Next Wednesday, the Netherlands is likely to elect its first female prime minister in its history, who is also the first immigrant. She is of Kurdish origin and a Muslim. However, polls confirm that 46-year-old Justice Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz is poised to take on the top position in the country, according to reports from local and foreign newspapers. If successful, she would succeed Mark Rutte, who has been prime minister for 13 years.
Dilan Yeşilgöz, leader of the conservative "People's Party for Freedom and Democracy," is expected to benefit from a shift of voters to the right, despite having arrived in the Netherlands as a migrant at the age of 7 with her mother after fleeing to a Greek island on a overcrowded boat of migrants. She has taken a tough stance on asylum seekers and pledged to reduce their numbers.
A video displayed below shows her during her visit last year to the city of Erbil in northern Iraq. Last week, Yeşilgöz gained an advantage over her competitors and promised voters, "I will be with you," urging them to support her policies, not her gender. She stated, "I will not say: I am a woman, therefore give me your votes; I have my own abilities (...) I want to run the campaign with my objective views that aim to solve people's problems." She reaffirmed her promise to reduce the number of migrants by limiting residency rights and family reunification.
According to the widely circulated newspaper De Telegraaf, she also remarked, "There are far too many asylum seekers, and we do not have enough housing amid little integration, which is unfair to both Dutch society and refugees." These proposals caused the previous government, supported by a conservative-liberal coalition, to collapse amid the increasing migration crisis in the European Union. Dilan Yeşilgöz, who has been married to a Dutch man for nine years without children, was born in the Turkish capital Ankara, grew up in Amsterdam with her Turkish parents, and became politically active as she aspired to the top office.
