93 3 Introduction In 2014, two Dutch-Turkish and Muslim members of parliament, Tunahan Kuzu and Selҫuk Özturk, founded the political party DENK (meaning “Think” in Dutch, and “Equality” in Turkish). A few months earlier, Kuzu and Özturk were expelled from the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) for criticizing a minister from their party on his integration policy. DENK successfully participated in the next parliamentary elections of 2017, winning three seats15. In addition to the two founders, Dutch-Moroccan Farid Azarkan was elected as an MP for DENK. Azarkan became leader of the party in March 2020. Since their entry into parliament, DENK have retained three seats and established a considerable presence in Dutch municipalities16. The Netherlands has a proportional electoral system with a low threshold compared to other European countries, contributing to DENK’s success. While these electoral conditions are unique, the Dutch electorate is not. Across Europe, there are similar electorates, but no parties like DENK to vote for and to represent minoritized electorates in parliament. DENK is outspoken on a wide range of issues, including discrimination, Islamophobia, geopolitical relations with Turkey, and Muslim rights (de Zoeten and Nij Bijvank, 2021). The politicians of DENK are different from the Muslim politicians in mainstream parties, where they are often included for symbolic reasons and tend to be less likely to speak out in favour of the topics Muslim voters care about (Dancygier, 2017). DENK combines “descriptive” and “substantive” representation (Pitkin, 1967). They are present as Turkish-Dutch, ethnic minorities and/or Muslim MPs and claim to act in the interests of Turkish-Dutch, ethnic minorities and/or Muslims. In their representative work, DENK respond to the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that has become so prevalent in political debates and policies of the last decades (Vermeulen, 2018: 2). DENK’s tough language and the platform they offer to their constituents are seen as an emancipatory process of “talking back” (hooks as cited in Loukili, 2021a: 119). Extant scholarship finds that Dutch citizens with a Muslim (Otjes and Krouwel, 2019) and migration (Vermeulen et al., 2020) background are more likely to vote for DENK, but we do not know much about the underlying mechanisms. In this paper we outline three possible explanations: 1) policy issues and personal attitudes (as suggested by Otjes and Krouwel, 2018: 1159; Vermeulen et al., 2020: 445), 2) recent experiences with discrimination and feelings of belonging (as suggested by Azabar et al., 2020), and 3) ethnic or religious in-group favouritism. In our original survey data, we oversampled three ethnic minority groups. Our survey contains 905 Dutch citizens, of which 201 have a background in Turkey, 136 15 Kiesraad, Officiële Uitslagen Verkiezingen. Available at: https://www.kiesraad.nl/ 16 Kiesraad, Officiële Uitslagen Verkiezingen. Available at: https://www.kiesraad.nl/
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