# Serdar Yüksel

# Serdar Yüksel

Serdar Yüksel (born 27 April 1973 in Essen) is a German politician of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) and a member of the Bundestag for the constituency of Bochum I in North Rhine-Westphalia. He sat in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2010 until April 2025. The Bundestag lists his occupation as a state-examined nurse and states that he worked as a nurse until 2010.

[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel) has described him as the son of Kurdish immigrants, born in Essen in 1973. His Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members' own declarations, records a Fachabitur, qualification as a nurse, and a continuing distance course in health sciences at Bielefeld University, and lists him as Roman Catholic, unmarried, and an SPD member since 1989. [Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt) reported that, before entering the Landtag in 2010, he had worked for 18 years in intensive care.

At the federal election of 23 February 2025 he won the first-vote contest in constituency 139, Bochum I, with 32.7 percent (53,007 votes), ahead of Vivienne Chantal Fee Roth of the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) on 24.6 percent. Turnout in the constituency was 81.7 percent of 200,128 eligible voters. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on Health, the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Subcommittee on Crisis Prevention, Strategic Foresight, Stabilisation and Peacebuilding. He is a deputy member of the Committee on European Union Affairs, the Petitions Committee, and the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the [Council of Europe](/organizations/council-of-europe), and he chairs the German-Turkish Parliamentary Friendship Group.

In a report published on 31 October 2018, Die Welt wrote that during that day's sitting of the Landtag committee on labour, health and social affairs he began chest compressions on a scientific adviser to [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany who had collapsed with serious heart trouble, while Susanne Schneider of the Free Democratic Party (Germany), a trained nurse, gave rescue breaths; the man became responsive and was taken to hospital. The same biography lists him as chair of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt branch Ruhr-Mitte, deputy chair of AWO International, and a board member of UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe. Spiegel reported that in late 2014, after a lecture on Yazidi civilians who had fled the Islamic State, he proposed with the journalist Jan Jessen, the former Caritas worker Rudi Löffelsend and the interpreter Thomas Shairzid a container settlement in northern Iraq, and that by April 2016 about 400 people were living in 70 containers funded by donors from the Ruhr.

## Early life and education

### Family background

Serdar Yüksel was born on 27 April 1973 in Essen. *Der Spiegel* has described him as born and raised in the Ruhr; the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* specifies that he grew up in Wattenscheid and went to school there. Wattenscheid was united with Bochum by the territorial reform that the city dates to 1 January 1975, when he was one year old.

National newspapers have described him as the son of Kurdish immigrants or of Kurdish parents. In April 2016 *Der Spiegel* wrote that he was born in Essen in 1973 as the son of Kurdish immigrants. A profile in the same magazine that October said that his father had come to Germany as a *Gastarbeiter* from the east of Turkey, and that Yüksel grew up in a family of seven children. In February 2025 both *Der Spiegel* and the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* again called him the son of Kurdish parents. *Vorwärts*, in April 2025, placed the father's move from Turkey to the Ruhr in the 1960s and described the household as shaped by trade-union and social-democratic politics.

The October 2016 profile also recorded a childhood scene from Wattenscheid in the 1970s and 1980s. When neighbors received relatives from the German Democratic Republic, they brought *Eierschecke*, a layered cake of egg and quark, and he was allowed to taste it. Asked in Bautzen where he came from, he answered, "I am German, but I have Kurdish roots." Speaking later to *Vorwärts*, he said that the street where he grew up had an "invisible wall" between immigrant families and long-established German families, with each side keeping to itself, and that his family met discrimination when dealing with public authorities. He traced his decision to enter politics to that experience as a teenager: "If this is to change, I have to get politically involved."

Descriptions of his religion in public sources do not agree. The October 2016 *Spiegel* profile stated that he is an Alevi and that he described himself as not particularly religious. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members' own information, lists him instead as Roman Catholic and unmarried. The short biography published by the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, likewise compiled mainly from self-reporting, also records him as unmarried and states no denomination.

### Schooling

The parliamentary biographies say little about individual schools. The Landtag entry records the *Fachhochschulreife* in 1991, the certificate that admits students to universities of applied sciences (Fachhochschulen). The Bundestag biography lists a *Fachabitur*, the ordinary name for that qualification, and does not name a school.

A chronology on the website of the SPD in Wattenscheid is more specific: *Grundschule* and Hauptschule in Wattenscheid from 1979 to 1989, then a Fachoberschule in Bochum from 1989 to 1991. In North Rhine-Westphalia the Fachoberschule is a two-year course at a *Berufskolleg*. Pupils are admitted with the *Mittlerer Schulabschluss* (also called the *Fachoberschulreife*), or with entitlement to the upper level of a Gymnasium, and the course ends with the *Fachhochschulreife* examination.

Press accounts name the qualification before the *Fachabitur* differently. Writing from Wattenscheid in February 2025, the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* reported that he had gone to school there, taken the Mittlere Reife, and then, because he had done well, gone straight on to the *Fachabitur*. *Der Spiegel* in 2016 wrote that he had completed a *Realschulabschluss* before training as a nurse. Neither parliamentary biography, nor the Wattenscheid chronology, names a Realschule. What those sources agree on is the endpoint: a *Fachhochschulreife*, or *Fachabitur*, in 1991, after schooling in Wattenscheid and, on the local SPD chronology, two further years at a Fachoberschule in Bochum.

