Ekin Deligöz

Ekin Deligöz (born 21 April 1971 in Tokat, Turkey) is a German politician of Alliance 90/The Greens and a graduate in administrative science. She was a member of the Bundestag from 1998 to 2025, elected on the state list of Bavaria for the constituency of Neu-Ulm, and from December 2021 a parliamentary state secretary in the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.

The Bundestag biography records her as an Alevi, married, with two children. She has held German citizenship since 1997 and has lived in Germany since 1979. She arrived at the age of eight with her mother in Senden, near Neu-Ulm. She attended primary school in Istanbul and in Senden and the Gymnasium in Weißenhorn, passed the Abitur in 1992, and studied administrative sciences at the University of Konstanz and the University of Vienna.

Deligöz joined the Greens in 1988 and in 1991 was a co-founder of the youth association GBAJ. In the Bundestag she was parliamentary managing director of the Green group from 2002 to 2005, deputy chair of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth from 2005 to 2009, and deputy chair of the parliamentary group from 2009 to 2013. From 2013 to 2021 she sat on the Budget Committee and the Audit Committee, and in 2020–2021 she was the group’s spokesperson for children and family policy.

In October 2006 Bild am Sonntag quoted her describing the headscarf as a symbol of the oppression of women and appealing to Muslim women in Germany to take it off. Death threats and hundreds of hostile messages followed, and the Federal Criminal Police Office placed her under personal protection; in January 2007 she said she would make the appeal again. On 8 December 2021, after Olaf Scholz was elected chancellor, the president of the Bundestag announced the new government, with Anne Spiegel as minister for family affairs; the parliamentary state secretaries named for that ministry included Deligöz and Sven Lehmann. In that office she represented Germany in European and United Nations negotiations on equality, gender-responsive foreign policy, demographic change and the rights of children in armed conflict.

In September 2024 she said she would not stand at the 2025 federal election, calling the choice personal rather than an expression of frustration with the coalition, and saying that a rare autoimmune disease diagnosed some months earlier was not the decisive reason. She wanted, in her mid-fifties, to work again on administrative modernization, management and cutting bureaucracy; her Bundestag office confirmed the decision to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur. She later became a senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies at the University of Bonn, where her stated themes include Turkey in transition. The same profile lists her as a member of the board of UNICEF Germany and as active in Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie. In 2019 the Bavarian Landtag named her among the recipients of its Constitutional Medal in silver, presented on 7 February 2020, and on 3 July 2026 she was among those receiving the Bavarian Order of Merit.

Early life and education

Childhood in Tokat and migration

Ekin Deligöz was born on 21 April 1971 in Tokat, Turkey. Bundestag biographies state that she has lived in Germany since 1979 and has held German citizenship since 1997, and they describe her as an Alevi, married, with two children. A 1998 profile in the taz called her the daughter of a teacher and the granddaughter of a social-democratic city councillor. In a 2014 interview published by the Bundestag she said that this grandmother had been one of the few women on a Turkish town council in the mid-1970s, and that her grandfather had wanted his children to finish an education.

She began primary school in Istanbul. In 1979, aged eight, she moved with her mother—then a single parent and a teacher—from Istanbul to Germany and grew up in Senden, in Bavaria's Swabia, near Neu-Ulm. The taz reported that the mother, Hatice Güler-Meisel, had gone to Ulm in 1979 to teach the children of Turkish guest workers, and identified Deligöz's stepfather as Helmut Meisel, a teacher and councillor of Alliance 90/The Greens in Senden.

Schooling in Swabia

Bundestag biographies record primary school in Istanbul and Senden, then the Gymnasium in Weißenhorn and the Abitur in 1992. In the 2014 interview Deligöz said she was first placed in an all-Turkish school in Senden, with only three hours of German a week and more Islamic religious instruction than she had received in Turkey. She said that, as an Alevi, she could not be excused from that instruction, and that her mother arranged a transfer into a German primary class, which she later called her chance. The first three months, she said, were very hard because she barely spoke German.

She also recounted a Gymnasium teacher who gave her a five in German, a failing mark, and told her: "Ich tue dir damit einen Gefallen, deinen Platz zu finden. Ausländer gehören nicht aufs Gymnasium. Behinderte können ja auch nicht beim 100-Meter-Lauf gewinnen." The Bundestag profile presents the remark as one she had not forgotten, and quotes her crediting family support with carrying her through the Abitur and into university.

