Tunahan Kuzu

ABOUT TUNAHAN KUZU

Dutch politician and member of the House of Representatives since 2012. He was an active member of the Labour Party until 2014 when he left to form a new party called DENK ("Think") along with fellow politician Selçuk Öztürk. He became the Parliamentary group leader in 2014. In 2017, DENK acquired 3 seats in the House of Representatives, making it the first minority-founded party to secure seats in the Dutch national parliament.

He earned a degree in public administration from Erasmus University Rotterdam before becoming a health advisor for PricewaterhouseCoopers. In the year 2008, he began a four-year term as a member of the municipal council of Rotterdam.

He made international headlines in 2016 after sporting a pin of the Palestinian flag on his jacket and refusing to shake the hand of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the States General of the Netherlands. He later publicly stated that he had done so in protest against the atrocities being suffered by Palestinian civilians living under Israeli rule.

He was born in Turkey, but grew up primarily in Maasluis, Netherlands.

He co-founded the DENK political party after proposals by Deputy Prime Minister and party leader Lodewijk Asscher led him to the leave the Labour Party. Politician and television personality Sylvana Simons was a member of DENK until 2016 when she left to create her own political party called BIJ1.