## Nursing career

The Bundestag lists Serdar Yüksel's occupation as examinierter Krankenpfleger, a state-examined nurse. Its biography, which the parliament notes is based on members' own statements, records a Fachabitur, completion of that nursing qualification, and a continuing-education distance course in health sciences (weiterbildendes Fernstudium der Gesundheitswissenschaften) at Bielefeld University, and states that he worked as a Krankenpfleger until 2010. The Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, whose short biographies are drawn mainly from self-reporting, dates the path more closely: the Fachhochschulreife in 1991, nurse training finished in 1994, and employment as a nurse from 1994 to 2010.

The fullest published description of the ward work is an interview he gave Die Welt in 2018. He said that 15 years as a nurse on a hospital intensive-care unit had trained him to see how serious a collapse was, that most of that time had been at the Marienhospital in Gelsenkirchen, and that an emergency call, especially on nights, meant taking a defibrillator to the ward concerned. He described resuscitations as something he had done hundreds of times in that job. For six years, he told the paper, he worked mainly at night so that he could study health management (Gesundheitsmanagement) alongside the post, and he entered the Landtag in 2010, two years after finishing that course.

The hospital he named, Marienhospital Gelsenkirchen, describes itself as a Catholic acute and trauma hospital on Virchowstraße and part of KERN Katholische Einrichtungen Ruhrgebiet Nord GmbH. It states that it has 568 beds, is the largest hospital in the city, and is a teaching hospital of Ruhr University Bochum and of the University of Duisburg-Essen. Those figures are the hospital's present description of the institution, not a record of staffing or of the intensive-care unit during the years he worked there.

Parliamentary biographies record further study during the nursing years, with differences of wording. The Landtag entry says that from 1999 to 2008 he studied nursing science and applied health sciences at the Evangelische Fachhochschule Bochum and at Bielefeld University, and that he qualified as a Gesundheitsmanager in 2008. His own website gives the same years and the same qualification. The Bundestag text does not name the Bochum college or a Gesundheitsmanager certificate; it describes only the Bielefeld element, as a weiterbildendes Fernstudium der Gesundheitswissenschaften. The Wattenscheid organisation of the SPD lists state-recognised nurse training, work as a nurse in intensive care, nursing science at the Protestant college in Bochum, and applied health sciences at Bielefeld with a Gesundheitsmanager qualification, without years. None of these accounts states that a programme was left unfinished.

The Landtag biography records his employment as a nurse as ending in 2010. The Bundestag biography likewise states that he was a Krankenpfleger until 2010 and a member of the Landtag from 2010 until April 2025. Under the heading for activity before membership of the Bundestag, the disclosures published with his biography list both that Landtag membership and Marienhospital Gelsenkirchen GmbH, with the occupation Krankenpfleger and a Rückkehrrecht, a recorded right of return to the nursing post. The parliament states that such entries are made under the code of conduct in sections 45 onwards of the Members of the Bundestag Act and are published once it has been checked whether publication is required.

## Party career in Bochum

### Young Socialists and local offices

Yüksel has been a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany since 1989, according to the biography published by the Bundestag. The SPD in Wattenscheid, the district of Bochum where he grew up, dates the posts that followed to the mid-1990s: deputy chair of a local association from 1995, deputy sub-district chair of the Young Socialists in the SPD in Bochum from 1995 to 2004, and chair of the Young Socialists in Wattenscheid from 1998 to 2001. The same profile places him on the executive of the Bochum sub-district (Unterbezirk), the SPD's city-wide organisation, from 2001, on its managing board from 2007, and as the Bochum SPD's press spokesperson from 2007 to 2011. Both that profile and the Bundestag biography list membership of the services union ver.di.

*The SPD Wattenscheid executive elected on 11 April 2016, with Serdar Yüksel as district chair.*

In April 2014 delegates elected him chair of the SPD in the Stadtbezirk Wattenscheid, succeeding Dieter Rakowski. He said that in 45 years the district had had only three chairs: Herbert Schwirtz, Heinz Wirtz and Rakowski. Eighty delegates re-elected him on 11 April 2016 with 86 percent; Anna-Maria van den Meulenhof and Burkart Jentsch became deputies. The report for the Bochum congress of 17 June 2019 still listed him as Wattenscheid chair, from the local association Wattenscheid West/Leithe. On the executive elected on 26 June 2017 he held the public-relations brief under chair Karsten Rudolph. He left the Wattenscheid chair at the end of June 2019, announcing it at a district meeting. The *Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung* reported that the step surprised many present, and that Bezirksbürgermeister Manfred Molszich told the same meeting he would not stand again in September 2020.

### Chair of the SPD in Bochum

On the evening of 8 June 2015 a congress elected Rudolph, a member of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, to succeed Thomas Eiskirch. The *WAZ* reported that Eiskirch congratulated him as the Bochum SPD reorganised in that election year. Rudolph was still chair of the executive elected in 2017. By 2019 Eiskirch sat on it in an advisory capacity as Oberbürgermeister, with Bundestag members Axel Schäfer and Michelle Müntefering.