Administrative studies

After the Abitur she studied administrative sciences (Verwaltungswissenschaften) at the University of Konstanz and the University of Vienna. An author note published with her thesis states that her emphases were municipal and regional policy and administrative management, and that the University of Konstanz awarded the Diplom in Verwaltungswissenschaft in 1998.

By the 1998 federal campaign she had submitted a diploma thesis on segregation and integration among Turks in Konstanz, and the taz described her travelling between a flat there and the family home in Senden. In February 1997 she exchanged her Turkish passport for a German one, telling the paper she did so "weil man mehr Chancen hat." Her mother, after nineteen years in Germany, declined naturalization; she called it a farewell from home and said that without citizenship she still could not really take part in decisions.

The thesis appeared in 1999 from Hartung-Gorre in Konstanz as Ausländer zwischen Integration und Segregation: Am Beispiel der türkischen Bevölkerung von Konstanz, a 120-page paperback and volume 50 of Konstanzer Schriften zur Sozialwissenschaft, edited by Horst Baier and Erhard R. Wiehn (ISBN 978-3-89649-366-8). The table of contents moves from spatial, ethnic-cultural and municipal political-administrative segregation to a local study of the Turkish or Turkish-descended population: length of stay, reasons for migration, housing and residential segregation, political participation, language, social contacts, leisure, information habits, civic engagement and occupational position. An appendix prints the questionnaire, short portraits of people interviewed and calculations, and a preface is titled "Wir sind die Kinder der Zukunft." The dedication, "für meine drei H's: Hatice, Helmut und Heinzi," names her mother, her stepfather and the partner with whom the taz reported she was then living in Konstanz. The bookseller's reproduction of the publisher's text says the study measures social, spatial and administrative segregation in one municipality, using the behaviour and attitudes of Konstanz's Turkish population, where migration research and urban sociology overlap.

Entry into the Greens

Green Youth in Bavaria

Deligöz joined the Greens in 1988, while she was still at school. The biography published by the Bundestag, compiled from members' own statements, records membership of Alliance 90/The Greens from that year and lists her as a co-founder, in 1991, of the youth association GBAJ. A chronicle of former speakers kept by the Green Youth in Bavaria places her in 1989–1991 under the heading Grün Bunt Alternative Jugend Bayern, before Christian Böser from 1991. In a 2009 interview for the Konstanz student magazine powalter she called herself one of the founding members of the Green Youth, active from her school years in youth groups as well as in the party. In a 2020 reply on Abgeordnetenwatch she wrote that she had contributed to the founding of Grüne Jugend Bayern.

During her administrative-sciences studies at the University of Konstanz she sat on the student faculty council (Fachschaftsrat) and the faculty council (Fakultätsrat), which she later called practice in representing students on a small scale. The same interview said that she was only lightly active in the party then, but that she and others founded the Greens' university group in Konstanz and brought Joschka Fischer as a guest speaker; in 2020 she described her part as a substantial role in building the group. A 2016 text in the university magazine uni'kon recalls that, while she still held only Turkish citizenship and had no voting rights in Germany, others backed her candidacy for the faculty council.

Her electoral base stayed in Senden, in the Neu-Ulm district. A profile by Constanze von Bullion in the taz of 10 July 1998 described the campaign as being run from the family home there, with her stepfather, the teacher and Green local councillor Helmut Meisel, keeping the diary of appearances while she travelled back from Konstanz.

The 1998 election

For the 1998 German federal election, held on 27 September, the Federal Returning Officer's register of Bavarian candidates put Deligöz fifth on the state list of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and as the party's candidate in constituency 241, Neu-Ulm. She was still listed as a Diplomandin in administrative sciences, born in 1971, with an address in Senden; Christine Scheel, Albert Schmidt, Claudia Roth and Hans-Josef Fell stood above her, and the sitting members Halo Saibold and Elisabeth Altmann were in places 7 and 9. The taz reported that some Greens had warned a candidate of Turkish origin would put voters off, and that her placing had pushed Saibold and Altmann onto less secure positions. After the nomination, the paper wrote, a neighbour sent a threatening letter urging that "Germans of Turkish disposition" be expelled, or else "old Germans" would have to take up arms again; it also noted hostile coverage in parts of the conservative Turkish press and the asylum rhetoric of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria in a seat held by the federal finance minister Theo Waigel. By then she had just submitted a diploma thesis on segregation and integration of Turks in Konstanz.

