Hülya Kat

Hülya Kat
Member of the House of Representatives
In office
31 March 2021 – 5 December 2023
Member of the Amsterdam municipal council
In office
30 May 2018[1] – 31 March 2021[2]
Preceded byMascha ten Bruggencate
Member of the Velsen municipal council
In office
11 March 2010[3] – 22 February 2018[4]
Succeeded byBas de Ruig
Personal details
Born (1983-08-01) 1 August 1983 (age 41)
IJmuiden, Netherlands
Political partyDemocrats 66
Alma materUniversity of Groningen
Websitehulyakat.nl

Hülya Kat (born 1 August 1983) is a Dutch politician, serving as a member of the House of Representatives on behalf of the social liberal party Democrats 66 (D66). She was a member of the Velsen municipal council between 2010 and 2018, when she was elected to the Amsterdam council. Kat won a seat in the House in the 2021 general election.

Early life and education

Kat was born in 1983 in the North Holland port town of IJmuiden to Turkish-born parents, who had come to the Netherlands in 1970. She grew up in that town and in Santpoort-Noord with her two younger brothers, and she attended the Haarlem secondary school Erasmus College.[5][6] Kat studied law at the University of Groningen between 2002 and 2009 with intellectual property law as specialization and returned to her parents in IJmuiden afterwards.[5][7]

Career

She joined Democrats 66 in 2009 and first appeared on the ballot in the 2010 municipal election in Velsen as the party's fifth candidate.[5][8] D66 won four municipal council seats, but Kat was elected despite this result because of her preference votes.[5] At the time, Kat also volunteered at the Velsen animal ambulance. She became chair of the municipality's John van Dijk Fund, which aims to engage young people in politics, shortly after her election.[5][9] Kat's focus in the council was on safety and public order, and she was re-elected in 2014 as D66's third candidate.[10][11] She was also placed 38th on the party list in the 2017 general election. Kat received 2,685 preference votes, but she was not elected due to D66 winning nineteen seats.[12]

She moved to the Dutch capital of Amsterdam in 2018, while she was working as an HR officer at a cleaning company.[10] Kat was D66's ninth candidate in Amsterdam in the 2018 municipal election, which was held a month after she had left the Velsen municipal council.[4] Her party won eight seats in Amsterdam, but Kat did end up in the municipal council in May 2018, when another D66 member left the council.[10][1] She became her party's spokesperson for economic affairs, port, airport, and spatial planning and the chair of the mobility, air quality, and water committee.[13][14] She also started working as a senior staff and organizational advisor at the Amsterdam district court in June 2018.[15][16]

Kat ran again for member of parliament in the 2021 general election, being placed seventeenth on the party list.[15] She received 15,620 preference votes and was sworn into the House of Representatives on 31 March.[17] She was replaced in the Amsterdam municipal council that same day, and she left her job at the district court.[2][18] In the House, Kat's specializations were poverty, debts, and the childcare benefits scandal, the Participation Act, and law, and she is on the Committees for Credentials, Defence, Finance, Justice and Security (chair), Public Expenditure, and Social Affairs and Employment (vice chair).[19][20] In October 2021, she also took over Rens Raemakers's position on the committee of the parliamentary inquiry into natural gas extraction Groningen.[21] She was her party's lijstduwer in Amsterdam in the 2022 municipal elections.[22] Following reports in March 2022 about an administrator who had embezzled money from debtors he was managing the finances of, Kat suggested changes to the system. She proposed for municipalities to provide a central point for help in case of high debts, which would create a three-year plan to get out of debt and to prevent a repeat. This is supposed to prevent debts continuing for many years, which could be in the financial interest of the administrator.[23] In late 2022, the House of Representatives passed a motion by Kat to have the government provide free period products to low-income households.[24] Another amendment co-filed by Kat was carried to shorten the term for personal debt restructuring from three to one and a half years.[25]

Kat has been part of the board of directors of UNESCO Centrum Nederland, which provides development aid, since 2012.[18]

Personal life

She moved from Amsterdam to The Hague, while a member of parliament, and she is a supporter of the football club AZ Alkmaar.[20][26]

Electoral history

Electoral history of Hülya Kat
Year Body Party Pos. Votes Result Ref.
Party seats Individual
2021 House of Representatives Democrats 66 17 15,620 24 Won [27]
2023 House of Representatives Democrats 66 17 1,907 9 Lost [28]

