By Hambersom Aghbashian
Cemile Giousouf (born in May 5, 1978 in Leverkusen, Germany) is a German politician of Turkish ethnicity. She is the first ever Muslim member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), elected to the Bundestag in 2013. Cemile’s parents immigrated in the 1970s from Greece, where they lived as Turkish minority in Western Thrace. The members of her Muslim family spoke Turkish at home, so she did. Following the completion of her high school in Leverkusen, she studied Political science, Social science and Islamic science at the University of Bonn. In 2008, Giousouf was employed as a consultant in the State Ministry of Generations, Family, Women and Integration of North Rhine-Westphalia. From 2009 on, she served as a consultant in the Department of Integration at the Ministry of Integration and Social Welfare of the same state.
During her university years, she was engaged in the German-Turkish Forum, a subordinate organization of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and in 2008, she was elected vice chairperson of the organization’s North Rhine-Westphalia branch. She was also active in the CDU’s several other local organizations as well as in the city administration of Aachen.
Giousouf entered CDU’s federal-level organization in 2011, where she served for “İntegration” matters. On June 30, 2012, she was elected to the executive board of CDU state organization in North Rhine-Westphalia. In 2013, the local organization of CDU in Hagen nominated her for the Bundestagswahl. In the next two preliminary inner-party elections, she was able to make her way for the federal election as direct candidate in the Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis District in September 2013.
On June 6, 2016, DW.com” wrote “After Germany’s Armenian genocide resolution, the Turkish head of state has railed against German parliamentarians of Turkish origin. In Germany, the move has met with dismay and resolute opposition. In actions that have sparked outrage in Germany, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has unleashed retaliatory statements against German parliamentarians with ethnic Turkish backgrounds. The reason? On Thursday they voted, together with nearly all their colleagues in the Bundestag, for a resolution recognizing mass killings of Armenias as genocide. In addition, the resolution admitted the “complicity” of the German Empire in the crimes of Turkey’s predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire. Over 1.5 million Armenians died in the events approximately a century ago under the Ottoman Empire, but Turkey has steadfastly denied it was a genocide. German members of parliament Özan Mutlu (Greens), Mahmut Özdemir (SPD), and Cemile Giousouf (CDU) have now had their Turkish identity called into question by Erdogan, who strictly rejects the crime being classified as genocide. Erdogan has now called for them to take a “blood test”, saying their Turkish identity should be checked as “their blood is impure”. Many of the MPs have also received death threats. (1)
According to Barnabas Fund-GB , June 8, 2016, the national chairman of the Turkish Community (in Germny), Gökay Sofuoglu told the dpa press agency “We find death threats and blood tests abhorrent,” and added “I thought that defining people by blood stopped in 1945.” (2) That was a clear reference to the NAZI era the end of WW-II, where the process of defining people by blood stopped. But it seems that Erdogan is trying to revive that process by calling on German members of parliament Özan Mutlu, Mahmut Özdemir, and Cemile Giousouf to take a “blood test”, saying their Turkish identity should be checked as “their blood is impure”. Barnabas Fund-GB mentioned also that “On the internet, MPs of Turkish origin who hold a German passport have become victims of hate speech and defamation. A ‘wanted’ poster featuring portraits of the parliamentarians is spreading rapidly and has attracted over a thousand likes. The image appears under the heading in Turkish, reading “SIRTIMIZDAN VURDULAR” (these parliamentarians have treacherously stabbed us in the back). The phrase recalls Nazi propaganda which claimed that Social Democrats, international Jewry, and ‘Democrats without a fatherland’ had been a ‘stab in the back’ to the German Empire in post-World War I Germany.”
In his article titled “Police Protection after Genocide Vote”, Heike Anger wrote on June 13, 2016 in Global Handelsblatt, “German parliamentarians of Turkish descent have been placed under police protection and warned against traveling to Turkey, after voting for a resolution to officially recognize the Ottoman massacres of Armenians as genocide. Even in Germany, it’s dangerous to speak out about the massacres of the Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks at the end of World War I. Eleven parliamentarians of Turkish descent have been placed under federal police protection after receiving death threats for supporting a German parliamentary resolution that recognized the massacres as genocide.(Last Friday, we received detailed information about how we should behave, how to categorize hate mail and the special protection we will receive during sessions), Cemile Giousouf told Handelsblatt. Five Social Democrats, three Greens and two Left Party members are also under protection. The foreign ministry has warned the parliamentarians against traveling to Turkey, saying their security could not be guaranteed. (3)
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1- http://www.dw.com/en/erdogan-takes-aim-at-german-mps-on-armenia/a-19310660
2- https://barnabasfund.org/operation-nehemiah-news-update-236?audience=ES
3- https://global.handelsblatt.com/edition/448/police-protection-after-genocide-vote
