Özlem Demirel (born 10 March 1984, in

Malatya Malatya ( hy, Մալաթիա, translit=Malat'ya; Syro-Aramaic ܡܠܝܛܝܢܐ Malīṭīná; ku, Meletî; Ancient Greek: Μελιτηνή) is a large city in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey and the capital of Malatya Province. The city h ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

) is a German politician 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 elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...

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 (''Regierungsbezirk'') of Detmold and the ...

and

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

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

University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine ...

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 2005 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 Campaign or The Campaign may refer to: Types of campaigns * Campaign, in agriculture, the period during which sugar beets are harvested and processed *Advertising campaign, a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme * Bl ...

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, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...

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

Feminist Anti-War Resistance Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR or FAWR, russian: Феминистское антивоенное сопротивление (ФАС), Feministskoye antivoyennoye soprotivleniye (FAS)) is a group of Russian feminists founded in February 2022 to ...

initiated by Russian feminists after the

Personal life

Demirel was born in

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

References

External links

Living people MEPs for Germany 2019–2024 The Left (Germany) MEPs 21st-century German women politicians 1984 births {{Germany-MEP-stub