A virtual congress in February 2021 nominated Schäfer and Müntefering as Bundestag candidates. Radio Bochum reported that Rudolph had withdrawn a candidacy of his own in Schäfer's favour. On 19 March the *WAZ* reported that Rudolph, then 58, had not prevailed in the party and would neither stand again for the chair nor seek another Landtag mandate. The leadership nominated Yüksel unanimously on 22 March. The next day he urged the party to close ranks, while saying that it had been in a difficult position.

Delegates voted at a digital congress on 17 May 2021; the *WAZ* called the result clear. The sub-district said the electronic result was confirmed by a ballot on 22 May. In his farewell report Rudolph described the 2020 municipal elections as a re-election of Eiskirch, with the SPD still the city's largest party and the red-green coalition continued. The new deputy chairs were Kerstin Paschke, Kai Rauschenberg and Caroline Ströttchen.

On 13 May 2023, in the Stadthalle Wattenscheid, delegates re-elected Yüksel without an opponent, by 118 votes to 11 with two abstentions, about 90 percent. Paschke and Ströttchen were returned as deputies, with a third deputy. He said membership, long given as about 4,000, was about 3,500, and still larger, on his figures, than the CDU, [the Greens](/organizations/the-greens) and the Left in Bochum combined. In April 2024 he put it at about 3,300 after more than 50 people joined in the first quarter. Managing director Sandra Wein linked the joiners to concern for democracy and opposition to the far right; the Greens in Bochum then reported 703 members. The Bochum SPD still identified him as chair in November 2025.

## Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia

Serdar Yüksel, of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), was a member of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia from 9 June 2010 to 14 March 2012 and from 31 May 2012 to 31 March 2025. Its biography records a direct mandate in constituency 109 in each period: Bochum III – Herne II in the 15th, 16th and 17th, and Bochum III in the 18th.

### Direct mandates, 2010–2022

The state returning officer’s final results name Yüksel as the SPD candidate elected on the first vote in constituency 109 at all four elections. On 9 May 2010, in Bochum III – Herne II, he received 27,904 votes, 47.3 percent of the valid first votes, on a turnout of 56.1 percent. The Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) was second with 27.0 percent, ahead of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) on 8.6 percent and Alliance 90/The Greens on 7.5 percent.

*The plenary chamber of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia in Düsseldorf.*

At the early election of 13 May 2012, still in Bochum III – Herne II, he took 29,551 votes, 51.2 percent, his highest share of the four contests, with turnout at 55.6 percent. The CDU fell to 21.2 percent. The [Pirate Party Germany](/organizations/pirate-party-germany) was third on 10.9 percent, and the Greens had 9.1 percent.

On 14 May 2017, again in Bochum III – Herne II, he was returned with 24,801 votes, 41.5 percent, on a turnout of 60.0 percent. The CDU took 26.7 percent, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) 9.3 percent and Die Linke 7.5 percent.

The [2022 North Rhine-Westphalia state election](/facts/2022-north-rhine-westphalia-state-election), on 15 May, used the same number, 109, but the name Bochum III and a smaller electorate, 91,439. Yüksel won with 18,263 votes, 38.3 percent, on a turnout of 52.7 percent. The CDU had 23.4 percent and the Greens 20.1 percent; the AfD had 5.9 percent. The 2017 comparison printed on that page is recalculated for the new boundaries and is not the 2017 result for Bochum III – Herne II.

### Committees and the Petitions Committee

In the 17th electoral period the minutes of the Committee for Labour, Health and Social Affairs record Yüksel speaking for the SPD, including at public sittings on 21 February, 11 April and 31 October 2018. For 2017–2022, Abgeordnetenwatch lists him as a full member of that committee and as chair of the Petitions Committee.

He was not the first chair of that period. On 1 June 2017 the Landtag set up a provisional petitions committee, because petitions do not lapse when a period ends. Drucksache 17/27 named Wolfgang Jörg (SPD) as chair and Andrea Stullich (CDU) as deputy, and Jörg took the constitutive sitting that evening. By 9 November 2017 the invitation to the eighth sitting was signed by Yüksel as chair. On 27 March 2025, presenting the report for the second half of 2024, he said he had led the committee since 2017. That half-year brought about 2,700 submissions and about 1,700 completed cases; more than 30 percent concerned building, housing, transport and the environment, and nearly 25 percent foreigners’ law, especially delays in naturalisation.

Drucksache 18/24, of 1 June 2022, again named Yüksel chair, with Christina Osei of the Greens as deputy, and he presided at that day’s constitutive sitting. The Landtag calls the committee its “Kummerkasten”: anyone, regardless of nationality, residence or age, may petition over alleged unfair treatment by an authority, and up to 5,000 petitions arrive each year. After he left on 31 March 2025, Landtag president André Kuper received Andrea Busche (SPD) on 21 May 2025 as the new chair.

### Resuscitation in the health committee, 2018

On 31 October 2018, during the committee’s 34th public sitting in Düsseldorf, the minutes record an interruption at 15:55 for a medical emergency and a resumption at 16:40. Chair Heike Gebhard then said the patient’s condition was stable, that he was on the way to hospital, and that the remaining business would be taken on 7 November.

