Muhtaram Aras, 50, from the Green Party is also the first woman politician to lead the regional assembly in the province.
“Many people have congratulated me for the new position but I was especially happy to receive a phone call from the Kurdish village in Turkey’s Kurdistan where I was born,” Aras said who is now one of the 16 provincial speakers in Germany.
The German Green Party first won representation at the national level in 1983, but from 1998 to 2005 it managed to form a coalition government with the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
The party has largely campaigned on integration issues in a country with sizable Turkish and Kurdish communities. The party has also advocated for the resumption of peace talks in Turkey between the government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
“Indeed I come from a Kurdish background and that will remain part of who I am, but I see myself as a German politician,” said Aras who came to Germany as a 12-year-old in the late 1970s.
Aras said despite the “negative media coverage” the German society is far from being anti-immigrant with a “large tendency towards more openness and integration.”
“The far right movement should not be seen as a German issue since xenophobia is a global problem which should be fought but those who work for tolerance are far more and stronger in every society as well as in Germany,” she told Rudaw in an interview which will be published in its entirety this week.
Aras believes that there are great opportunities for activists in Germany regardless of their ethnic origin, encouraging them in the meantime to get into German politics in order to help their host country and communities at the same time.
“True that I am a Kurd and speak some Kurdish words, but if I am living here and my life is in this society then what is happening here is more related to me,” she said. “Therefore, all the foreigners, not only the Kurds, should participate more in German politics.
from Rudaw http://ift.tt/28TqeO9
via Defense News
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