Without his uniform, the war hero looks devastatingly normal: normal build, body warmer over a checked shirt, medium-length blond hair tamed with a generous lick of gel.
On a clear Thursday morning in October, Lieutenant Colonel Gijs Tuinman walks along the floodplains of the Waal towards Slot Loevestein. “We had a nice walk,” he says cheerfully when he finds out that he could also have parked in front of the castle gate.
In 2014, Tuinman was knighted in the Military Order of William by King Willem-Alexander for his heroic actions in Afghanistan in 2009. He previously received the second highest award, the Bronze Lion. The Dutch most decorated soldier is now in third place on the election list of the BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB). Party leader Caroline van der Plas has already put the commando forward as candidate Minister of Defense. Tuinman himself revealed it in a sensational interview A.D know that they have “no political ambitions”. In the same interview he also called for voting for CDA MP Derk Boswijk – a friend of his. Last week he was in the news again, after it emerged that former terrorist Soumaya Sahla maintained good contacts with him and former helicopter pilot Roy de Ruiter, also decorated with the Order of William. The incidents fit into a messy campaign by BBB, which was the largest in the Provincial Council elections earlier this year, but has now dropped to fifth party with 12 seats in the polls.
Tuinman does not seem to be concerned about the political headwind. “Last time, significantly more people voted for BBB than the polls indicated.”
Gardener likes to come to Loevestein. Two years ago he gave a lecture here about the ideas of legal scholar Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), who was imprisoned in the castle. Tuinman talked about the “just war” and about peace, which he described as a period of relative peace between two conflicts. According to Tuinman, many people do not realize how vulnerable the Netherlands is.
Tuinman’s switch to politics was the result of another lecture he gave on May 5 last year. In it, Tuinman stated that freedom can mean something different for everyone and he advocated radical empathy with others – even with the Taliban. “That idea resonated with Caroline,” says Tuinman. The BBB leader asked him if she could use elements of his speech for her HJ School lecture, in which she opposed polarization in politics and asked for understanding for the “gut feeling” in the Netherlands. It was the beginning of a period of intensive contact between the two, with Tuinman driving back and forth in the evening from the Hoeksche Waard to Van der Plas’ house in Deventer. The defense paragraph in the BBB election manifesto – with a lot of emphasis on investments in the armed forces – bears his stamp.
Anyone who asks about Tuinman’s ideas should take his time, because the former commando loves to philosophize, and he jumps from topic to topic at a high pace: “My head never stands still.”
In 2013, Tuinman left Defense for Deloitte, but he could not settle into the consultant profession and returned to the army. He studied for two years at the School of Advanced Military Studies in the US, and until recently taught at the Dutch Defense Academy. During his lectures he caused the students to despair by completely turning established ideas about the military business upside down. Two years ago he started a dissertation on the philosophical principles behind military strategy. “I study complexity theory. No, that is not vague, that is very concrete.”
Competitive twins
Tuinman is one half of identical twins who were born by caesarean section on November 15, 1979 in Heerlen. Brother Joost was picked up a minute before him, “but if it had been a normal birth I would have been the first,” says Tuinman. “I was lying in front of him.” The brothers have maintained their mutual rivalry to this day. “There are conjoined twins and there are competitive twins.”
Joost and Gijs both went to the Royal Military Academy, after which they reported together to the Commando Troops Corps. For Joost, that choice had been clear for years, Gijs Tuinman had long doubted about tropical agronomy in Wageningen. “I would go to Ethiopia, build a coffee plantation.”
Tuinman likes to talk about the historic mansion in South Limburg where Joost and he grew up, and about the community spirit in the town of Emmaberg, near Valkenburg. As teenagers, Joost and Gijs worked for a farmer. He learned what working with your hands is like. As a fourteen-year-old boy, Tuinman led the Iraqi asylum seekers who came to help with the strawberry harvest.
In farming he learned to make do with what he has, Tuinman says, something that, according to him, politicians in The Hague often lose sight of. “Nowadays, if there is a problem, we often say: there must be rules, legislation, extra money. But for solutions you always need knowledge and skills from practice. If you can’t chop open a frozen container of silage on your own in the winter, you can chop with six people. But you can also use the tractor to remove the gas tank and burner and thaw the ground. Then you can do it on your own.”
At the age of 21, Tuinman was deployed to Afghanistan for the first time, as commander of a team of eight commandos. Tuinman spent more than three and a half years of his life in conflict areas. The missions, usually carried out by a handful special forces, have shaped his worldview. “With a small team you can achieve very big effects.”
According to Tuinman, much more attention needs to be paid to the work floor. As far as the BBB is concerned, the defense staff in The Hague will be reduced and more money and powers will go to the military units in the province. The same principle applies outside the armed forces, he says firmly. “The trick is to tackle problems at the lowest possible level.”
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In the AD you said that you had no ‘political ambitions’. Then why are you on the list?
“I don’t really have political ambitions, but I do have ambitions in politics.”
Is there a difference then?
“Of course. If you have political ambitions, you opt for a political career: Member of Parliament, party leader, minister. Having ambitions in politics means that you say: there are certain issues in society and something needs to be done about them. We see that we are dealing with a cluster of crises in the Netherlands.”
The nitrogen crisis, for example.
“You cannot separate the nitrogen crisis from the climate crisis, but also from the lack of space. There are problems with water, with food, with energy, with migration. And there are problems with how our society functions. We have a pile of crises, and the difficult thing is that you cannot isolate them from each other, if you push against one partition, the other starts to slide. You can also look at it holistically. That means you don’t try to achieve 100 percent solutions to all problems, but you say: this is good enough.”
That’s nothing compared to the global problems: Ukraine, Gaza…
“If you look at our history, you see that periods of peace and prosperity alternate with periods of unrest, chaos and war. We can say: we don’t want that, but the Netherlands will also have to get into the trench every now and then.”
The BBB advocates significant additional investments in the armed forces.
“The government has not done that badly at all. The money that was there was well spent. What is lacking is perseverance. In Ukraine you see that the Russian is prepared to wait it out for a long time.”
The armed forces already have a personnel problem. Should conscription return?
“You have to modernize it. So on a voluntary basis, and scale up if the international situation requires it.”
That will cost an awful lot of money.
“That’s not necessary. I was recently at a conference of non-commissioned officers, a room of 750 people. I then asked: who stands in front of a group of soldiers at least one day a week? At most fifty hands went up. The rest are behind the computer, going from meeting to meeting.”
In the AD you said that the VVD also had a good story.
“If you compare all the plans, they are 90 percent the same.”
Why would you vote on November 22?
“You choose differences in emphasis. We at BBB put society first. You shouldn’t just look at what yields the most profit. It’s about people living together.”
The CDA also says that.
“That could be. But we are going to make it happen.”
According to you, you might as well vote for CDA MP Derk Boswijk.
“If you are looking for someone with military expertise and you are against BBB in principle, you can vote for Derk. I said that.”
The image was: that Gardener is naive.
“While I am anything but naive. But we are about reaching out, bridging the differences.”
Can BBB still beat Pieter Omzigt?
“Of course we want to become the biggest, but it’s not about winning. We have to work together.”