References

  1. ^ a b "Openbare vergadering op woensdag 30 mei 2018" [Public meeting on Wednesday 30 May 2018]. Gemeente Amsterdam (in Dutch). 20 June 2018. pp. 3 and 85–86. Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  2. ^ a b "Openbare vergadering op woensdag 31 maart 2021" [Public meeting on Wednesday 31 March 2021]. Gemeente Amsterdam (in Dutch). 19 April 2021. Archived from the original on 18 May 2021. Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  3. ^ "Gemeenteraad: 'Een prachtig moment voor lokale democratie'" [Municipal council: 'A beautiful moment for local democracy']. IJmuider Courant (in Dutch). 12 March 2010.
  4. ^ a b "Verslag van de raadsvergadering van de gemeente Velsen op 22 februari 2018" [Report of the council meeting of the municipality of Velsen on 22 February 2018] (PDF). Gemeente Velsen (in Dutch). p. 9. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
  5. ^ a b c d e "'Ik kan ook een viswijf zijn'" ['I can also be a fishwife']. IJmuider Courant (in Dutch). 3 April 2010.
  6. ^ "Hülya Kat: "Ik wil gewoon méédoen!"" [Hülya Kat: "I just want to participate"] (PDF). Jutter/Hofgeest (in Dutch). 24 June 2021. p. 8. Retrieved 20 August 2021.
  7. ^ "Persoonlijk" [Personal]. Hülya Kat (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 11 June 2021. Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  8. ^ "Vijf raadsleden met voorkeursstemmen" [Five council members with preference votes]. IJmuider Courant (in Dutch). 5 March 2010.
  9. ^ "Hülya Kat voorzitter John van Dijk-fonds" [Hülya Kat chair John van Dijk Fund]. IJmuider Courant (in Dutch). 1 June 2010.
  10. ^ a b c Nijveen, Carlo (29 December 2017). "Bevlogen politica Hülya Kat wil in 2018 Mokummer worden" [Enthusiastic politician Hülya Kat wants to become an Amsterdam resident in 2018]. IJmuider Courant (in Dutch). p. 9.
  11. ^ "Voorkeurstemmen in Velsen" [Preference votes in Velsen]. Noordhollands Dagblad (in Dutch). 21 March 2014.
  12. ^ "Uitslag Tweede Kamerverkiezing 2017 (getekend exemplaar)" [Results House of Representatives election 2017 (signed copy)] (PDF). Kiesraad (in Dutch). 21 March 2017. pp. 114 and 115. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
  13. ^ "Gemeenteraadslid Hülya Kat op plek 16 van D66, ook advocaat Sidney Smeets op de kieslijst" [Municipal councilor Hülya Kat on spot 16 for D66, also lawyer Sidney Smeets on party list]. AT5 (in Dutch). 11 November 2020. Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  14. ^ "Kandidatenboek Tweede Kamerverkiezing 2021" [Candidate book House of Representatives 2021] (PDF). D66 (in Dutch). November 2020. p. 144. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 April 2023. Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  15. ^ a b Nijveen, Carlo (5 March 2021). "Hülya Kat klaar voor sprong naar Binnenhof: ex-IJmuidense wil vanuit Den Haag óók meebeslissen over toekomst van Tata Steel [video]" [Hülya Kat ready for Binnenhof: former IJmuiden resident wants to be involved in decisions about Tata Steel [video]] (in Dutch). Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  16. ^ "Mr. H. (Hülya) Kat". Parlement.com (in Dutch). Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  17. ^ "Uitslag Tweede Kamerverkiezing 17 maart 2021 Proces-verbaal" [Results general election 17 March 2021 Report] (PDF). Kiesraad (in Dutch). 29 March 2021. p. 188. Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  18. ^ a b "Nevenactiviteiten van Hülya Kat" [Secondary activities Hülya Kat]. Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 11 June 2021. Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  19. ^ "Hülya Kat". D66 (in Dutch). Retrieved 26 November 2023.
  20. ^ a b "Hülya Kat". Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal. 31 March 2021. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
  21. ^ Miskovic, Mario (16 October 2021). "Ziek D66-Kamerlid permanent vervangen in enquêtecommissie gaswinning" [Ill D66 member of parliament permanently replaced in committee of the parliamentary enquiry into gas extraction]. RTV Noord. Retrieved 31 October 2021.
  22. ^ "D66'ers hebben gestemd: Definitieve kandidatenlijst GR2022 bekend!" [D66 members have voted: Definitive party list for 2022 municipal elections known!]. D66 Amsterdam (Press release) (in Dutch). 17 November 2021. Archived from the original on 28 January 2022. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  23. ^ Claessens, Geertjan (20 April 2022). "Andere aanpak schuldhulp moet foute bewindvoerders wind uit de zeilen nemen" [Different approach debt assistance is supposed to make things harder for bad administrators]. De Limburger (in Dutch). Retrieved 24 May 2022.
  24. ^ "Tweede Kamer: vanaf volgend jaar gratis tampons voor minima" [House of Representatives: Free tampons for low-income households starting next year]. RTL Nieuws (in Dutch). 6 December 2022. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
  25. ^ De Jonge, Adriaan (25 January 2023). "Tweede Kamer stemt voor kortere schuldentrajecten" [House of Representatives votes in favor of shorter debt restructuring]. Binnenlands Bestuur (in Dutch). Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  26. ^ "Biografie, onderwijs en loopbaan van Hülya Kat" [Biography, education, and career of Hülya Kat]. Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 11 June 2021. Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  27. ^ "Proces-verbaal verkiezingsuitslag Tweede Kamer 2021" [Report of the election results House of Representatives 2021] (PDF). Dutch Electoral Council (in Dutch). 29 March 2021. pp. 62–100, 188. Retrieved 21 December 2023.
  28. ^ "Proces-verbaal van de uitslag van de verkiezing van de Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal 2023 d.d. 4 december 2023" [Report of the results of the election of the House of Representatives on 4 December 2023] (PDF). Dutch Electoral Council (in Dutch). 4 December 2023. pp. 19–20. Retrieved 21 December 2023.