*Die Welt*, citing the *Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung*, reported that a scientific staff member of the AfD group had collapsed with serious heart problems. Yüksel, a trained nurse, found cardiac arrest and began chest compressions. Susanne Schneider of the Free Democratic Party (Germany), also a trained nurse, gave the rescue breaths. *Welt* wrote that after this cardiopulmonary resuscitation the man was responsive within a few minutes and was taken to hospital by paramedics. Yüksel told the *WAZ*, in the words quoted by *Welt*, “Da hilft man einfach spontan” (“You simply help, spontaneously”). The same report described him as 45, of Turkish origin, and as having worked for 18 years in intensive care until his election in 2010, while also studying nursing science and health sciences. The AfD group named the staff member as Hans Braun, a specialist adviser on health and social affairs, thanked Yüksel and Schneider, and said that according to his family he was no longer in mortal danger.

## Election to the Bundestag

### Candidacy in Bochum I

Constituency 139, Bochum I, comprises four districts of the independent city of Bochum in North Rhine-Westphalia: Bochum-Mitte, Bochum-Wattenscheid, Bochum-Süd and Bochum-Südwest. The city’s other districts lie in constituency 140.

Axel Schäfer of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Bundestag member for the constituency since 2002, told Bochum party members in October 2024 that he would not stand again. He wrote that he had won the seat at every election since entering parliament, that nobody should “cling” to office, and that the party should choose anew for 2025. On 30 November 2024 an SPD delegate conference in Bochum nominated Serdar Yüksel, then a member of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, with 84 percent of the votes, to contest Bochum I on 23 February 2025. The state returning officer later listed him as place 52 on the SPD state list as well as the constituency candidate.

On 24 January 2025 the constituency committee admitted nine proposals, subject to the state committee: Fee Roth for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), Yüksel for the SPD, [Knuth Meyer-Soltau](/people/knuth-meyer-soltau) for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), [Max Lucks](/people/max-lucks) for Alliance 90/The Greens, Anna Schmit for the Marxist–Leninist Party of Germany, Léon Beck for the Free Democratic Party (Germany) (FDP), Cansin Köktürk for Die Linke, Lena Maria Christina Bormann for Die PARTEI, and Nicole Marie-Luise Scheer for [Bündnis Deutschland](/organizations/bundnis-deutschland). In the state returning officer’s list the same candidates appear as Vivienne Chantal Fee Roth (CDU, North Rhine-Westphalia list place 23), Max Lucks (Greens, 12), Léon Beck (FDP, 27), Knuth Hans-Peter Meyer-Soltau (AfD, 16), Cansin Köktürk (Die Linke, 2), Anna Katharina Schmit (MLPD, 4) and Nicole Marie-Luise Scheer (Bündnis Deutschland, 3); Bormann had no list place. Lucks, who had studied social science in Bochum after schooling in Wattenscheid, had sat in the Bundestag since 2021. Meyer-Soltau is a criminal-defence lawyer in Bochum, and Köktürk, born in Hattingen in 1993, had worked there as a social worker.

### Result of 23 February 2025

Of 200,128 eligible voters, 163,505 voted, a turnout of 81.7 percent, 5.3 points higher than in 2021. From 162,128 valid first votes, Yüksel took 53,007 (32.7 percent). The state returning officer recorded him as elected.

That share was 5.6 points below the SPD’s 38.3 percent in the constituency in 2021, but 8.1 points ahead of Roth, second with 39,925 votes (24.6 percent, up 2.9 points). Meyer-Soltau was third with 22,797 (14.1 percent); the AfD had fielded no constituency candidate there in 2021. Lucks received 22,181 (13.7 percent, down 4.9), Köktürk 15,273 (9.4 percent, up 3.3), Beck 4,680 (2.9 percent), Bormann 2,795 (1.7 percent), Scheer 1,050 (0.6 percent) and Schmit 420 (0.3 percent).

On the second vote the SPD still led, but more narrowly: 39,364 votes, or 24.2 percent, 8.5 points below both its 2021 second-vote share and Yüksel’s first-vote share. The CDU took 38,257 (23.5 percent), the Greens 24,221 (14.9 percent), the AfD 22,483 (13.8 percent, up 7.2 points) and Die Linke 19,653 (12.1 percent). The Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht), with no constituency candidate, received 6,374 second votes (3.9 percent), and the FDP 5,941 (3.7 percent).

A first-vote plurality no longer conferred a seat by itself. The Federal Elections Act, amended in 2023 and applied for the first time in 2025, gives a party candidate a constituency seat only if that candidate has the most first votes and the seat is covered by the party’s second-vote entitlement in the Land (Zweitstimmendeckung). Winners in each Land are ranked by their share of valid first votes, and the party’s seats in that Land are filled in that order; any further winners are not elected and the constituency stays vacant. The Federal Returning Officer states that the old automatic direct mandate no longer exists. Yüksel’s seat was allocated: the Bundestag records a constituency mandate for Wahlkreis 139, not a list mandate. Lucks, Meyer-Soltau and Köktürk entered on their parties’ North Rhine-Westphalia lists.

