If the VVD members, about 24,000, choose Dilan Yeşilgöz (46) as their new leader, they will get someone completely different from Mark Rutte. A woman, for the first time in the history of the VVD. Of Turkish-Kurdish origin: she came to the Netherlands with her parents when she was eight. Rutte lived in The Hague all his life, even when he studied history in Leiden, he did not want to leave that city. And in the party Yeşilgöz is seen as a right-wing hardliner, Rutte not at all.
But with her, the VVD also gets more of the same. Just like Ruth chose Yesilgöz on Wednesday morning The Telegraph, the newspaper of the VVD supporters, to announce her candidacy as party leader. With a text that the VVD campaign advisers could just as well have had Rutte pronounce: “I am ready to make our country even stronger and more resilient. Safer, more prosperous and ready for the future.” A day earlier, at the NOSshe was “still thinking”, although even then it could be read from her face that she was already done with that and she couldn’t wait to tell it.
Like Rutte, she finds imaging extremely important. During interviews in newspapers, she emphatically interferes with the photo that accompanies it. She also seems to know very precisely which personal details can be important for her image and how she presents them. On May 11, just before a debate in the House of Representatives on animal cruelty, she posted a picture of herself on Twitter: on the couch in sweatpants, her dog Moos hangs over her and wants to lick her face. As you can see I am a big animal lover. Unfortunately, not everyone takes good care of their animals.” Moos is also sometimes in full view on her Twitter photos when she looks at Ajax. She is an Ajax fan.
The texts she puts on social media would also fit on a VVD campaign poster. ‘The revenue model of drug criminals must be destroyed.’ “Any threat to anyone is pitiful, cowardly and unacceptable.” “If you harass or pelt players, you are not a supporter but a huge bastard.”
Victims to save
In interviews, Yeşilgöz told how she ended up with the VVD via the SP, PvdA and GroenLinks. Her parents had demonstrated in Turkey for the rights of women and minorities. “Then you are by definition left-wing,” she said in the 2021 election campaign against Feminer, a platform ‘for and by young ambitious women’. She had inherited it from her parents. But she had “soon noticed” that she did not fit into a left-wing party. That was mainly, she said, because she was treated there as “the immigrant”. “Left parties are simply looking for victims they can save. That’s why they exist.”
In the HJ Schoo lecture, in the Rode Hoed in Amsterdam, Yesilgöz chose ‘undermining the democratic constitutional state’ as the theme and what stood out: as the first threat she mentioned ‘wokism’. Because, according to her, “wokists” “want to determine who has the right to speak”. She also said: “It is a dangerous misunderstanding that there is such a thing as the right not to be hurt.” Only then did she start talking about conspiracy theorists and spreaders of fake news, online hate, anti-Semitism.
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In the 2021 election programme, the VVD seemed to be moving from the right to the centre, especially economically. The party wanted to stand up for people with a modest income and argued for a stronger government. The message seemed to be: come and govern with us, PvdA or GroenLinks. That failed in the formation. Many VVD members assume that the party will acquire a more right-wing image under her leadership. And also more ideological ‘color’, which the party would have lost by co-ruling in all kinds of coalitions since 2010. With the fall of the cabinet over a typical VVD theme such as asylum, the entire VVD top now seems to have opted for such a strategy.
‘Soft’ and ‘involved’
There are also VVD members who have experienced her up close and call her “not right-wing at all” and “a real liberal” who is tenacious but also “involved” and “soft”. These VVD members also know that she has shown little of this at the Ministry of Justice. “Maybe,” says one, “she can do that in the campaign.”
For the time being, many VVD members assume that under her leadership the party will be happy to cooperate with right-wing parties in the House of Representatives. BBB leader Caroline van der Plas already seems to like that. She says that she gets along well with Yeşilgöz and has encouraged her to become a VVD party leader, but that she also sees her as a “formidable competitor”. “She has a lot of sympathy, also among non-VVD members.”
Opinion research agency I&O Research saw that in January. VVD members thought she was the best minister after Rutte, she was also remarkably popular among voters of the CDA, D66, the ChristenUnie and JA21. She was called “visible” and “decisive” by respondents.
The only opponent who has registered so far is former Member of Parliament André Bosman. The next few weeks will show who else dares to take on Yesilgöz. That seems hopeless from the start. The party board, other VVD members from the outgoing cabinet and many MPs also support her.