She did not win the constituency. Of 222,770 eligible voters in Neu-Ulm, 174,365 cast ballots, a turnout of 78.3 percent. Of 172,477 valid first votes, Waigel received 94,445 (54.8 percent) and Deligöz 6,515 (3.8 percent); the Social Democratic candidate took 54,899 (31.8 percent). The Greens' second-vote share in the constituency was 5.0 percent (8,594 votes), below the Free Democrats' 5.5 percent. Across Bavaria the Greens received 413,909 second votes, 5.9 percent. The state statistical office's directory of members returned from Bavaria, dated 26 October 1998, records Deligöz for the Greens in constituency 241 at list place 5, elected on the state list, with Waigel as the directly elected member. Its table of women returned from Bavaria names three Green members that year—Scheel, Roth and Deligöz—and does not include Saibold.

Parliamentary career, 1998–2021

Whip and deputy group chair

Ekin Deligöz sat in the Bundestag from 1998 and was returned at every federal election through 2021 for Alliance 90/The Greens, each time on the state list in Bavaria and never with a direct mandate. Her constituency was Neu-Ulm, numbered 256 in the 2002–2005 Bundestag and 255 from the 2009 election; the Christian Social Union held the seat throughout. The Bavarian state returning officer’s reports place her fifth on the Green list in 2005 and 2009 and third in 2013 and 2017, behind Claudia Roth and Anton Hofreiter in the later two elections. In Neu-Ulm she took 12,505 first votes in 2013 (7.8 percent), 16,519 in 2017 (9.2 percent) and 20,621 in 2021 (11.0 percent). The direct winners were Georg Nüßlein of the CSU in 2013 and 2017, with 57.5 and 44.6 percent, and Alexander Engelhard of the CSU in 2021, with 37.2 percent.

On 19 February 2002 she became a parliamentary secretary (Parlamentarische Geschäftsführerin) of the Green parliamentary group, taking the post Katrin Göring-Eckardt left that day, and she kept it until 15 February 2005, when Undine Kurth succeeded her. She was not the group’s first parliamentary secretary: in the 2002–2005 term that office was Volker Beck’s, while Göring-Eckardt and Krista Sager were joint chairs. From November 2009 she was a deputy chair of the Green group and leader of its working group V, “Knowledge society and generations”; the Bundestag’s own biographies date the deputy chairmanship to 2009–2013. In February 2020 the Bavarian Green party referred to her as head of its Bundestag state group (Landesgruppe).

Family committee and the Children's Commission

From November 2005 until 2009 Deligöz was deputy chair of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. A Bundestag biography captured in September 2009 also listed her as chair, and as an ordinary member, of the Children’s Commission (Kinderkommission), the commission charged with the interests of children, and as an ordinary member of the family committee, with a deputy seat on the Legal Affairs Committee. A 2014 Bundestag profile recorded that she had belonged to the commission for more than ten years.

On 18 May 2005 she was the lead signatory of a cross-party motion, alongside Anton Schaaf (SPD), Ingrid Fischbach (CDU/CSU) and Klaus Haupt (FDP), asking that the commission be allowed to introduce its own bills. The motion described a body founded in 1988 whose task was to be a “lobby for children in parliament,” recalled that it could adopt decisions only unanimously, and argued that this composition made an initiative right peculiar to it and not a precedent for other committees. Looking back in 2014, Deligöz counted among the commission’s results the 2000 law rejecting violence in upbringing, the child supplement (Kinderzuschlag) introduced in 2005 for lower-earning families, and Parliament’s debate on child sexual abuse.

Budget and audit work

The archived Bundestag biography for the 20th term records her, from 2013 to 2021, as a member of the Budget Committee and of the Audit Committee (Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss).

During budget week in autumn 2014 a Bundestag profile described her as the Green rapporteur for five chapters of the federal budget: health; education and research; family, senior citizens, women and youth; the office of the Federal President; and labour and social affairs, then the largest single departmental plan. She told the profile that she read those drafts with two questions in particular—gender equity, and the interests of children—and that on the labour and social-affairs plan she would ask whether spending aimed at inclusion also reached migrants.

In the 19th legislative period (2017–2021) she was the Greens’ Obfrau on the Audit Committee and an ordinary member of that committee, the Budget Committee and the family committee, and a deputy member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs. From November 2020 she was also the Green group’s spokesperson for children and family policy, an assignment the biographies date to 2020–2021. In December 2021, at the opening of the 20th term, she became Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.

