Europe’s Strangest Special Relationship
The historical partnership between Germany and Turkey is arguably the most paradoxical, if unavoidable, in modern Europe.
Germany crossed a political threshold in May 2026 when Cem Özdemir took office as minister-president of Baden-Württemberg. Özdemir is the country’s first state-level head of government with a Turkish background; his parents were Gastarbeiter (‘guest workers’) who moved to the Black Forest in the early 1960s as part of West Germany’s programme to fix its labour shortage problem. Elected on 8 March, his victory arguably depended less on his credentials as co-chairman of Germany’s Green Party than on his personal charisma.
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