Özlem Cekic

Özlem Sara Cekic (May 7, 1976) is a Danish politician, former member of parliament for the Socialist People's Party (SF). A nurse by training she was first elected to the central committee of the Socialist People's Party in 2004. In the 2007 elections, she became a member of the Danish parliament, the first female MP with a Muslim immigrant background. She is her party's spokesperson for health related issues. In the 2011 elections the Socialist People's Party lost many of the seats they had gained in the 2007 elections, including one seat in her electorate, which meant that either she or the other SF candidate Kamal Qureshi would have to leave parliament. After a count of the personal votes, Cekic was declared the winner with 5383 personal votes against Qureshi's 1977.

Born in Ankara, Turkey, from a Kurdish background she arrived in Denmark as a young child and grew up in Copenhagen's Vesterbro neighborhood. At 20 she entered a marriage arranged by her parents, but at age 26 she decided to divorce and raise her child alone. She was encouraged by her maternal grandmother who told her that she should strive never to be dependent on anybody, least of all on men. She is now married and has three children.

In 2009 she published the autobiographical book 'Fra Føtex til Folketinget' (Gyldendal) [English: "From Føtex to Parliament"], in which she recounted her experiences as a politically progressive Muslim woman from a working-class background. Among her experiences of discrimination in Danish society she recounts how her teacher told children with immigrant backgrounds that "it is incredible to see how much you struggle, while knowing that you'll never achieve anything", and how the Danish midwife who refused to address Cekic by name even once during her 23-hour labor, because it was "too hard to pronounce". Cekic also tells how she got in trouble during her years in the Nurse's Union, when she criticized the fact that the union leader's salary was higher than that of the Danish prime Minister.

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