Lale Akgun

Lale Akgün, 2012

Lale Akgün (born September 17, 1953 in Istanbul ) is a Turkish- German politician ( SPD ).

Life and work

After graduating from high school in 1972, Lale Akgün studied medicine , ethnology and psychology in Marburg , which she completed in 1981 with a degree in psychology. In 1980 she took on German citizenship . She then worked for the family counseling service of the City of Cologne until 1997 , from 1992 as the deputy head of the department. In 1987 she received her doctorate as Dr. rer. nat. at the University of Cologne . From 1997 to 2002 she was head of the State Center for Immigration of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in Solingen . In 1999 she received her license to practice medicine as a psychotherapist . In 2008 she published her cheerful memories of her family's integration process in Germany under the title Tante Semra im Leberkäseland - Stories from my Turkish-German Family . In May 2013 Akgün advocated the founding of an association of liberal Muslims as part of the Critical Islam Conference 2013 , since the majority of German Muslims are not represented by the traditional Islamic associations. Islam in Germany is regulated and controlled from outside, so "the delicate seed of a liberal Islam" must be established in Germany.

Lale Akgün is married to the teacher Ahmet Akgün, has a grown daughter and lives in Cologne.

politics

In 1982 Akgün became a member of the SPD. From 2002 to 2009 Akgün was a member of the German Bundestag . Since December 2005 she has been the deputy spokesperson for the parliamentary group working group “European Union Affairs” and since March 2006 also the working group “Migration and Integration”. Since October 2007 she has also been a member of the executive committee of the SPD parliamentary group. She was one of five members of the Muslim faith.

Lale Akgün always moved into the Bundestag as a directly elected member of the Cologne II constituency . In the 2005 Bundestag election it received 43.8% of the first votes . In the federal election in 2009 , she lost her constituency to the CDU candidate Michael Paul . On the state list of the SPD North Rhine-Westphalia, she was elected to 29th place, which did not come into play. She left the Bundestag. After the change of government in North Rhine-Westphalia, she was group leader in the State Chancellery of North Rhine-Westphalia for international affairs and one-world politics . From March 2013 onwards, Akgün headed the newly created competence center for sustainable and fair procurement of goods and services in North Rhine-Westphalia . The project, which had an annual budget of 300,000 euros, was completed at the end of 2017. Akgün has been working as a Senior Researcher at the International Center for Sustainable Development Policy at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences since November 2017.

Awards

2012: Federal Cross of Merit
2013: Giesberts Lewin Prize

Publications

with Jendrik Scholz: Municipal integration policy - problems and perspectives using the example of Cologne. In: Arguments. Contributions to the future discussion from the left. Issue 1, 2003, ISSN 1439-9784 , pp. 57-67, online (PDF; 63 kB) .

Aunt Semra in Leberkäseland. Stories from my Turkish-German family. Krüger, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-8105-0119-6 .

The faked Reichstag. Aunt Semra's clan makes politics. Krüger, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-8105-0121-9 .

Uprising of the headscarf girls. German Muslim women defend themselves against Islamism. Piper, Munich et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-492-05381-5 .

Kebab christmas. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-351-03370-5 .

Place there! Here come the enlightened Muslims. No more the predominance of conservative Islam in Germany. Alibri, Aschaffenburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-86569-298-6 . Review by Norbert Mecklenburg [1]

with Adrian Gillmann and Norbert Reitz (eds.): Secular. Social. Democratically. A plea for the separation of religion and politics. JHW Dietz Nachf., Bonn 2019, ISBN 978-3-8012-0567-6 .

literature

Alice Schwarzer : Lale Akgün, therapist and politician in: Alice Schwarzer portrays role models and idols. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2003, ISBN 978-3-462-03341-0 , pp. 48-60.