Özlem Alev Demirel-Böhlke (born 10 March 1984) is a Turkish-born German politician of

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish language ** Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) **Central Kurdish (Sorani) **Southern Kurdish ** Laki Kurdish *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern ...

descent who is currently a serving representative of the party The Left as a

Member of the European Parliament A member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been Election, elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the European Coal and S ...

Education

She attended primary and secondary education in

Bielefeld Bielefeld () is a city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 341,755, it is also the most populous city in the administrative region () of Detmold (region), Detmold and the L ...

and

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

, and graduated from high school in 2004. she began to study political sciences and history at the

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

Political career

She has interested herself early on in politics and with 15 years she became involved in the youth section of the Democratic Workers Union (DIDF). In 2012 she became the DIDF Chairwoman. From 2004 to 2007 she was a member of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), and co-founded The Left party in 2007. She led The Left in the campaign together with Christian Leye to the election to the State Parliament (Landtag) of Nord Rhine-Westphalia in 2017, where The Left did not reach the affordable 5% to enter the Landtag. She was again the leading candidate of The Left's electoral campaign to the European Parliament in 2019 to which she was elected on 24 May 2019. In the European Parliament she is both a vice chair of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence and the Delegation to the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee On 2 March 2022, she was one of 13 MEPs who voted against a resolution condemning the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

and calling for the arming of Ukraine. Demirel said the resolution would only worsen the situation and that "I think it is cynical to abuse the suffering of the Ukrainians for something like this. The peoples in Ukraine, of Europe and the world want to live in peace and social security". In March 2022 she was amongst 151 international feminists signing ''Feminist Resistance Against War: A Manifesto'', in solidarity with the Russian

Feminist Anti-War Resistance Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR or FAWR, ) is a group of Russian feminists founded in February 2022 to protest against the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In its first month, FAR became "one of Russia’s fastest-growing anti-war campaigns", a ...

. This manifesto was criticized by both Ukrainian feminists and members of the

themselves.

Personal life

Demirel was born in

Malatya Malatya (; ; Syriac language, Syriac ܡܠܝܛܝܢܐ Malīṭīná; ; Ancient Greek: Μελιτηνή) is a city in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey and the capital of Malatya Province. The city has been a human settlement for thousands of y ...

in 1984 to a Kurdish family of Alevi faith, and migrated to Germany together with her family when she was 5 years old. She is married since 2011, and a mother of two children.

References

External links

Living people MEPs for Germany 2019–2024 Die Linke MEPs 21st-century German women politicians 1984 births MEPs for Germany 2024–2029 21st-century women MEPs for Germany {{Germany-MEP-stub