Cem Özdemir

Cem Özdemir is national chairman of the German Green Party (Bundnis 90/Die Grünen) and a member of the European Parliament. Mr. Özdemir was elected to the European Parliament in 2004. He is a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and a substitute member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. His areas of concentration include EU-Turkey relations, the Cyprus conflict, migration and integration, and Islam in Europe. He is the European Parliament's rapporteur on Central Asia and second vice chair of the Permanent Ad Hoc Delegation for Relations with Iraq. He also served as vice president of the "CIA Committee" (Temporary Committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners).

In November 2008, Mr. Özdemir was elected national co-chair of the German Green Party. He was the first person of Turkish descent ever elected to the German Bundestag, where he served for two terms (1994 to 2002). In 2003, he was a transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington and Brussels. He is a charter member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and sits on the advisory board of the American Jewish Committee's Berlin office and the integration board of the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia.