Cem Özdemir often jokes that he is an “Anatolian Swabian,” a nod to Swabia in Baden-Württemberg where he was born and to Anatolia, the region in Turkey where his parents came from. He rejects the idea that he is a symbol of successful integration, saying he never needed to be integrated because his home has always been Germany. When members of the far-right Alternative for Germany once told him to “go home,” he fired back that his home is in Bad Urach near Stuttgart and that he would not be told otherwise.
Özdemir’s parents arrived from Turkey in the 1960s as so‑called guest workers. His father worked in a textile factory and his mother ran a small seamstress business. Özdemir was born in December 1965 in Bad Urach and became a German citizen at 18. He started his working life as a preschool educator, later studied social psychology, and joined the Green Party in 1981. He has two children from his first marriage.
His political career includes several notable firsts. At 30, in 1994, he was among the earliest members of the Bundestag with Turkish roots. Seen as a moderate within the Greens, he served as government spokesperson for domestic affairs during the Green–SPD coalition under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He resigned from that post in 1999 after it emerged he had used bonus air miles earned on official travel for private flights.
Özdemir later served as a Green member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2009 and from 2008 to 2018 was co‑chair of the German Green Party. In 2021, when the Greens joined the federal traffic‑light coalition, he became Germany’s first federal minister of Turkish descent as agriculture minister.
Long before the wider German government shifted its stance, Özdemir was a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin, warning as early as mid‑2021 that many in Germany underestimated the risks posed by the Russian president. He has also frequently criticized Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, voiced support for Turkish conscientious objectors, and endured hostile responses from some Turkish media.
Throughout his career he has been pulled between two countries’ expectations—accused at times of betraying Turkey and at others of not being fully German. He has largely brushed those accusations aside, remaining rooted in Baden‑Württemberg and cultivating broad appeal. Multilingual and comfortable in the local Swabian dialect, he won his Stuttgart constituency in the 2021 federal election with the best result among Green candidates nationwide.
In the 2026 state election he was the Greens’ leading candidate. His personal popularity and campaign prominence helped the party perform strongly, and in the subsequent government formation he became the first state premier in Germany with Turkish roots, outshining his main rival from the CDU, Manuel Hagel, in public debates and voter recognition.
This profile was originally written in German and was first published on May 9, 2026; it has been updated to reflect later developments.