ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Berivan Aymaz, a Kurdish woman, who was a candidate from the Greens faction in the German parliament for the mayor of Cologne lost to a rival from centre-left in the runoff elections that took place on Sunday with reportedly lower turnout than the first round.
Germany's most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia held local elections on September 14. Aymaz, a Green Party candidate born to a Kurdish family in Turkey’s Bingol province in 1972, led the mayoral race with 28.1 percent of votes, but fell short of the required majority. She faced Social Democratic Party (SPD) candidate Torsten Burmester in a Sunday runoff.
Aymaz received 46.45 percent of the votes against Burmester, who secured 53.55 percent.
The runoff turnout stood at 44.72 percent among Cologne’s 807,000 eligible voters, down from the first round's 56 percent.
Aymaz, who has served as deputy speaker of the North Rhine-Westphalia parliament since 2017 - the first with an immigrant background in that role - represented a new generation of Kurdish political integration in Germany.
The Kurdish candidate congratulated her rival after the results were announced.
Three days before the runoff elections, Aymaz told Rudaw that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) had launched a campaign to prevent her from winning the post.
“The AfD party is conducting a campaign against me. They're calling for people to vote for my rival to block me," she had claimed.
Germany hosts the largest Kurdish diaspora in Europe.
Kurdish candidates achieved mixed but significant results in the September 14 elections, with several winning seats on mainstream German party tickets even as dedicated Kurdish lists struggled to break through.
Twelve Kurdish candidates won seats on integration councils across North Rhine-Westphalia. Winners included Baran Yenen in Aachen, Silda Koledamja in Bocholt, and Mahmoud Sumo in Bochum representing the CDU. In the town of Bad Oeynhausen, both Kawa Shekhe and Qahraman Chika secured seats on the Forgiveness and Reconciliation list.
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