Integration, religion and security threats

The 2006 headscarf appeal

On 15 October 2006 Bild am Sonntag quoted Ekin Deligöz, a member of the Bundestag for Alliance 90/The Greens: “Das Kopftuch ist ein Symbol der Frauenunterdrückung. Wer von Frauen verlangt, dass sie ihren Kopf und das Haar verhüllen, macht sie zu einem Sexualobjekt,” and “Kommt im Heute an, kommt in Deutschland an. Ihr lebt hier, also legt das Kopftuch ab!” Der Spiegel also recorded a further sentence from the same interview: “Zeigt, dass ihr die gleichen Bürger- und Menschenrechte habt wie die Männer!” Beside her, Social Democratic deputy Lale Akgün said it was “keine Sünde, ohne Kopftuch auf die Straße zu gehen”; Mehmet Daimagüler said the issue was not only “ein Stück Stoff” and that each woman must decide; and lawyer Seyran Ateş spoke of “dieses kleine Stück Stoff.”

On RBB Inforadio she said women who wore a headscarf freely should continue to do so; for her it stood “für eine bestimmte Form von Rollenzuweisung und von Patriarchat.” On ARD’s Nachtmagazin she called the row “überfällig” and said Muslim women themselves must be able to choose. “Ich habe keine Angst, weil das, was ich verteidige, ist ein kostbares Gut - die Freiheit,” she said, adding that police protection was “sehr belastend” at home as a mother. She is Alevi; Der Spiegel noted that hardly any Alevi woman wears a headscarf. Naturalized in 1997, she said: “Ich bin auch ethnisch eine Türkin, religiös eine Muslimin, und werde es immer sein.”

Threats, protection and political response

Within days she received hundreds of hostile messages, mostly from men, calling her a traitor and an unbeliever; some threatened to kill her. Turkish coverage compared her with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. About a week after the article, the Federal Criminal Police Office began guarding her. Der Spiegel reported an official security level of three and a practical level of one, as for a minister.

In January 2007 she said she would do it again, “aber besser vorbereitet,” rather than leave the argument to “eine Erzieherin” without protection, and that she did not want to be the Greens’ headscarf spokesperson. Muslim associations condemned the threats. At a meeting with Green group chair Renate Künast they defended free speech without sharing the appeal. Kenan Kolat of the Turkish Federation of Berlin-Brandenburg said she must be free to speak, “aber sie muss aufpassen was sie sagt,” and that she endangered “den sozialen Frieden”; he called the appeal “unsinnig und populistisch,” while the Turkish Community stood “voll und ganz” against the abuse. The Central Council of Muslims took the same split; Ali Toprak of the Alevi community said Muslims disagreed on whether the headscarf was commanded.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (Christian Democratic Union) said Muslims had to accept differing views of women’s roles, and that “Wenn man bedroht wird, dann ist was nicht in Ordnung”; an English Spiegel report quoted him calling a Muslim woman’s appeal “absolutely legitimate.” Bundestag President Norbert Lammert called limits on speech “nicht hinnehmbar,” and said treating her advice as religiously forbidden raised “die Frage nach der Vereinbarkeit des so verstandenen Islams mit der deutschen Verfassungsordnung.” CDU general secretary Ronald Pofalla called the “Klima des Hasses” unacceptable. At the Greens’ December congress the case went unmentioned.

Citizenship, forced marriage and later debates

As chair of the Bundestag Children’s Commission, Deligöz said in December 2000 that fewer than half of foreign children born in Germany received citizenship because parents refused, and only about five percent of those up to ten used a transitional rule. She blamed bureaucracy, a 500-mark fee and fear of cultural alienation; the commission asked Interior Minister Otto Schily to press the Länder, cut the fee to 100 marks and extend the deadline. On 8 November 2005 she co-signed the Green motion “Zwangsverheiratung bekämpfen – Opfer schützen” (Drucksache 16/61), which treated forced marriage, up to so-called honor killings, as patriarchal pressure across religious and ethnic groups and stated: “Wo Gewalt anfängt, endet jede kulturelle Toleranz.” In Lammert’s 2006 volume Verfassung, Patriotismus, Leitkultur she published “Plädoyer für eine neue Kultur der Anerkennung – Eine schwäbisch-türkische Annäherung an die ‚Leitkultur‘-Debatte.” A Frankfurter Rundschau review placed her among critics of that term, revived in debate by Friedrich Merz in 2000.

