Betül Havva Yılmaz, a Turkish academic who signed a 2016 peace petition and was dismissed by emergency decree the following year, has won a seat in Berlin’s state parliament on the ticket of Germany’s Die Linke party, according to preliminary election results.
Yılmaz, a former research assistant in the comparative literature department at Eskişehir Osmangazi University, entered the legislature from Die Linke’s candidate list in the Neukölln district, Deutsche Welle reported.
She was dismissed in February 2017 under emergency decree No. 686, one of a series of decrees issued after an attempted coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in July 2016.
She was in Germany for research at the time and was unable to return to Turkey after her passport was canceled.
Yılmaz was among the academics who signed a January 2016 petition titled “We Will Not Be a Party to This Crime.” The petition criticized Turkish security operations in the predominantly Kurdish southeast and called for an end to the violence and the resumption of peace negotiations.
The signatories, who became known as the Academics for Peace, faced criminal investigations and professional sanctions after Erdoğan publicly condemned them. Hundreds were dismissed from universities and some had their passports canceled.
In July 2019, Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the convictions of 10 petition signatories on terrorism-propaganda charges had violated their freedom of expression, paving the way for acquittals in similar cases.
Yılmaz is also a member of the Germany branch of the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP). She has been active in campaigns for migrant and workers’ rights, affordable housing and greater political participation by people without German citizenship.
She is one of 10 politicians of Turkish origin elected to Berlin’s 130-seat parliament in Sunday’s election. DW identified 29 candidates of Turkish origin fielded by the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and Die Linke.
Five of the newly elected lawmakers represent Die Linke: Yılmaz, Elif Eralp, Ender Atakul, Asya Şenyüz and Eda Tekan. Sevim Aydın, Derya Çağlar, Sebahat Atlı and Orkan Özdemir were elected for the SPD, while Taylan Kurt won a seat for the Greens.
Eralp and Kurt were elected directly from their constituencies. Yılmaz, Atakul, Şenyüz and Tekan will enter the parliament for the first time, while the other six served in the previous legislature.
Die Linke won the election with 25.7 percent of the vote, ahead of the CDU at 18.8 percent, according to the preliminary results. The result made Eralp, the party’s lead candidate, a contender to become Berlin’s next governing mayor if Die Linke can form a coalition.
Berlin is both a city and one of Germany’s 16 federal states, meaning its governing mayor also heads the state government.
People of Turkish origin make up one of Berlin’s largest immigrant communities. Citing 2024 data from the Berlin-Brandenburg statistics office, DW put their number at 191,397, or about 5 percent of the city’s population.
The 10 lawmakers of Turkish origin will hold approximately 7.7 percent of the seats in the new parliament.
This article is republished from Turkish Minute.
