Her parents fled Turkey after the military coup of 1980. And she, who grew up on the outskirts of Amsterdam, fled from the left-wing parties in which she was active in her youth.
Today, Dilan Yesilgöz-Zegerius, Minister of Justice and protagonist of a dazzling political career, aspires to become the first woman to serve as head of Government in the Netherlands.
“Who would have thought that, taking into account where I come from, I would be in front of all of you today. “A fan of Ajax Amsterdam here in Rotterdam,” she told the delegates of the Dutch liberal party VDD in September when she was proclaimed, without internal opposition, as leader and candidate for the legislative elections on November 22. They promise to be very contested elections but, today, Yesilgöz-Zegerius leads the polls. Beyond her Turkish roots, her candidacy is peculiar for several reasons, among them, being a champion of the hardening of immigration policies and the only candidate who does not rule out agreeing with the extreme right if necessary to form a Government.
Born in Ankara in 1977, Yesilgöz is the daughter of a couple of Kurdish activists who met at university. When she was 8 years old, she traveled with her mother and her sister to the coastal town of Bodrum, where one night they took a boat that took them to the Greek island of Kos. From there they traveled to Athens and, finally, to Amsterdam, where her father, a trade unionist, who had requested asylum in the country of tulips a few years before, was waiting for them. The family settled in Amersfoort, a town with a high percentage of foreign population, where her parents developed intense activism, but settled not in Turkish neighborhoods but surrounded by native Dutch.
He studied Social and Cultural Sciences at VU University Amsterdam, where he obtained a master's degree in Cultural Management. The Amersfoort City Council, where she started working in 2004, was her springboard into politics, where she has worked on issues such as security, drug policies or the defense of the LGTBI community. He was active in the Socialistische Partij (ultra-left), then in the PVDA (social democrats) and in GroenLinks (Greens) but he ended up abandoning these groups, he says, because he always felt that, in their ranks, his origin determined everything and he detested their “paternalism.” .
In the VVD, the party for which she was elected as a councilor in 2014 and three years later as a deputy, it has never been like this, says this professional from the television sets, where she has had a long presence, for a long time exceeding her political weight. . Jokes aside, beyond the fact that her husband, from whom she takes her second surname, is on the board of directors of Ajax, the day her colleagues proclaimed her candidate, after only two years in the Government, she did not avoid her foreign origins .
“For me, the Netherlands is the most beautiful country in the world. I was not born here but it is where I was raised and where I have become who I am. My country, the country of freedom,” he claimed before honoring acting Prime Minister Mark Rutte for his 12 years of leadership. Divergences over immigration management were the cause of the fall of her last government and Yesilgöz-Zegeriu has given signs that she will defend tougher positions than Rutte, a profile that has led to her being compared to the British Minister of the Interior, Suella. Braverman, daughter of immigrants, bulwark against illegal immigration and prone to inflammatory rhetoric.
“People worry about the high influx of immigrants, wondering if it will create problems, if it is fair for people who have been waiting for years for sheltered housing or for real refugees, or if it is realistic that our small country wants to receive to all who come. We politicians cannot close our eyes to these concerns,” the brand new liberal candidate said that day. The VDD program advocates for “better management” of immigration and Yesilgöz-Zegerius has shown signs of wanting to restrict the reception of economic immigrants to make room for political refugees, evoking the acute housing problem that the country suffers.
Despite the fact that far-right parties have focused on her origins to criticize her management (Geert Wilders said she feared for her safety when she was appointed minister, because “obviously” she would prefer to see her “underground”), the liberal candidate has said that does not rule out working with them. “Let's look at her projects first. What interests me is who will be at the negotiating table and with what policies.” The experience of Rutte's first government, in 2010, with the extreme right, which gave him parliamentary support, ended in fiasco, but Yesilgöz-Zegerius says that she does not rule out anything from the outset, just as she does not rule out reaching any voter.
The liberal candidate's leadership in the polls is increasingly disputed by Pieter Omtzigt, from the Christian Democrat orbit. Omtzigt, a deputy, presents himself as an independent with a program focused on the idea of decency and bringing out the colors of Rutte's party due to the scandal, uncovered by himself, that brought down his previous Government, in 2021, the false accusations families – the majority, immigrants – from collecting social assistance fraudulently. The electoral debates, analysts say, could be decisive this year in deciding who wins on November 22.
