Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, new leader of the Netherlands’ VVD party is a talk show darling. Will that be enough to take her to the very top?
In a splintered political landscape, where a government will be formed by a coalition of three or more parties, leadership is a primary theme. For a generation, this will be the first election where Rutte does not end up automatically in charge, and yesterday Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, 46, who has been justice minister since January 2022, made her pitch to bright lights, streamers and the Dolly Parton song 9 to 5.
Even before she became justice minister, Yeşilgöz-Zegerius had built an astonishing media profile. On a talk show in 2016, she showed her grandmother Sara’s Louis Vuitton bag and told how she and herTurkish Kurdish parents had fled Turkey when she was eight. They took a “rickety” boat from Bodrum to Kos with what fitted in that bag, then settled in Amersfoort, 30 miles south-west of Amsterdam.
By the time she was elected to parliament in 2017, after working as a VVD councillor, she had 45 TV appearances under her belt. Political journalist Sheila Sitalsing: “As a councillor, she’s been a guest on all the programmes your average MP would kill to appear on.” Yeşilgöz-Zegerius started her career with the Dutch Socialist party, then the Labour party, but found her feet in the centre-right VVD. She embraced being called a “pitbull in high heels” for her campaign to ban street harassment, and talked openly about her marriage, battles with an immune condition and hesitation about having children. Last year, she cut off a lock of hair on live TV – choosing a section from the back – in support of women in Iran.
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