Yildiz Akdogan

Who is Yildiz Akdogan?

Yildiz Akdogan is a Turkish Danish politician. She was a member of the Folketing—the parliament of Denmark—for the Social Democrats between 2007 and 2011. Along with Özlem Cekic, she was one of the first two female immigrant politicians to be elected to the Folketing.

Akdogan was born in Turkey and was raised by her paternal grandparents for the first five-and-a-half years of her life. Her mother moved to Esbjerg in Denmark shortly after her birth and her father was called up to do military service in Turkey. The family were reunited in 1979, when Akdogan and her father moved to Denmark.

Prior to being elected to the Folketing, Akdogan received an MSc in political science from Aarhus University in 2006. She had previously worked as a journalist for the Danish-Turkish newspaper Haber. She has published widely on social integration and women's rights. Akdogan is a board member and spokesperson for the Democratic Muslims, a network set up in the wake of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.