Eighteen candidates of Turkish descent were elected as lawmakers in the German federal parliament Bundestag in the country’s elections that took place Sunday.
Aydan Özoğuz, Hakan Demir, Metin Hakverdi, Macit Karaahmetoğlu, Derya Türk-Nachbaur, Mahmut Özdemir, Cansel Kızıltepe, Gülistan Yüksel and Nezahat Baradari were elected as Social Democratic Party (SPD) lawmakers, Anadolu Agency (AA) reported.
Cem Özdemir, Ekin Deligöz, Canan Bayram, Filiz Polat and Melis Sekmen from the Green Party and Ateş Gürpınar, Sevim Dağdelen and Gökay Akbulut were elected as lawmakers from the German Left Party (Die Linke).
Previously, there were 14 lawmakers of Turkish descent in the Bundestag.
Turkish-origin Greek citizen Takis Mehmet Ali was also elected as a lawmaker in the latest elections.
Over 100 Turkish-German individuals ran as candidates in the election.
Germany’s center-left Social Democrats (SPD) won the biggest share of the vote in a national election Sunday, narrowly beating outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavaria-only sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), in a closely fought race that will determine who succeeds the longtime leader at the helm of Europe’s biggest economy.
