Cem Özdemir
| Cem Özdemir | |
|---|---|
(2012)
|
|
| Personal details | |
| Born |
21 December 1965 Bad Urach, West Germany |
| Political party | Alliance '90/The Greens |
Cem Özdemir (German pronunciation: [ˌʤɛm ˈœzdɛmiʀ]; born 21 December 1965) is a German politician. Since 2008 he is co-chair of the German political party Alliance '90/The Greens, together with Simone Peter. He is a Member of the German Bundestag since 2013 and he was a Member of the German Bundestag between 1994 and 2002 and of the European Parliament between 2004 and 2009. He is standing to be one of the top two candidates for the Greens for the 2017 German federal election.
Cem Özdemir is the son of a Turkish-Circassian gastarbeiter from Tokat, Turkey; in 1983 he acquired German citizenship. After graduating from a German Hauptschule and a Realschule Özdemir completed an apprenticeship, becoming an early childhood educator. After qualifying for advanced technical college entrance he studied social pedagogy at the Evangelical Technical College (Evangelische Fachhochschule für Sozialwesen Reutlingen) in Reutlingen, Germany. After completing his studies in 1987, Cem Özdemir worked as an educator and a freelance journalist.
Özdemir describes himself as a "secular Muslim" and is married to the Argentine journalist Pía María Castro. They have two children: a son and a daughter.
Özdemir has been a member of the Green Party since 1981, originally in the district chapter of Ludwigsburg. Between 1989 and 1994 he was a member in the State Executive (Landesvorstand) of the Green Party in Baden-Württemberg. During that time he was one of the founding members of Immi-Grün – Bündnis der neuen InländerInnen, an alliance of InländerInnen (locals), as opposed to the German word Ausländer (foreigners).
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