German Green politician Cem Özdemir was elected prime minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg on Wednesday. His parents came from Turkey decades ago. Shortly before winning the election, Özdemir made public his marriage to an Albanian lawyer. Özdemir is a strong supporter of Kosovo’s statehood.
The state of Baden-Württemberg is located in southern Germany, on the border with Switzerland. If we compare the map of Germany to a human body, Baden-Württemberg would be somewhere near the feet. The truth is: Baden-Württemberg is the heart of German industry, a region known for famous brands such as Bosch, Mercedes, Porsche, Ritter. Last year, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of this state was about 670 billion euros. Kosovo barely reaches 11 billion dollars. GDP is the total value of all goods and services produced within a country.
Since Wednesday, Cem Özdemir has been the Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg – and this is historic news not only for this German region. The 60-year-old Özdemir is the first Prime Minister of a German state of Turkish origin. Like the previous Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann, Özdemir also comes from the Green Party.
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Özdemir’s parents came to Germany in the early 1960s, as the country needed workers. At that time, many Albanians from Yugoslavia also emigrated to Germany as guest workers. Özdemir called his election as Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg “the absolute highlight of my life.” From a child of workers from the Turkish provinces to the Prime Minister’s office – this career sounds a bit like a dream.
Özdemir was born in Bad Urach in the Schwäbische Alb, a mountain range in southern Germany. It can be said, without disparagement, that Özdemir grew up in the German province. His mother was a seamstress, his father a factory worker. And little Cemi? A student with difficulties at school. Even today he keeps in touch with a teacher who helped him take his first steps in school. Despite the barriers, Özdemir managed to study social pedagogy.
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The Green Party was founded in 1980, and the following year Cem Özdemir became a member, campaigning for environmental protection and against nuclear energy. A leading figure of the Greens at the time was Joschka Fischer, who later became Germany’s Foreign Minister.
Özdemir was always the first. In 1994, he was first elected to the Bundestag (German parliament) and was the first deputy of Turkish origin. For 10 years (2008-2018) he was the chairman of the Green Party of Germany. In the penultimate government of Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Özdemir served as Minister of Agriculture. He has also been mentioned as a candidate for German Foreign Minister. Özdemir is a strong defender of Western values and has repeatedly criticized the authoritarianism of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This does not please Erdoğan’s militants in Germany. Özdemir has said that he often had problems when taking a taxi in Berlin. Turkish drivers have insulted and treated him badly. His apartment in Berlin has been stoned.
But Özdemir has not given up. He sees himself as a defender of human rights. And he has proven this in the case of Kosovo, which he has seen not only as a human rights issue, but also as a legitimate battle of a people for freedom, independence and their own state.
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During his visit to Kosovo in 2024, Özdemir also visited Kruše e Madhe. He expressed his dissatisfaction that those members of the Serbian forces who committed crimes against the civilian population have not yet been punished. In recent years, Özdemir has been a regular participant in receptions of the Kosovo Embassy in Berlin on the occasion of the anniversary of Kosovo’s independence and has taken the floor praising Kosovo’s achievements despite the heavy legacy of the war. In a photo, Özdemir is seen during a reception for the 17th anniversary of independence holding a jar of ajvar produced in Kosovo.
In the March 8 elections for the Baden-Württemberg state parliament, the Greens won by a narrow margin over Chancellor Friedrich Merz‘s conservative CDU. A Green victory was not expected and was achieved thanks to Özdemir’s political talent, but also to the mistakes of his political opponents. About 180,000 Albanians live in Baden-Württemberg, and a significant portion of them supported Cem Özdemir and his party in the recent elections.
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In his book “Ich bin Inländer” (I am a native) Özdemir reveals that he was fascinated by American politics at a time when it was almost unthinkable in Germany for a person of foreign origin to take on high political responsibilities. In 1997, he wrote: “The fact that a descendant of an immigrant family is aiming for the highest office in the country as a presidential candidate, like Michael Dukakis in the late 1980s, is not a topic of discussion in the United States. I have never actually started marching to the chancellor’s office, nor have I ever shaken the fences of the chancellor’s residence after a couple of beers shouting: ‘I want to get in!’, but in this respect, the USA has fascinated me since my first trip there.”
Özdemir is a pragmatic politician. While some ideologues in his party call cars deadly for the environment, he cultivates a closeness to the automotive industry. When he was chairman of the Greens, Özdemir invited the then Mercedes boss, Dieter Zetsche, as a speaker at the party’s federal congress in 2016, which caused dissatisfaction among some delegates.
Before the March elections, Özdemir married Flavia Zaka, an Albanian lawyer whose family immigrated from Albania to Canada. In 2008, Zaka studied law in Germany and then returned to Canada. In 2023, a friend of hers invited her to Stuttgart for a birthday party – that’s where Zaka met Özdemir. According to German media, Zaka was working in Toronto at the time as a lawyer and advisor on environmental law and human rights for the Canadian government and non-governmental organizations. With Özdemir’s election as Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, an Albanian will be the first lady, a First Lady, as they say in the Anglo-Saxon world, or: Landesmutter, as the Swabians of Baden-Württemberg say, which in Albanian means: mother of the Land. In an interview, Zaka said that she has liked the clarity of the German language since her youth and appreciates German literature, especially the lyrics of Rainer Maria Rilke.
The new Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, Cem Özdemir, is known as a supporter of businesses, is a vegetarian and prefers to travel by bicycle. He does not always agree with his party. In terms of migration policy, he is critical of those who come to Germany and refuse to integrate. Özdemir has been calling for increased vigilance by the authorities and politicians against Islamist fanatics for years. A wide public debate was sparked by an editorial by Cem Özdemir, published in September 2024 in the newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. In it, Özdemir described how several men of foreign origin had harassed his daughter and her friends. He called for a frank debate on “patriarchal structures and the role of women in many countries with an Islamic character”.