After assaults on women in Cologne and other cities at New Year 2015, she told Das Parlament there was “keinerlei Entschuldigung für Gewalt, keine kulturelle, keine religiöse, keine ethnische,” and warned against a “Pauschal- und Generalverdacht” of Muslims. She described an “importierte Einstellung” that split women into “Engel” and “Freiwild,” and wished “dass wir auf einen Islam zusteuern, der deutsch ist” — “eine Form des aufgeklärten Islams,” under the constitution and without glorifying violence.

On 2 June 2016 the Bundestag called the Ottoman killing of Armenians genocide. Eleven members of Turkish origin who voted for it, Deligöz among them, then received threats up to murder. Protection was strengthened; Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière called the threats unacceptable. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said their blood was “verdorben” and called them a mouthpiece of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that he suggested blood tests, and that Ankara’s mayor posted their photographs under “Die Verräter sollen ausgebürgert werden.” Deligöz spoke of “sexistische Attacken” from “fast nur Männer” and of the charge that they had “verkauft” themselves, having been treated as “exklusive Interessenvertreter.” She asked Chancellor Angela Merkel or President Joachim Gauck: “Das sind unsere Abgeordneten; die rührt niemand an.” Lammert said such pressure attacked “das ganze Parlament und unsere Demokratie.” On Bayern 2’s radioWelt a month later she said officers at public events signaled “dass hier schon eine gewisse Sicherheit besteht,” that the attacks left “Spuren” and were “Gewalt in der pursten Form,” and that a Turkish outlet had called her a “Staatsfeind.”

Family, children and equality policy

Children's rights and care

From 2005 to 2009 Deligöz was deputy chair of the Bundestag committee for family affairs, senior citizens, women and youth. For more than ten years she also sat on its Kinderkommission (Commission for the Interests of Children), which she later called a lobby for the youngest. The chair rotated among the groups. She took it on 16 December 2004 from Ingrid Fischbach of the CDU/CSU and held it to the end of the 15th Bundestag, with migration, nutrition and consumer protection, and education as her priorities. On 22 March 2005 the commission under her chair called for better language support for children with a migration background, citing OECD PISA and the IGLU reading study and the claim that educational chances in Germany tracked parents' social status more closely than elsewhere. It asked for more all-day kindergarten places, a preschool curriculum and language courses for mothers. She chaired the commission again from 19 January 2009, after Diana Golze of the Left, until the 16th term ended in October 2009. The interim report for that period lists early help (Frühe Hilfen), elementary education and early support, and children's nutrition and consumer protection as the work programme.

In a 2014 Bundestag interview she counted, among the commission's results, the 2000 law repudiating violence in upbringing, the 2005 child supplement (Kinderzuschlag) for low-earning families, and debate on child abuse. As a budget rapporteur she said she read estimates through the lenses of gender justice and children's interests, backed a women's quota, and rejected the label "quota migrant", tying migration policy to childcare, schools and anti-poverty programmes that she said other children would share.

On the budget committee in the 19th Bundestag she kept the family estimates. A motion of 25 April 2018 by Alliance 90/The Greens, which she signed, said that only about 30 percent of parents entitled to the child supplement received it, so two thirds of eligible children grew up in hidden poverty, and asked that it be paid automatically. In the family-budget debate of 22 November 2018 she cited the Basic Law's protection of marriage and family against an AfD distinction by nationality, and told family minister Franziska Giffey that the Gute-Kita-Gesetz gave the states federal money for early education with no way to reclaim it or to sanction misses on quality. She called the coalition's steps on child poverty too small and said her group wanted a six-billion-euro package. From 11 May 2019 she was vice president of the German Child Protection Association; the Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own disclosures, records that the office ended on 13 May 2023 and lists membership of the committee of UNICEF Germany.

Spokesperson role, 2020–2021

In 2020–2021 she was the Green group's spokesperson for children and family policy, until she became parliamentary state secretary in December 2021. In June 2019 the Greens tabled a bill to amend Article 6 so that it would expressly guarantee protection, support for development, participation, and priority for the child's welfare. The draft said Article 6 still treated children mainly through parental rights and state guardianship, and lagged behind the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Germany in 1992, and the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court. The coalition bill of 31 March 2021 was narrower: it would make children's rights visible without disturbing parents' primary responsibility.

