After the departure of DENK leader Van Baarle, the power struggle between party top and group has now been exposed

The power struggle between the national administration of DENK and the three -headed room group came as a surprise for the outside world on Thursday evening. Party leader Stephan van Baarle wrote in a message X That he withdraws as a party leader of DENK.

He would have been in conflict for weeks with the chairman of the three -headed party board, specifically about the composition of the list of candidates for the national elections. Parallel to this, unrest has also arisen within the party about an additional general members’ meeting (GMM), which would be blocked by the board. Van Baarle feels “undermined as a party leader,” and states that the party “greater [is] Then all of us, “he wrote his statement on social media.

Baarle’s departure does not seem final. He is fully supported by the other two MPs on behalf of DENK, Ismail El Abassi and Dogukan Ergin. So Ergin opposes NRC That “the only way to get on top of this” is the boarding of the entire board. He says he speaks on behalf of the “full fraction.”

According to several party sources, Van Baarle would have had no participation about the composition of the list

On Friday afternoon, the board came up with a statement stating that Van Baarle wants to turn around. The “earlier proposal for mediation by an independent professional is still on the table,” the board writes.

Chairman of the board Ejder Köse opposes NRC that he wants to handle the hassle with the national group ‘orderly’. “It doesn’t get along when we go on the streets with each other,” says Köse, to add that the behavior of the group is “brash – and that is an understatement.”

MPs Ergin and Ismail El Abassi posted Friday afternoon a video On social media, in which they draw strongly against Köse. “How do you have it in your head, how do you do our political leader Stephan Van Baarle? And how can you go so far that your Stephan is trying to work away?”

And that while Van Baarle “fought hard for the Palestinians,” stands up “against Wilders” and protects “minorities”. The board, says El Abassi, has made it impossible for Baarle to perform its role as a party leader. Nothing less than betrayed, says Ergin and El Abbasi, who demand the departure of the board and the return of Van Baarle. “Stephan has to go back.”

To suffocate

Van Baarle would have had no participation about the composition of the list, several party sources report NRC. Ergin states that Van Baarle has “been placed for accomplished facts”. Without knowing who is on the list, several sources suspect that a significant part of the list consists of confidants of Köse. “It was choking or swallowing, and otherwise withdrawing,” says Ergin and El Abassi about the message that Van Baarle received from the board, when he made his dissatisfaction about the list.

Van Baarle followed in the summer of 2023 as party leader and party leader, after Tunahan Kuzu and Farid Azarkan announced that he would no longer be eligible for election. Van Baarle, who has a Dutch mother and Turkish father, stands according to the sources for ‘broad diversity’, which should amount to more room for women and black men, for example. An initiate states that the board in turn argues ‘ethnic-driven’, with a pronounced preference for Turkish-Dutch.

Is think a Turkish party? No, the party is ‘more complicated together’ than the outside world thinks

“Stephan has been arguing for broad diversity for some time,” says Ergin. For example, the national group would “more women [op de lijst] Want to see “. However, emails sent by” Critical Thinking 2025 “shows that Ergin would be dissatisfied with the place that the board would like to allocate: he would drop from the third to fifth place. The board would like to put a woman in third place.” To date I know nothing, “Ergin responds. “I don’t know where I am.” And: “We have a bigger problem than where I get.”

He also says that the national group has indicated to the board that it attaches value to ‘continuity and renewal’ for the upcoming elections. This could therefore amount to that the top three should remain unchanged, with more room for ‘broad diversity’ on the rest of the list.

Since 2017, DENK represents three seats in the Lower House, but according to recent polls, has growth potential of up to four or five seats.

Gaza

The power struggle between the board and the national group, less than three months before the elections, is in danger of unadfully unpleasant DENK if the party top does not quickly come to a solution. Stephan van Baarle saw his national name recognition growing in the past two years thanks to his outspoken performances against the normalization of Geert Wilders and the PVV, and the apathic attitude of Dutch politics about the genocide in Gaza.

According to political scientist Floris Vermeulen (University of Amsterdam), the origin and stable success of DENK can be understood from conservative parts of the Turkish community. They are “traditionally well organized” – think of religious networks such as Diyanet Nederland and Milli Görüs with considerable influence within Turkish mosques. Party chairman Köse is said to have been involved in the Turkish-conservative networks for decades.

According to Vermeulen, DENK is “more complicated” than before the outside world. The party board is ‘very strongly connected’ with the aforementioned religious-conservative organizations. But the promise of DENK was also that it would be a party with an eye for more migrant communities than just the Turkish. For example, the party has never put a woman in an eligible place, and, according to insiders, black members are passed. Things that Van Baarle wants to change.

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