May I introduce you to Düzgün Yıldırım. According to wikipedia a Dutch citizen, born in 'Turkish Kurdistan'. In September 1980, at the age of 17, he came to the Netherlands as a political refugee. Today, Turkish Daily News, put an article with the catchy but also suggestive heading on their front page 'Holland’s new problem child: Yıldırım'.
Now, I can tell you, he is not our Dutch problem child. There are more important issues to solve. But since the Turkish media are following their 'citizens' closely in West Europe, here are some facts.
In 1994 Mr. Yirdirim was elected in the city council of Zwolle, for the moderate socialist party the PVDA. Not nice for him but the PVDA, put him on a lower place for the city elections of 2002. Which made him change his opinion: he moved to the real left socialist SP. But he didn't succeed to be elected. But he came back in the city council in 2003.
For the national parliament elections of 2006, several districts pushed the SP to put him on higher places. Although the SP gained a lot of seats, he was not one of them on their list.
But during the 'Senate' elections (the First Chamber) he gained some preferential votes (One of these votes was of himself). But his party, like all other parties in the Netherlands, have their own programme and rules. For the SP are preferential votes not valid, which he agreed upon and which is embedded in their party structure.
He was put on place 18, but only 12 seats were available.
Now we get the difficult part: the election council recognize the preferential votes, but his party not, which is their legal right. And he knows this, when the PVDA put him on an unelected place in 2002, and he made the switch to SP... sounds opportunistic to me.
Te SP congress voted him away with 993 against 38 away yesterday.
Another important note: his voting area (Zwolle, Hengelo, and Arnhem), are in the east of the Netherlands, and was a battlefield for PKK supporters and the Wolves (MHP) in the nineties. The first party is illegal and is 'declared' a terrorist organization. The second, the Grey Wolves, of the MHP, are considered as patriots in Turkey but not in the Netherlands. Fascism is not allowed.
Overall: It is a sad story for Mr. Yildirim, who 2 years ago told, live on Dutch Television, that he has two university degrees, and two of a college. In the end, he has one open university degree: management and organization.
And the sage goes on...
And do we threat our brothers in Europe well? Yes, we do...
But it is up to them which way we have to go, now...it's their turn...
