Cem Özdemir on weaknesses in our own political systems and societies that states like Turkey and Russia exploit.
Tuesday, 22. September 2020, 18:30 – 20:00 h
At the University of Zurich, Rämistrasse 71, 8006 Zurich, KOL-G-201 (Aula)
The world is becoming less and less free. Authoritarian states form alliances to ensure the stability of their regimes in the face of democratic challenges. On a global level, they threaten liberal democracy as a model of order and attempt to destabilize the West by exerting targeted influence. What weaknesses in our own political systems and societies are states like Turkey and Russia exploiting? How can Germany and Europe defend liberal democracy – both internally and externally? Cem Özdemir, Member of the German Bundestag and former Federal Chairman of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, is seeking answers and new questions to one of the greatest challenges of our time.
Cem Özdemir was elected to the German Bundestag for Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in 1994, as the first member of parliament from a Turkish guest worker family. In 2003, he was a Transatlantic Fellow at the think tank German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington DC and Brussels. From 2004 to 2009, Cem Özdemir was a Member of the European Parliament and foreign policy spokesman for his parliamentary group. From 2008 to 2018 he was Federal Chairman and co-leader of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in the 2017 federal elections. Since 2013, he has been a member of the Bundestag again, and in the current legislative period he is also chairman of the Committee on Transport and Digital Infrastructure and deputy member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.