As of: 7/7/2022 5:51 p.m
Ferda Ataman has been elected Federal Commissioner for Anti-Discrimination. The publicist achieved a little more than the necessary so-called Chancellor majority of 369 votes in the Bundestag. The choice was controversial.
Publicist Ferda Ataman is the new Federal Commissioner for Anti-Discrimination. 376 MPs in the Bundestag voted for the 42-year-old, 278 against her. There were 14 abstentions. The General Equal Treatment Act prescribes the chancellor majority for the election of the “Independent Federal Commissioner for Anti-Discrimination”. This is the majority not only of those present, but of all 736 members of the Bundestag.
Sharp criticism of the personnel
At the suggestion of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, the Federal Cabinet nominated Ataman for the post in June. Union, AfD and also individual representatives of the governing party FDP had sharply criticized the personnel. They deny Ataman’s suitability for the post, calling her a “left-wing activist” and accusing her of playing down “clan crime” and Islamism.
The FDP politician Linda Teuteberg had announced before the election that she could not agree to the personnel in the Bundestag. Among other things, the Liberal criticized the fact that Ataman is said to have deleted a number of tweets that might have gotten her into trouble. Ataman is also controversial among migrants. She only cares about “Muslim migrants”, criticized the Initiative Migrants for Secularity and Self-Determination.
Politicians from the SPD and the Greens had spoken of unfounded claims and a campaign against the publicist. For Federal Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens), Ataman is “exactly the right person” for the job. She stands for great commitment to an inclusive, democratic society, she said recently.
Integration regardless of origin
Ataman herself wants an integration policy for all people, regardless of their origin, as she once said in an interview. What is needed is “a new understanding of belonging that has nothing to do with ancestors, religion and appearance,” she said, adding: “It’s actually quite simple.”
Born in Stuttgart in 1979 and raised in Nuremberg, Ataman is a journalist, author and diversity expert. She studied political science with a focus on the “modern Near East”, and even at university she concentrated on the topics of migration and integration.
Her first job after graduation: she worked for the CDU politician Armin Laschet, who became integration minister in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2005 – and was looking for a speechwriter with a Turkish background. In 2007 Ataman trained at the Berlin School of Journalism and then worked in various newspaper editorial offices. From 2010 to 2012 she headed the public relations and communication department of the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency.
Debate about belonging after book publication
In 2009 she co-founded the New German Media Makers network, which advocates more diversity in the media. From 2013 to 2016, the 43-year-old, whose parents came to Germany from Turkey, headed Mediendienst Integration, a scientific platform for journalists on the topics of migration, integration and asylum. Ataman confirmed that the Ministry of Home Affairs, introduced by the then Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU), was “above all symbolic politics for potentially right-wing voters.”
The CSU politician then boycotted the integration summit in the Chancellery in June 2018 because he saw Ataman associating himself with the “blood and soil” ideology of the Nazis. With her book “Stop asking. I’m from here”, published in 2019, Ataman sparked a debate about belonging in Germany. A little later she caused an uproar with her “Spiegel” column “Heimatkunde”, which dealt with the question of how Germans without a migration background could be called.