### Resignation from the Landtag

Yüksel’s Bundestag biography, based on his own statement, records membership of the Landtag from 2010 until April 2025. On 1 April 2025 the state returning officer announced that he had resigned the mandate at the end of 31 March 2025 and that Frank Sundermann, the next person on the SPD state list from the 2022 Landtag election, had succeeded him with effect from 1 April 2025. Landtag president André Kuper administered the oath on 20 May 2025. The parliament’s press office said Sundermann, then 59 and from Ibbenbüren, was replacing Yüksel after the move to the Bundestag, and that Sundermann had already served in the Landtag from 2010 to 2022.

## Membership of the 21st Bundestag

Serdar Yüksel has been a member of the 21st Bundestag since 25 March 2025, sitting for the Social Democratic Party of Germany on a direct mandate for constituency 139, Bochum I, in North Rhine-Westphalia. His constituency office is at Alte Hattinger Straße 19, 44789 Bochum. The official biography lists him as a full member of the Committee on Health, the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Subcommittee on Crisis Prevention, Strategic Foresight, Stabilisation and Peacebuilding; as a deputy of the Committee on European Union Affairs and the Petitions Committee; as a deputy of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe; and as chair of the German-Turkish Parliamentary Friendship Group. The SPD parliamentary group dates the health seat and the EU-affairs deputyship from 21 May 2025, the development seat as a deputyship until 21 April 2026 and a full seat from 22 April 2026, the petitions seat as full membership until 21 April 2026 and a deputyship from 5 May 2026, the crisis-prevention subcommittee from 4 November 2025, and the friendship-group chair from 15 September 2025.

### Committee assignments

The Committee on Health deals with statutory health and long-term-care finance, access to care, and training in medicine and nursing. On 6 November 2025 he spoke for the SPD on the report on an [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) motion to limit immigration into the health system (Drucksachen 21/1750 and 21/2603) and on the bill implementing the June 2024 amendments to the International Health Regulations (Drucksache 21/1508).

The Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development, with 18 members, covers education, work, health, governance and related fields and reviews German projects abroad. On 8 July 2026 he spoke for the SPD against AfD motions to cut development assistance sharply and dissolve the [Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development](/organizations/federal-ministry-for-economic-cooperation-and-development) (Drucksache 21/6906) and to publish all such spending (Drucksache 21/6907). He put that year's ministry spending at about €10.06 billion, 0.56 per cent of gross domestic product and just under 2 per cent of the federal budget.

The Committee on the Affairs of the European Union, required by the Basic Law, has 34 members, covers integration, institutions, the multiannual financial framework and enlargement, and can in defined cases act for the plenary. The Petitions Committee, with 26 members, handles requests and complaints within federal competence.

The Subcommittee on Crisis Prevention, Strategic Foresight, Stabilisation and Peacebuilding was constituted on 16 October 2025 under the Foreign Affairs Committee, with [Peter Beyer](/people/peter-beyer) (CDU/CSU) as chair and Max Lucks (Alliance 90/The Greens) as deputy. Following a recommendation of the enquiry commission on Afghanistan, it focuses on strategic foresight and on the National Security Council in the Federal Chancellery. The constitutive list named Hubertus Heil and [Gabriela Heinrich](/people/gabriela-heinrich), not Yüksel, as the SPD's full members.

### German-Turkish Parliamentary Friendship Group

Friendship groups are reconstituted each term; the Council of Elders fixes their number and structure, and chairs follow party strength, with other groups able to send a board deputy. In the 21st term, 47 groups keep up relations with about 180 countries through conferences, trips and contacts rather than bills. A press notice of September 2026, which names him as chair, gives the deputy chairs as Achim Köhler (AfD), [Ayse Asar](/people/ayse-asar) (Alliance 90/The Greens) and [Mirze Edis](/people/mirze-edis) (Die Linke).

On 28 September 2026 the press office announced that a delegation led by Yüksel, with those deputies, would travel to Turkey from 29 September to 4 October 2026. The programme foresaw, in Istanbul, civil-society talks on human rights and on LGBTQI+ rights and participation, and a meeting with the head of women and family policy at the Istanbul metropolitan administration. In Ankara it foresaw a meeting with the president of the Turkish parliament, [Numan Kurtulmuş](/people/numan-kurtulmus), talks with the Turkish-German friendship group and with parties including the YEP and the DEM Parti, and a visit to the bus maker MAN Türkiye.

### Council of Europe and other bodies

The biography places the Assembly seat and the friendship-group chair outside the standing committees. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the parliamentary organ of the Council of Europe, meets for a week four times a year in Strasbourg to initiate agreements, adopt recommendations and resolutions, observe elections and monitor Council of Europe standards. It has 306 full members and 306 substitutes; Germany sends 18 of each, led, on the Bundestag's account, by Knut Abraham (CDU/CSU), with Gabriela Heinrich (SPD) as deputy leader.

On 5 June 2025 the Bundestag adopted the joint nomination in Drucksache 21/339 of 4 June 2025. The SPD full members listed are [Jürgen Coße](/people/jurgen-cosse), Nancy Faeser, Gabriela Heinrich and [Frank Schwabe](/people/frank-schwabe); the substitutes are Falko Droßmann, [Franziska Kersten](/people/franziska-kersten), [Derya Türk-Nachbaur](/people/derya-turk-nachbaur) and Serdar Yüksel, with Yüksel set opposite Schwabe. He is a substitute, not a full member of the delegation, which is also how the biography records the post.

