Schroeder calls for Turk in German cabinet

Agence France Presse

In an interview to be published Thursday, Schroeder said Germans should see a "role model" in Obama as the first African-American U.S. president. "After the general election in [September] 2009, it will hopefully be the time [for a minister of Turkish origin] and allow me to say, it should be a Social Democrat," Schroeder, a former leader of the Social Democrats, or SPD, told the monthly magazine Cicero.

The SPD is currently the junior partner in the "grand coalition" government led since 2005 by Schroeder's successor, conservative chancellor Angela Merkel.

Polls show that Merkel's conservatives are likely to win the general election on September 27 and form a coalition either with their partner of choice, the pro-business Free Democrats or, in a pinch, again with the SPD.

In November, the Greens became the first major party to elect a Turkish-German as leader, Cem Ozdemir, which prompted members to adopt the tongue-in-cheek slogan "Yes We Cem" based on Obama's motto.

In 1994 Ozdemir became the first politician of Turkish origin to be elected to the German parliament, just two years after taking German citizenship.

There are about 2.8 million people of Turkish origin living in Germany. A study published this week, however, called Turks the least integrated group of immigrants in German society, with poorer academic achievement and drastically less success in the job market.

Many Turks living in Germany are the descendants of participants in a "guest worker" program in the 1960s that recruited Turkish laborers to do work Germans refused to perform.

Even third- and fourth-generation Turks who have never lived in Turkey were regarded as guests rather than immigrants until Germany passed a reform of its blood-based citizenship laws under Schroeder in 1999.