Mar 16, 2026
3 min read
The environmental expert, an expert who attracts moderate votes, will be the first president of a Turkish state in Baden-Württemberg.
Cem Özdemir, the son of immigrants will manage the richest German
A veteran environmentalist, a pragmatist who attracts moderate votes, the first president of a country of Turkish origin will be in Baden-Württemberg.
Baden-Württemberg is an island in Europe that is buffeted by the winds of radicalism and the extreme right.This federal state, which has 110 million people in the southwest of Germany, was won by Sem Ozdemir in the local elections on March 8.The son of Turkish immigrants, Ozdemir was born nearly five decades ago and is the practical face of the Greens, which has been established as a government party for years and has no problem dealing with conservatives.
After a campaign in which he overcame all sorts of disadvantages in opinion polls, the winner is negotiating an alliance with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which trails the Greens by half a point.
The victory of Özdemir (Bad Urach, 60 years old) is a powerful symbol.It is the first country to which 3 million Turkish-Germans and Turks migrated through immigration.And at a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric is flourishing in Germany and across Europe.
"It was unusual for his parents' generation and for him," explains Johanna Henkel-Waidhofer, co-author of Brücken Bauen (Bridge), a biography of the German politician from the country's capital, Stuttgart.Cem Özdemir's father works in a factory;his mother owns a tailor shop.
"The CDU made an error of judgment in Baden-Württemberg," said political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder in Berlin."They always said: 'A Turk will never be prime minister here'."They were wrong, although the future president of the main exporting country, with the headquarters of Mercedes, Porsche or Bosch, did not define himself as such, but as "Anatolian Swabian", in relation to the land of his ancestors, Anatolia, and the German region of Swabia, where he was born and grew up.
"Many mistakes have been made in immigration policy, but one good thing is that over time there is a greater willingness to realize that we are moving towards a country of immigrants," says Schröder from the University of Kassel.
Ozdemir, who was previously a federal member, member of the European Parliament and agriculture minister, is much more than just the first son of an MP to head the country.He is also the most important member of the royal family today.This means the pragmatic sector of the Greens, or centrist, which for decades has faced fundamentalists, leftists, and pure environmentalists and pacifists in epic ideological battles.
"He was a real person," commented Henkel-Waidhofer, a biographer.In this he resembles Winfried Kretschmann, who has also been Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg since 2011, first in collaboration with the Social Democrats and then with the Christian Democrats.
In the campaign, Özdemir rebranded his party, which had lost popularity after years of ruling in the coalition of social democratic chancellor Olavi Scholz.And he irritated many members of other faiths, who called him a “conservative” for his positions in favor of making the calendar for banning gasoline-powered cars more flexible or maintaining tighter controls on irregular immigration.
On the phone, Daniel Kohn-Benditt, a German-French historical environmentalist, describes Zdemir, the leader of the Paris May '68, this way: "He is not ideologically constrained. He is a learned pragmatist, not the most opportunistic. Liberal, open green."
When asked about the lessons Özdemir's victory leaves for Europe's progressives, Dany el Rojo responded:“The lesson is you have to present yourself to voters as someone who can talk to everyone, knows everything 100% and is always accurate.”
The victory in Baden-Württemberg, he adds, "shows that a German from Anatolia can be prime minister just as well as a German from [the region of] Sauerland and [current Christian Democrat leader] Friedrich Merz."
Güner Balci, writer and commissioner for integration in the Berlin neighborhood of Neukölln, wrote that the politician of the environment at the same time provoked the anger of the far right, who could not stand to see the son of Gastarbeiter in power, and the Turkish identitarians, who would not forgive him for announcing the decision to theArmenian Genocide.
"Some hate him because his name is Zem, not Klaus, and some because he does not worship the flag and does not present himself as a victim despite being of Turkish origin," Balji wrote in an article published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper."In the end, he didn't win because the Muslim community supported him or met the diversity quota;he won because the majority in Baden-Württemberg trusted him to make good policies.
Özdemir connects a space that moves from progressivism to the moderate right, but it is a weak space.The extreme right is rising, and Baden-Wurtenberg is not an exception in Europe or an island.With 18.8%, the AfD remains in third place.And he achieved this in the most prosperous Germany, although it is threatened by a global storm: the tariffs of Donald Trump, the energy of China and the oil that hit the car industry.The most difficult thing for the future for the Minister-President begins now.
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