## Health and long-term-care policy

### Nursing experience in health policy

In the 21st Bundestag, SPD member Serdar Yüksel is a full member of the Committee on Health. The parliament lists his occupation as examinierter Krankenpfleger, a state-examined nurse. The Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia records nurse training finished in 1994, nursing work until 2010, and a 2008 Gesundheitsmanager qualification after studies at the Evangelische Fachhochschule Bochum and Bielefeld University. Its Committee for Labour, Health and Social Affairs, on 26 October 2022 made him its standing member of the supervisory board of the state health-telematics centre.

The *Ärzte Zeitung*, portraying the new health committee on 19 May 2025, reported that he calls the German health system's problems complex but solvable. The paper quoted a Facebook post in which he, writing as a trained nurse, called for reforms, digitisation, relief for staff and fair financing, and treated health as a basis of [social cohesion](/drivers/social-cohesion) rather than a cost factor.

On 16 October 2026, in opposition motions on long-term care insurance in Germany, he said 20 years of hospital nursing had shown him what a sudden loss of autonomy means. To [Birgit Bessin](/people/birgit-bessin) of the Alternative for Germany he said the AfD would scrap generalist training and academisation and send care back to wives at home, which was not the SPD view. He told health minister [Carsten Linnemann](/people/carsten-linnemann) the coalition would back a modernisation of care; [Claudia Moll](/people/claudia-moll) and CDU/CSU speaker Hendrik Streeck spoke in the same debate.

### Debate on care financing

The 16 October item joined a Die Linke motion for a solidaristic, needs-based insurance, the committee report on an earlier Left motion against cuts, and a motion by Alliance 90/The Greens for a lasting reform. Yüksel invoked Norbert Blüm's 1994 rule that needing care should not mean the social-assistance office. Outlays, he said, had gone from 31 billion euros a decade earlier toward 80 billion, and people in need of care from 2 million to more than 6 million — not from demography, since cohorts born from 1964 would reach the scheme only in 12 to 15 years. The coalition was limiting spending growth rather than abolishing benefits, and should prefer autonomy: "rehabilitation before care" and "prevention before care". After an expert commission, he wanted a balance between the social and private schemes. The family, he said, remained the largest provider, including about 200,000 children and young people caring for a parent before school.

The cabinet text was the Pflegeneuordnungsgesetz of 30 September 2026. The Federal Ministry of Health said it was to stabilise social long-term care insurance and keep care available. Linnemann called support for people needing care, and for relatives, a core task of solidarity, excluded cuts to carers' pensions, and promised guidance at home. The scheme pays only part of the cost; with nursing-home bills rising, home care had to be strengthened, prevention treated as the best guard against dependency, and a structure commission from October left to prepare the 2030s. The ministry counted 2.8 million people in need of care in 2016 and 6.4 million in 2025, spending of about 60 billion euros in 2022 and about 74 billion in 2025, a 3.6 per cent rate since 2025, and gaps without the law of about 7.6 billion euros in 2027 and 15.4 billion in 2028. Merged home-care budgets are meant to be simpler and to let households choose; thresholds for grades 1 to 3 move toward earlier scientific advice, with existing grades kept.

The association of substitute funds (vdek) put the average out-of-pocket nursing-home bill in the first year at 3,364 euros a month on 1 July 2026, 256 euros above a year earlier; chair Ulrike Elsner said that rise falls on the people affected.

On 26 October 2026 he told *Der Westen* the draft still risked making care a route into poverty, for the person cared for and for relatives. He wanted a social–private balance, a cap on co-payments and a larger federal share, and objected to putting consumable aids — gloves, disinfectant, bed pads — into one budget that might compete with replacement care. Clearer benefits, local guidance, new budgets and a digital overview were right, he said, and the health committee should amend the text after expert hearings. He added that cuts to carers' pension contributions, a lower starting care allowance and weaker nursing-home subsidies had already been stopped. The ministry says the pension contributions continue in full. Green speaker [Simone Fischer](/people/simone-fischer) welcomed that reversal but criticised a narrower respite-care budget; Moll interrupted to dispute her.

## Humanitarian work and development policy

### The Ruhrgebiet refugee village in Dohuk

In late 2014 Serdar Yüksel, then a Social Democratic Party of Germany member of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia for Bochum, heard a lecture by the journalist Jan Jessen on Yazidis who had fled Islamic State fighters into the Sinjar Mountains. Jessen, a politics editor at the *Neue Ruhr/Neue Rhein Zeitung* and a Caritas volunteer who organised aid convoys to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, described more than 1.5 million displaced people, most of them in tents, unfinished buildings or ruins. Yüksel, born in 1973 in Essen as the son of Kurdish immigrants, proposed a refugee village in northern Iraq. Jessen brought in Rudi Löffelsend, a retired long-time Caritas worker in Essen, and Thomas Shairzid, an interpreter who had sought asylum in Germany from northern Iraq in the 1990s after fleeing Saddam Hussein.

