Mahinur Özdemir Göktaş Minister of Family and Social Services, Republic of Türkiye

Mahinur Özdemir Göktaş is a Turkish-Belgian politician who completed her undergraduate and master’s education at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She began her political career in 2005 as the Deputy President of the CDH Party’s Schaerbeek Organisation and was elected as a Council Member in the Brussels Schaerbeek Municipality in 2006. Making history in 2009, she became the first veiled member of the European Parliament from Brussels, a position she held until 2019. During this time, she served as Vice Chair of the Social Services Committee and the Gender Equality Committee in the Brussels Parliament. Throughout her political career, she focused on issues such as women’s employment, entrepreneurship, violence against women, domestic violence, equal opportunities, environment, and urban planning. In 2020, she was appointed as Türkiye’s first female ambassador in North Africa. On June 4, 2023, she assumed the role of the Minister of Family, Labour and Social Services in President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s cabinet.