Beginnings 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 () of the Green Party in
Baden-Württemberg. During that time he was one of the founding members of , an alliance of (locals), as opposed to the German word (foreigners).
Member of the German Bundestag, 1994–2002 From
1994 until
2002, Özdemir was a member of the German Bundestag; along with Leyla Onur of the
Social Democrats, he was the first person of either Turkish or Circassian descent ever elected to the country's federal parliament. From 1998 until 2002, he was a member of the Committee on Home Affairs and served as his parliamentary group's spokesperson on this issue. In this capacity, he advocated for reforms to
Germany's citizenship laws. In addition, he was the chairman of the German-Turkish Parliamentary Friendship Group. (See list of the German
Parliamentary Friendship Groups and the pages from the German Bundestag website that describes their purpose and their membership as at January 2024 [https://www.bundestag.de/europa_internationales/parlamentariergruppen/Parlamentariergruppen. In 1999, nine months after the Greens for the first time joined a German federal government under Chancellor
Gerhard Schröder, Özdemir was among 40 younger party members of the self-described "youth of the second generation" who declared in a controversial manifesto "[that] we cannot and will not idly watch the moralizing know-it-alls in our party from the founding generation" around
Jürgen Trittin. In 2002, Özdemir was accused of violating parliamentary regulations for retaining "
Miles & More"
frequent-flier miles accrued during official travel as a member of the Bundestag for personal use. He was also criticised for having taken out a credit with Moritz Hunzinger, a German PR consultant and lobbyist, in order to overcome personal financial issues. This affair was also associated with
Rudolf Scharping, former German Minister of Defence (1998–2002). Subsequently, Özdemir resigned as spokesman for domestic affairs and as a member of the Bundestag. In 2003, Özdemir joined the
German Marshall Fund of the United States in
Washington, D.C., and
Brussels as a Transatlantic Fellow. During his fellowship he gave various speeches and brown bag lectures at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, on the issue of Turkey and Europe. He also researched on the ways that minority groups in the United States and Europe organize themselves politically. In the run-up to the party co-chair elections, Özdemir also ran for a promising party list position for the
2009 German elections at the federal state party conference of Baden-Württemberg. In two separate runs he lost to his respective direct opponents. Nevertheless, Özdemir adhered to his candidacy for the party chairmanship. Since 15 November 2008, Özdemir has been one of two co-chairs of Alliance 90/The Greens. He received 79.2 percent of the delegate votes. near nuclear waste disposal centre at
Gorleben in northern Germany on 8November 2008 In the
2009 elections, Özdemir was not elected to the Bundestag. As a candidate in the constituency of
Stuttgart I, which covers south Stuttgart he polled 29.9%, but lost to
Stefan Kaufmann, the candidate of the CDU.
Member of the German Bundestag, 2013–present Özdemir re-entered the Bundestag as a result of the
2013 elections. He served as deputy chairman of the German-Chinese Parliamentary Friendship Group. In 2017, Özdemir ran for the male top candidacy of the Greens in the subsequent federal election and narrowly won the party membership election over Schleswig-Holstein Deputy Minister-President
Robert Habeck and Bundestag parliamentary leader
Anton Hofreiter by only 75 votes. He led the Greens into the federal election alongside parliamentary leader
Katrin Göring-Eckardt. Following the election, the Greens were first expected to form a government with the CDU and the FDP, in which Özdemir was widely expected to become the Minister of Foreign Affairs. However, when the FDP abruptly ended the negotiations, this fell apart. Özdemir had already declared not to stand for reelection as party leader (with Robert Habeck succeeding him), and the parliamentary leadership had been reelected directly after the federal election, so there was no leadership post left for him. Instead, from 2018 until 2021, he chaired the Bundestag Committee on Transport. Nevertheless, Özdemir remained one of the most popular politicians of the country and at times even was the most popular politician, placed before
Angela Merkel. In September 2019, Özdemir unsuccessfully challenged incumbents
Katrin Göring-Eckardt and
Anton Hofreiter at the middle of the legislative term and announced his candidacy to co-chair the Green Party's parliamentary group, together with
Kirsten Kappert-Gonther. Following the announcement of
Fritz Kuhn to not seek re-election as Mayor of
Stuttgart in 2020, Özdemir was widely considered a potential successor. Shortly after, he decided not to run for the position. In the negotiations to form a
coalition government under the leadership of
Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg Winfried Kretschmann following the
2021 state elections, Özdemir was a member of the working group on economic affairs, labor and innovation. In May 2021, several months ahead of the
national elections, various media outlets reported that Özdemir had been late to declare to the German Parliament's administration a total of €20,580 in additional income he had received over the course of five years – 2014 through 2018 – in his capacity as leader of the Green Party. In the negotiations to form a so-called
traffic light coalition of the
Social Democrats (SPD), the Green Party and the
FDP following the
2021 federal elections, Özdemir led his party's delegation in the working group on economic policy; his co-chairs from the other parties were
Carsten Schneider and
Michael Theurer.
Minister of Food and Agriculture, 2021–2025 Following the
2021 German federal election, the Greens entered government as part of a
traffic light coalition led by
Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and Özdemir was sworn in as
Food and Agriculture Minister on 8 December 2021. The appointment of Özdemir, instead of outgoing parliamentary leader and biologist
Anton Hofreiter by the party leaders
Robert Habeck and
Annalena Baerbock came after infighting within the party over the Agriculture Ministry, and was seen as somewhat surprising, since he had no prior experience in agriculture policy and was considered to be a moderate within the Greens, while Hofreiter was left-leaning. However, Özdemir had also been one of the most prominent and popular politicians in Germany for several years. Özdemir was the only minister in the
Scholz cabinet to come from an
ethnic minority, and the first government minister of
Turkish descent in Germany's history. In its ruling of 15 November 2023, the Federal Constitutional Court declared the second supplementary budget for 2021 as unconstitutional and therefore invalid. This resulted in a budget deficit of 17 billion euros for the 2024 federal budget. Özdemir announced one element of the government's response - the abolition of subsidies for agricultural diesel and the introduction of a vehicle tax for agricultural vehicles. Thwas led to
farmers' protests across the country.
Campaign for minister president of Baden Württemberg In October 2024,
SWR reported that Cem Özdemir wanted to become the Green Party's top candidate in the 8 March
2026 Baden-Württemberg state election. Özdemir has long been considered a candidate for this task within the party. He would succeed
Winfried Kretschmann, who, as the only Green head of government in a German state, ruled the state for three five-year terms. Özdemir decided not to run for re-election in the 2025 federal election, instead choosing to run for the office of Minister-President in the 2026 state election in Baden-Württemberg, even though his party, Alliance 90/The Greens, was trailing the CDU by 11–14 percentage points in the polls at the time. However, Özdemir and his party caught up before the election on 8 March 2026 and ultimately won by a narrow margin. Özdemir himself achieved the best result of any politician in Baden-Württemberg in this election with his personal first votes in the Stuttgart II state constituency. == Political positions ==