From December 2014 the four asked firms, municipalities and individuals in the Ruhr for donations. *Der Spiegel* reported in April 2016 that about 600,000 euro had been raised from businesses, municipal staff, residents and schoolchildren; the Regionalverband Ruhr had already put the 2015 total at 600,000 euro. A container made in northern Iraq cost about 5,000 euro. Where a town raised that sum the unit took its name—Dorsten, Duisburg, Herne, Essen, Marl or Mülheim an der Ruhr. Spiegel described each as about 30 square metres, with a living room, a small kitchen and a bathroom, and room for up to two families.

Spiegel placed Flüchtlingsdorf Ruhrgebiet near the town of Sheikhan, in a camp that already existed in outline but lacked money. The Ruhr association reported the housing at Camp Mam Rashan: 62 containers occupied in 2015 and eight more in January 2016. By April about 400 people lived in 70 containers, the first since the previous November, with 100 planned. A bakery was operating; a school, a clinic and a bazaar street were still planned. The association reported that Caritas-Flüchtlingshilfe Essen had agreed with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit that the GIZ would build a container school. The governor of Duhok was at first sceptical, so the organisers invited him to Berlin to discuss the plan with politicians. In December 2015 Löffelsend said the families housed were Yazidi and that cuts in World Food Programme rations had left them with still less to live on.

Residents did not treat the containers as an end to displacement. Saado Badil Alo, a 64-year-old former farmer from Sinjar living in the unit named Dorsten, told Spiegel that they remained refugees, without work, a future or a home, and with little to eat; he had seen his house on television as rubble and wanted to return. Fighting nearby shook the walls, and residents had asked for a protective berm. Yüksel said a house in the region cost about 20,000 euro and that rebuilding Sinjar might be a later project; he did not present it as work already begun, and later accounts do not record it as carried out. In March 2018 the *NRZ*, under Jessen's byline, reported that hardly anyone in the "Flüchtlingsdorf NRW" expected a rapid return, while donations were funding ten further shops. In December 2020 the paper described Mam Rashan, near Duhok, as a Yazidi camp of almost 9,000 people containing the NRW settlement; its manager said fear kept many from returning, and that departures were offset by new arrivals. In September 2022 the Landtag, receiving Duhok governor Ali Tatar Tawfiq, called the "Flüchtlingsdorf Ruhrgebiet/NRW" a camp that Yüksel, then chair of the petitions committee, and Caritas-Flüchtlingshilfe Essen had initiated in 2014.

### Development cooperation and refugee organisations

In the 21st Bundestag, Yüksel was a substitute member of the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development from 21 May 2025 and a full member from 22 April 2026. From 4 November 2025 he was also a full member of the Subcommittee on Crisis Prevention, Strategic Foresight, Stabilisation and Peacebuilding, a subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

The Bundestag also lists two unpaid offices in refugee and development organisations. UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe, the German partner of the [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees](/organizations/united-nations-high-commissioner-for-refugees), includes him, after its members' meeting of 15 June 2026, among additional board members without power to represent the association, and notes that he co-initiated the village; the Bundestag records the seat as that of a *Beisitzer*. AWO International, the Arbeiterwohlfahrt body for development projects and humanitarian aid, lists him as deputy chair of an honorary board normally elected every four years; the Bundestag records that office at Arbeiterwohlfahrt International e.V. in Berlin.

## Other civic offices

Offices held by Serdar Yüksel outside parliament are set out in the mandatory disclosures on his Bundestag biography, filed under the Members of the Bundestag Act, and are reproduced by Abgeordnetenwatch. They are classified as functions in associations, foundations and a public-law body, not as paid secondary employment, and no income band is shown for them. AWO International states that its board works without remuneration, and UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe states that its executive board and supervisory board are honorary.

The disclosure lists him as chair of the board of Arbeiterwohlfahrt Unterbezirk Ruhr-Mitte, based in Bochum. The Arbeiterwohlfahrt is one of the six peak associations of non-statutory welfare in Germany, providing social services through district, county and local bodies. At an election conference in the Museum Bochum on 19 February 2016, delegates chose him as sub-district chair for four years, unanimously, succeeding Heinz Drenseck, who had held the office for 17 years.

He is deputy chair of AWO International e.V. in Berlin, which coordinates the Arbeiterwohlfahrt’s work abroad. The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development describes it as ministry-funded and active in development cooperation and humanitarian relief in Central America, Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia. The same disclosure lists him as an advisory member of the board of Arbeiterwohlfahrt Bezirk Westliches Westfalen e.V. in Dortmund. A board overview published by that association, tied to an election on 20 April 2024 and identifying him as a member of the Bundestag, names him instead as a Beisitzer, an ordinary board member.

In May 2017, while a member of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia, he was elected to the supervisory board of UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe e.V. in Bonn; a local report connected the election with his work on refugee policy. The association, which describes itself as a partner of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, lists him as an appointed executive-board member without power of representation, the Beisitzer post in the Bundestag disclosure.

He is a Beisitzer of aktuelles forum e.V. in Gelsenkirchen, which the state lists among recognised providers of political education, and a trustee of the Development and Peace Foundation (Stiftung Entwicklung und Frieden) in Bonn. Initiated in 1986 by [Willy Brandt](/people/willy-brandt) with [Johannes Rau](/people/johannes-rau), then minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia, the foundation became in 1993 a civil-law foundation supported by Berlin, Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony; the state register gives its purpose as international understanding, and the trustees set its programme and budget and supervise the executive board. The register also names him deputy chair of the KräftigeGüteStiftung in Essen, a charitable foundation recognised on 26 August 2024 for the general promotion of education and training, with Reinhard Wiesemann as chair.