In the first reading on 15 April 2021 Deligöz, quoting the German Bar Association, called that text a Danaergeschenk, a harmful gift: it fell behind the Convention, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the court's case law, she said, because the child's will, participation, protection, support and development were missing. She told CDU deputy Thorsten Frei that the Greens did not want to reopen the triangle of child, parents and state, only to clarify children's rights, and she accused the SPD of dropping a programme pledge on protection, participation, support and the priority of the child's welfare.

A constitutional amendment needed a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. On 8 June 2021 the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that talks among the Union, the SPD, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party had failed. Deligöz said she was "immensely disappointed": for more than a year, decisions in the COVID-19 pandemic had been taken "over the heads of children and young people", and for the Union still to refuse stronger children's rights was "simply cynical". The Greens had been ready for "far-reaching concessions", she said, but not for "mere symbolic politics". CDU/CSU deputy group leader Thorsten Frei said his group would have accepted a further text from Justice and Family Minister Christine Lambrecht that the Free Democrats and the Greens rejected, and that shifting the triangle against the family had been a red line. Free Democrat Stephan Thomae called the last draft "a meagre skeleton". Lambrecht blamed both the Union and the opposition and said children deserved that the parties clear the hurdle so their rights would be visible. The amendment was not passed.

Parliamentary State Secretary

Appointment in the Scholz cabinet

On 8 December 2021, after the Bundestag elected Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party chancellor, it published the Scholz cabinet. Ekin Deligöz of Alliance 90/The Greens was named a parliamentary state secretary (Parlamentarische Staatssekretärin) at the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, with Sven Lehmann. The Bundestag’s biography for the 20th electoral term records the office from December 2021. Holders of the post support the minister, must sit in the Bundestag, and are appointed by the federal president on the chancellor’s proposal.

By virtue of the office she chaired the board of trustees of the federal foundation “Mutter und Kind – Schutz des ungeborenen Lebens.” She served first under Anne Spiegel. On 11 April 2022 Spiegel said she was leaving the ministry under political pressure, to avoid damage to the office; the statement did not concede personal error. The dispute concerned a family holiday in France about ten days after the July 2021 Ahr valley flood, when Spiegel had been environment minister in Rhineland-Palatinate, and her account of cabinet meetings during that period. Scholz took note with respect. Lisa Paus, also of the Greens, was sworn in as family minister on 27 April 2022, and Deligöz remained.

The office ended on 6 May 2025, when Frank-Walter Steinmeier appointed the cabinet of Friedrich Merz and the caretaker Scholz government ceased. Education was merged with the family portfolio under Karin Prien; Mareike Wulf and Michael Brand became the parliamentary state secretaries. Under the Parliamentary State Secretaries Act the post ends with the minister’s tenure, including any caretaker continuation under Article 69(3) of the Basic Law, and not merely because a new Bundestag has met.

Child basic security and all-day care

The ministry’s main transfer reform was the Kindergrundsicherung (child basic security). On 27 September 2023 the cabinet adopted a bill to combine child benefit, the child supplement, the child element of citizen’s benefit, and parts of the education-and-participation package into a guaranteed amount for every child, an income-related supplement, and participation benefits, with a check for eligible families and a digital application at a family service of the Federal Employment Agency. Extra spending in the planned start year, 2025, was about 2.4 billion euros, more if take-up rose.

That sum followed a dispute between Paus and Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the Free Democratic Party. Der Spiegel reported that Paus had first cited a need of 12 billion euros, later two to seven billion, and that in August 2023 the ministers settled on 2.4 billion for 2025, with later years possibly higher, after Paus had blocked another cabinet item. She called it the broadest social reform in years and said up to 5.6 million children at risk of poverty would receive benefits faster; Lindner called the talks constructive but stressed the scheme’s complexity. The design was presented as simpler and partly digital, yet the FDP and other critics attacked a forecast of about 5,000 extra posts as new bureaucracy. Paus said the figure was only an agency forecast, needed if staff were to contact entitled families rather than wait for claims, and the Greens narrowed the claim. The bill was not passed: the government later recorded that it found no parliamentary majority and was not carried out in the 20th legislative period, so the existing child benefits remained.

Separately, a legal right to all-day education and care for primary-school children, enacted in 2021, was to begin on 1 August 2026 for first-graders and then extend grade by grade. Deligöz described it as up to eight hours a day including lessons, voluntary, and deliverable in after-school centres or schools. In March 2025 she wrote that construction and recruiting were hard for municipalities, but that the expansion would widen education, ease work and care, and support both parents’ employment. Der Spiegel reported in October 2024 that the Education and Science Union wanted longer deadlines for federal building aid, because shortages of administrative staff and stalled projects left Länder and municipalities unlikely to meet the timetable, while municipal associations pressed state governments to fund the new duty.

