "The day before my wedding, without warning, I received my orders. I was to join an Australian unit camped in the desert," he wrote.

However, Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland 4 written by JA De Moor states that Westerling had married a woman named Marjorie Edna Lilian Sowter around 1942. In his memoir, Westerling didn't mention the woman's name: was she the same woman he met in Cairo or not?

His duty as a commando who was carrying out military actions didn't stop Westerling from finding a partner. In 1946, he first met Yvonne Fournier, an Indo-French woman, the daughter of a hotel owner in Bandung, West Java. Yvonne's father was a French man who had lived in Indonesia for 30 years. Westerling decided to marry Yvonne, who already had two children from her previous marriage. "I was not Yvonne's first husband. She brought to our marriage two young children and was destined to become later the mother of my own daughter, Cecilia," said Westerling.

Yvonne brought a periodic tranquility which was a welcome change from my long period of soldiering.

Cecilia, who was born in 1948, now lives in Friesland, the Netherlands. Through her husband, Hans Veldhuis, Cecilia refused to be interviewed by Historia about her late father's actions during his service in Indonesia. Cecilia's reluctance to make statements seems to be due to the Westerling controversy that resurfaced after a Dutch television station broadcast a recording of his interview in 1978. In that interview, her father admitted to killing at least 400 Indonesians during his time in South Sulawesi.

Westerling's marriage to Yvonne, as he himself admitted, brought "a period of domestic tranquility which was a welcome change from my long period of soldiering". After some difficult years, they settled in Friesland, in the northern part of Holland, but the peace apparently didn't last long. Westerling's unstable economy and addiction to alcohol became the reasons for his divorce from Yvonne. Six years after divorcing Yvonne, Westerling married Adriana Martina Vleesch Dubois in 1971. They then lived in Purmerend, a city north of Amsterdam, where he ran a second-hand bookshop.

The end of Westerling's life was not as glorious as the Dutch had hailed in the 1950s. It was in his home where he sank deeper into his disillusionment: as a soldier who fought for his country but was forgotten in the face of political change. Westerling, who gallantly admitted to have slaughtered Indonesian fighters, ended as a lonely and miserable old man. He died in Purmerend on November 26, 1987.

‍