The disclosures list him as a member of the advisory board of Bochum prison (Justizvollzugsanstalt Bochum). The state justice ministry places these Anstaltsbeiräte under voluntary engagement and describes them as intermediaries between the institution and the public: the director appoints members after nominations from the city or county council, for five years in line with the Landtag term, to advise on the prison and on resettlement, under a duty of confidentiality.

The biographical notes, which the Bundestag says rest on members’ own information, also record membership of VfL Bochum, SG Wattenscheid 09 and the services union ver.di.

## Public positions and debate

### Islam, integration and the 2018 interview

In April 2018 the CDU–FDP government of North Rhine-Westphalia proposed limits on the headscarf for girls under 14 in schools and day-care centres. On 11 April the SPD group in the Landtag, through integration spokesman Ibrahim Yetim, called the demand "pure populism instead of targeted integration policy."

Two days later *Die Welt* published Till-Reimer Stoldt's interview with Yüksel, the SPD deputy for Bochum III/Herne, headlined as a critique of "false tolerance" and of courting "reactionary Muslims." He called the child-welfare argument overstated, but the discussion necessary: "In the great majority of cases the headscarf is a badge of political Islam, the profession of an Islamic ideology that collides with our rule of law. We should not tolerate such symbols in schools and still less in day-care centres." The introduction attributed to him an "Islamisation of German Muslims" — headscarves, Ramadan, swimming bans for girls — that had been tolerated too much, and a demand that the SPD change course. That diverged from the Landtag group's line.

After Nicolaus Fest, deputy editor-in-chief of *Bild am Sonntag*, wrote on 27 July 2014 that Islam was an "obstacle to integration," Yüksel told [Deutsche Welle](/organizations/deutsche-welle) he had filed a complaint for incitement of the people (*Volksverhetzung*), calling the piece racist, inflammatory and an open stirring of hatred against Muslims. Lawyer Udo Vetter told DW that the text remained covered by freedom of expression. In 2016 *Der Spiegel* quoted him — what Fest "allowed himself poisons the atmosphere in our society" — and described him as an Alevi who said he was not particularly religious. His Bundestag biography lists him as Roman Catholic.

### Turkey, Kurds and regional conflicts

*Die Welt* described Yüksel as of Kurdish descent; *Spiegel* called him the son of a guest worker from eastern Turkey with Kurdish roots.

On 17 December 2016 he told Deutschlandfunk that Kurds under President [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan](/people/recep-tayyip-erdogan) faced a "fatal" situation and "a declared war" after the peace process was ended unilaterally. He spoke of nearly 6,000 detained functionaries of the [Peoples' Democratic Party](/organizations/peoples-democratic-party), 12 of its MPs and mayors of 35 large eastern cities; of about 6,000 Turkish "informers and agents" in Germany; and of an Ankara hotline for denouncing residents as PKK or Gülen supporters. He called the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DİTİB) "the extended arm of Erdoğan," and said it would not aid integration.

On Syria he said Kurdish forces had fought the Islamic State effectively since 2013. On 31 March 2018 he called President [Emmanuel Macron](/people/emmanuel-macron)'s offer to mediate, after receiving Kurds in Paris, "an intelligent and clever move," Turkey's action a war contrary to international law, and Erdoğan's charge of French support for terrorists "completely absurd." On 29 December 2018, after an announced US withdrawal, he called a deal with [Bashar al-Assad](/people/bashar-al-assad) a choice "between plague and cholera," meant to avoid a Turkish advance, Islamist fighters he put at 40,000 to 50,000 around Idlib, and a repeat of abuses after [Operation Olive Branch](/facts/operation-olive-branch) in Afrin. He described Rojava as multi-ethnic, said weakening the Kurds would help the Islamic State, and criticised the foreign minister for having "gone to ground" after seeing, in northern Iraq, Kurds shelter millions of refugees.

As chair of the German-Turkish Parliamentary Friendship Group he marked the tenth anniversary of the 2016 coup attempt on rbb24 Inforadio on 15 July 2026. Power, he said, was "substantially more concentrated in the presidential office, that is with President Erdoğan, than ever before"; parliament and the courts had less influence and the press was less free. Yet 15 July was "a symbol that a military coup was prevented," and both belonged to the truth. Arrests under a Gülen label were a "large net" thrown into the sea. He asked that democratic deficits be stated openly and that contact with the opposition continue, including private criticism of pro-government deputies. A Bundestag delegation he was to lead was announced for Istanbul and Ankara from 29 September to 4 October 2026, meeting government and opposition, including the DEM Party, with human rights and LGBTQI+ participation on the Istanbul agenda. In January 2026 *Spiegel* reported that he had co-signed, with Green and Left members of the circle "Kurdish Life in Germany," an appeal to stop attacks on Kurdish-administered northern and eastern Syria, warning that Kobani risked encirclement.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/serdar-yuksel