European and United Nations work

On 5 May 2022 Paus made Deligöz national coordinator for children’s opportunities, to steer the plan “Neue Chancen für Kinder in Deutschland,” Germany’s response to the 2021 European Union recommendation on a European Child Guarantee. It was launched that day with Nicolas Schmit, the EU commissioner for jobs and social rights, and aimed at child poverty, early education and care, and access to education, health, nutrition and housing; Paus said one child in five in Germany was poor or at risk. Deligöz said delivery required other ministries, the Länder, municipalities and civil society, and direct involvement of children and young people.

At the 69th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women she addressed a ministerial round table on national mechanisms for gender equality. Thirty years after the Beijing Platform for Action, she said no country had reached equality and that rollbacks made it more urgent to hold course. She cited a German right to protection and counselling after violence, changes on pregnancy-conflict counselling, the earnings gap and involuntary part-time work, more childcare, and quotas for women in leadership. A later profile by the University of Bonn’s Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies, where she became a senior fellow, states that as state secretary she represented Germany in European and UN talks, on equality, a gender-responsive foreign policy, demographic change, and the rights of children in armed conflict.

Writing and public commentary

Books and essays

The scholarly monograph in Deligöz’s bibliography is Ausländer zwischen Integration und Segregation. Am Beispiel der türkischen Bevölkerung von Konstanz (Hartung-Gorre, 1999), volume 50 of the Konstanzer Schriften zur Sozialwissenschaft. The union catalogue gives VIII, 107 pages with graphs and identifies it as her 1998 diploma thesis at the University of Konstanz. It surveys segregation and assimilation theory, then housing, participation, language and occupation among Turkish or Turkish-descended residents of Konstanz. The preface is titled “Wir sind die Kinder der Zukunft.”

In 2006 the essay “Plädoyer für eine neue Kultur der Anerkennung – Eine schwäbisch-türkische Annäherung an die ‚Leitkultur‘-Debatte” appeared in Verfassung, Patriotismus, Leitkultur. Was unsere Gesellschaft zusammenhält, edited by Bundestag president Norbert Lammert (Hoffmann und Campe; also a licensed edition from the Federal Agency for Civic Education). Matthias Arning, in the Frankfurter Rundschau, placed her with critics of Leitkultur, including Seyran Ateş and Fritz Kuhn, against Volker Kauder and Angela Merkel. He reported her judgment that the debate had harmed society more than it had helped, and her figure that 20 percent of foreign youth did not obtain a Hauptschulabschluss; his review, as noted by Perlentaucher, found that the book set the debate back to zero.

“Auf der Suche nach einer Heimat” is her chapter in Özcan Mutlu’s Politik ohne Grenzen. Migrationsgeschichten aus dem Deutschen Bundestag (B & S Siebenhaar, Berlin, 2016), between Daniela De Ridder and Andrej Hunko. The publications list at the University of Bonn’s Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies dates it to 2017 and omits the book title. The same list, not a retrieved text, is the source for “Mit Lackschuhen über Steine” in a 2008 Spiegel Spezial it calls “Frauen und Gesellschaft,” and for “Wir riefen Arbeitskräfte und es kamen Menschen” (2013) in Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie, issue 50, pages 43–44, using Max Frisch’s line on foreign workers. Der Spiegel dated the special Das starke Geschlecht – Wie Frauen die Welt bewegen to 26 February 2008.

On 16 July 2024 the Behördenspiegel published “Verwaltung braucht Vielfalt,” which she links to a Diversity Day lecture in Mannheim. She argued that a workforce varied by age, gender, origin and religion would improve decisions and the acceptance of state action, citing about 360,000 vacancies, a migration-background share just under 12 percent in administration against about one in four residents, and women as 55 percent of federal staff but scarce in leadership.

Commentary on Turkey and migration

Other comment on Turkey is recorded conversation and newspaper opinion. The 28-page brochure Die Türkei in Europa? Migranten in Deutschland documents a discussion of 7 March 2007 in Gotha between Thomas Kossendey and Deligöz, edited by the foreigners’ commissioner of the Thuringian state government.

