Son of Turks to lead German Greens

Cem Ozdemir was elected party co-leader Saturday. (Jens Meyer/ Associated Press)

BERLIN - The Green party, one of Germany's main political parties, has elected the son of Turkish immigrants as its co-leader, the first time any party here has chosen a leader with an immigrant background.

Cem Ozdemir, 42, was born in southern Germany to parents who had come from Turkey to work as "Gastarbeiter," or guest workers, during the 1960s. His election Saturday marks a major turning point not only for the opposition Greens, but also for the country as a whole.

More than 2.6 million Turks live in Germany, accounting for 3 percent of the population, but few have managed to make it into politics and the civil service.

But with the election of conservative party leader Angela Merkel as chancellor in 2005 and now an ethnic Turk at the helm of an influential party, German society appears to be slowly breaking with the past, when women were inconspicuous in public and immigrants' voices were seldom heard.

Ozdemir, a social scientist, was elected as a Greens legislator to the lower house of Parliament, the Bundestag, in 1994, the first time anyone with a Turkish background had won such a mandate. He moved to the European Parliament in 2004 after he was forced to give up his seat for using his publicly paid airline miles for private use.

"I want a society where everyone has an equal chance, regardless of where they come from," Ozdemir said in his acceptance speech at the Greens' congress in Erfurt. He won 79.2 percent of the votes and joined Claudia Roth as the party co-leader.

With new leaders in place, the Greens are now turning their attention to federal elections next September. Some observers are asking whether the Greens might win enough votes to become junior partners for Merkel's conservative bloc.

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE