For his debut on national television, Stephan van Baarle has taken his brown suit out of the closet, the top button of the white shirt is loose, his beard is tightly trimmed. He looks at Joost Eerdmans, at that time the foreman of Leefbaar Rotterdam. “We know, for example, that men are overrepresented in crime and that VVD members are overrepresented in integrity scandals,” he begins.
Eerdmans bursts into laughter, clapping and cheering can be heard from the audience. Vincent Karremans of the VVD, who is sitting next to Eerdmans, tries to keep a straight face.
March 2018. The municipal elections will take place in two weeks. Stephan van Baarle, the Rotterdam party leader of Denk, is participating in the Rotterdam Debate in the Maassilo. He responds to Eerdmans’ position, who believes that the police should be able to arrest everyone, even if the good suffer from the bad.
Van Baarle: “I am not in favor of subjecting Mr. Karremans to an integrity investigation every day. And I am also not in favor of having Mr. Eerdmans arrested by the police every day.”
Ethnicity and crime have nothing in common, as he knows as a sociologist. According to him, politicians need to better understand that the living environment and unemployment are more important causes of criminal behavior. In this way, “half of Rotterdam” does not have to be “suspicious in advance”.
Two weeks later, Denk wins four seats in the Rotterdam city council in one fell swoop. After the municipal elections in 2022, four years later, the center-left party will join the city council, and Van Baarle has already been a Member of the House of Representatives for more than a year. The fact that Denk co-governs the country’s second city – with Leefbaar and VVD, of all things – is “80 percent” thanks to him, says Farid Azarkan.
Azarkan, leader of Denk in the House of Representatives until August, announced this summer that he was leaving national politics. Stephan van Baarle takes over from him. Tunahan Kuzu, one of the founders of Denk, will also not return after the early elections.
To the outside world, Azarkan’s successor may be seen as a political newcomer, but within the party he enjoys nestor status. “He knows more about politics than I do,” says Azarkan.
Nickname ‘Stephan the Turk’
Stephan van Baarle (1991) grew up in Vreewijk, a deprived neighborhood in South Rotterdam. He lives with his single Dutch mother and bears her surname, his Turkish father is absent. Going on holiday or buying new gym clothes was not a given. The fact that he later wants to “fight for equal opportunities” is due to the poverty in his environment, he said in his maiden speech in the House of Representatives.
He was 10 years old when two hijacked planes pierced the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. Despite his young age, he also consciously and closely experiences the rise of Rotterdam’s Pim Fortuyn. Overnight he is nicknamed ‘Stephan the Turk’. This period sowed the seeds for his aversion to “social polarization,” he later said in an interview interview.
After pre-university education, he chose to study sociology at Erasmus University, where he graduated with honors. He is offered a promotional position, which he turns down. Van Baarle knows that it would be better for him to become a policymaker himself, instead of always getting excited about policy.
Van Baarle is known at Denk as ‘member 007’. The party was founded in early 2015 after the split from PvdA MPs Kuzu and Selçuk Öztürk. Soon after, Van Baarle becomes their policy officer. Kuzu and Van Baarle had recently met at an event of Young Democrats, the political youth organization of D66. He came to the evening to hear Kuzu talk about integration.
In Rotterdam he stands out with statements about the Rotterdam housing vision, the plan to demolish cheap homes and build more expensive homes. He would prefer to put these proposals ‘through the shredder’.
After Denk, under the leadership of Van Baarle, obtained four seats in the Rotterdam city council, he will become a member of the Building, Housing and Outdoor Space committee. This is an important committee for his supporters, whose living environment is threatened with demolition and gentrification.
Friendly in the corridors
“It is really possible to work with this man,” thought René Segers-Hoogendoorn of the CDA once he shared the council chamber with Van Baarle. During the campaign, his party had excluded Denk from cooperation because of the intimidating videos that Denk had made about the voting behavior of MPs with a Turkish background. Van Baarle turned out to be pleasant to work with, “very open and friendly”.
Vincent Karremans, then VVD faction leader in Rotterdam, also sees that he is “a very friendly guy” in the corridors.
During the council debate following the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020, they come to blows. After the debate they have a conversation about it, out of the spotlight. Denk and VVD are writing the initiative memorandum together Against discrimination, for equality, for “more urgent policies” against discrimination in the city. “There we planted the seed for later cooperation in the current coalition,” Karremans recalls.
Also read: VVD and Denk: together against discrimination, with risk of failure
After a sharp debate in the council chamber, Van Baarle sometimes walks up to Joost Eerdmans of Leefbaar Rotterdam. “Nice job!” he says. They both understand that they can benefit from their differences. Although their positions sometimes overlapped, Eerdmans now says. “In terms of taxes, the airport and the car.”
In the 2021 elections, Denk consolidated the three seats in the House of Representatives. Board chairman Ejder Köse was satisfied, but “particularly happy” because Van Baarle could enter parliament. “He can talk for hours and hours and then find the middle ground. He is always looking for support, that is politics.”
After the 2022 municipal elections, Van Baarle will be one of the negotiators on behalf of Denk met Leefbaar, VVD and D66. He has already been a Member of Parliament for a year.
As a Member of Parliament, he asks questions about discrimination and racism, and all kinds of issues that affect Dutch people with a non-Western background. With the PvdA he fights against discriminatory algorithms used by the police and other governments.
Strongly against Yesilgöz
During the recent General Political Reflections, he accused VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz of lying about refugees, after which Chamber President Vera Bergkamp intervened. This surprises him, because “rants” about Muslims and asylum seekers are hardly interrupted. For chairman Köse, the clash was confirmation of the “double standard”.
The collision also helped. Van Baarle’s fame has increased since then, says Ipsos researcher Sander Nieuwkerk. Relatively few voters knew him at the beginning of September: 9 percent, compared to 46 percent of Dutch people who know Azarkan. After this debate that is 17 percent. Right-wing voters in particular got to know him. Voters who know who he is rate him with a 3.9. That is the lowest score given on the left. He is appreciated among his own supporters, who mainly live in the big cities. The main goal for newcomer Van Baarle is to retain those voters, Nieuwkerk analyzes.
It is striking that Van Baarle chooses a tough tone in the run-up to the elections, and often limits his messages to outrage about Islamophobia. “We don’t play the role of victim,” says chairman Köse. “We name what we see, that is the task of all 150 MPs.”
Sometimes outgoing MP Azarkan wants to know from Van Baarle whether he is aware of how his statements come across. “Is that the intention?” Van Baarle, Azarkan also says, has been around “long enough” to be able to withstand criticism. “And ultimately he just has to chart his own course.”
Köse sometimes teases the 32-year-old politician. “Get married,” I say. And then Stephan says that he married Denk.” Köse shakes his head, laughing.