Number 59 | December 2, 2008
The influential Green Party of Germany elected Cem Ozdemir, 43, as the first ethnic Turk to lead a mainstream German political party.
“I want a society where everyone has an equal chance, regardless of where they come from,” Mr. Ozdemir said in his acceptance speech at the Greens’ congress in the central city of Erfurt. He won 79.2 percent of the votes and joined Claudia Roth as the co-leader of the Greens.
The son of Turkish immigrant workers, Cem Ozdemir’s election came on the heels of the election victory of President-elect Barack Obama and his supporters saw in him a German version of Obama, coining the slogan “Yes, We Cem!” The international press credited the two young politicians of minority backgrounds for shattering racial barriers and providing hope for bridging racial and ethnic divides.
Even though more than 2.6 million Turks live in Germany, accounting for 3 percent of the population, and while many succeed in the professions, there are only few Turkish Germans who have managed to make it to the higher ranks of politics and the civil service. It is estimated that barely a quarter of this population has taken up German citizenship since 1972, a result of stringent German citizenship laws which do not provide automatic citizenship for children born in Germany to non-German parents.
Mr. Ozdemir, a social scientist who went to college in Reutlingen in the state of Baden-Württemberg, was elected as a Greens legislator to the lower house of the Bundestag, the German Parliament, in 1994. It was the first time anyone with a Turkish background to win this seat. He was later elected to the European Parliament. Mr.Ozdemir is married and has a daughter.
