Kurdish woman occupies post of Economic Affairs Minister in new Dutch government

Kurds Abroad‌‌‌‌ 11:23 AM - 2021-05-31

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Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, a Kurdish-Dutch politician of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) who has been a member of Netherlands parliament since 2017, has been appointed as State Secretary for Economic Affairs and Climate Policy of the new Dutch government.

 

She will be directly responsible for the Climate & Energy portfolio.

 

She is one of the most prominent figures in her party. Before becoming Minister of Economic Affairs, she was owner/senior advisor of Bureau DNW in Amsterdam and councilor in the capital. As a Member of Parliament, she was, among other things, a spokesperson for climate, police, security, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, and drug policy.

 

Yesilgöz-Zegerius became one of the 8 leaders of the Climate Act in 2018. After negotiations, the VVD and the CDA became co-signatories in June 2018 to the bill that was initiated 2 years earlier by the PvdA and GroenLinks.

 

She was elected as a parliament member in 2017. She was among the top 19 winners of the election of the parliament course, but in the recent election of the Netherlands held last March she paved her way up to top to become the 5th in the list of winners of the election and so with her talent and experience in political and parliamentary work, she was able to get more than 45,000 votes and became  State Secretary for Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.

 

Dilan was born in 1977 to a patriotic Kurdish family in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. Her family is originally from the Kurdish city of Dersim in northern Kurdistan which is now in Turkey. Along with her family, she fled to live in the Netherlands when she was only 7 and had been granted political asylum due to his father's political work. After completing the university, she became an employee of the Amsterdam Council of Mayors and became a member of the capital's municipal council in 2014, and served a lot in Amsterdam during that time.

 

 

 

Reported by Burhan Amin

PUKmedia