Interviewed by Timo Berger for Zeitschrift für Kulturaustausch (2008; English on Qantara.de, 19 January 2009), she said Turkey could modernize itself through universal education and less poverty, credited “European Union soft pressure” with ending the death penalty and improving human rights, and named taboos—including the Armenian question—and weak alternatives to the ruling Justice and Development Party as deficits. The English text has her asking whether an Islamic and secular Turkey could shape an Islam of equal rights beyond a “Sharia mind-set.”

The Bonn list also records a Huffington Post commentary of 17 April 2014, “Die Türkei nach den jüngsten Kommunalwahlen: Optimismus in schwierigen Zeiten wagen.” The text was not recoverable; the title alone treats the local elections as a moment for optimism in difficult times.

Withdrawal and later activity

Decision not to stand in 2025

On the evening of 19 September 2024, Deligöz's Bundestag office told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that she would not stand in the 2025 federal election, after what would then be 27 years in parliament, and that she had informed Alliance 90/The Greens by letter. In an Augsburger Allgemeine interview the same day she said the reasons were purely personal and that she was not frustrated with the traffic-light years; the paper reported that she also separated the decision from having been passed over as minister after Anne Spiegel's resignation, when Lisa Paus was appointed.

A rare autoimmune disease, diagnosed months earlier and already made public, had made her reflect, she said, but was not decisive: she had medical care and had learned to live with it. Leaving in her mid-fifties was, she said, the moment to return to administrative modernization, management and cutting bureaucracy; another four-year term would probably have closed that path. Her letter called the Budget Committee the finest period of her political life: negotiation, she said, on equal terms with the government and across democratic parties, rather than party tactics.

Her seat ended on 25 March 2025, when the 21st Bundestag met and, under Article 39 of the Basic Law, the previous electoral term closed. Under section 4 of the Parliamentary State Secretaries Act the state-secretary office does not end with that electoral term alone; in a caretaker case under Article 69 (3) it lasts until the responsible minister's caretaker management ends. On 6 May 2025 the Bundestag elected Friedrich Merz chancellor; he received his appointment the same day, and the new ministers were to be named that evening, succeeding Olaf Scholz's caretaker cabinet. Deligöz had held the post at the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth since December 2021.

Research, consulting and civic offices

The Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies at the University of Bonn lists her as a senior fellow working on Turkey in transition and on politics and society in critical structures. The profile says she is on the board of UNICEF Germany and active in Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie. The 20th-term Bundestag biography, from her own disclosures, instead listed membership of UNICEF Germany's committee, and recorded her as vice president and a board member of the German Child Protection Association until 13 May 2023; the register of interests also listed her as chair of that board until the same day. On that date the association elected Sabine Andresen president after Heinz Hilgers stood down, with Nezahat Baradari as vice president. UNICEF Germany's board as published after its June 2026 assembly does not include Deligöz.

In November 2025 she said an 18-month cooling-off period required Chancellery approval for new work by former members of the government, usually on advice from a body including Norbert Lammert, Andreas Voßkuhle and Krista Sager. She said the bar on using old contacts was reasonable but so tight that even unpaid work for the Child Protection Association could count as a conflict. With approval she founded Spreu von Weizen GmbH, a small communications and consulting firm. She linked the name to Ekin, Turkish for wheat—"to separate the wheat from the chaff"—and said she could help companies and associations find their way in politics but could not contact members or ministries to influence legislation.

In October 2026 she said she was still in the cooling-off period, returning gradually to honorary offices, with the firm limited to work such as public relations and strategy for social associations. She remained a party member, kept a home in Senden in the Neu-Ulm district, and hoped from November to work for a children's-rights association; the strain of the political years had, she said, also been partly a matter of health.

Honors

In December 2019 the Bavarian Landtag named Deligöz, listed as a graduate in administrative science, a member of the Bundestag and a resident of Senden, among 39 recipients of the Bavarian Constitutional Medal in Silver. Landtag president Ilse Aigner presented them on 7 February 2020. The Bavarian Greens reported that Aigner cited her long political engagement and her work for children's rights.

On 3 July 2026 Minister-President Markus Söder was to present the Bavarian Order of Merit to 68 people in the Antiquarium of the Munich Residenz; the participant list names "Ekin Deligöz, Senden". The 1957 statute limits the order to 2,000 living holders. On 24 September 2026 the Südwest Presse reported a ceremony at Senden town hall at which she signed the town's Golden Book. In October she called the order recognition of her work and an encouragement for voluntary engagement.