Who Controls Germany’s Engine Room?

Cem Özdemir’s Green Party won 30.3% in Baden-Württemberg on 8 March, edging the CDU’s 29.7%, positioning him to become Germany’s first state premier of Turkish heritage and handing control of Europe’s most critical automotive and manufacturing region to a pragmatic politician who has spent three decades navigating the gap between industrial reality and climate ambition.

The victory makes Özdemir the first minister-president of Turkish origin to lead a German state. But the real story is jurisdictional. Baden-Württemberg accounts for the third-highest gross regional product in Germany and hosts Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Bosch, and SAP. The Automotive industry alone generates almost 140 billion euros in revenue annually and employs around 216,000 people in the state. The region is also home to a substantial Turkish-German population concentrated in industrial centres like Stuttgart, Mannheim, and Heidelberg, reflecting decades of labour migration that began with postwar Gastarbeiter programmes.

Özdemir closed a polling gap of nearly 15 percentage points over the course of the campaign, profiting from the political inexperience of his opponent and videos that cast CDU candidate Manuel Hagel in a negative light, according to analysis from the German Marshall Fund. Polls on Thursday before the election found the top two parties level on 28%, but the Greens stood to benefit from a change to electoral laws lowering the voting age to 16. Voter turnout reached 70.2 to 71.5 percent, up from 63.8% in 2021, per Bluewin.

The Coalition Arithmetic

Only a coalition between the CDU and the Greens, similar to the current one, would be possible, with no party willing to govern with the far-right AfD, which rose from 9.7% in 2021 to 18.7%. The Greens and CDU have shown they can build a stable coalition when parliamentary majorities are dwindling, with minister-president Kretschmann governing with the CDU since 2016 by putting the economy first, noted the German Marshall Fund. Convention dictates the largest party leads the coalition, putting Özdemir in the premier’s seat.

Özdemir stuck to Kretschmann’s script as a Green ‘Realo’ and even veered to the outer conservative lane of his party to thwart the fringe parties on both sides of the political spectrum. He called for more flexibility in the transition away from combustion-engine vehicles, and criticised some of his party’s MEPs for voting against the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement, a deal particularly welcomed by German car manufacturers who hope to boost exports to South America, according to France 24.

Industrial Policy in the EV Transition

Özdemir inherits control of automotive policy at a moment of acute pressure. Germany has unveiled a new electric vehicle incentive programme designed to stimulate climate-friendly mobility while targeting lower and middle-income households, following a subsidy pause that contributed to weakened EV sales in 2024 and early 2025, according to the European Alternative Fuels Observatory. Germany has allocated approximately €3 billion toward the incentive scheme, providing support for an estimated 800,000 vehicles through to 2029.

The state has been hit particularly hard by the ongoing crisis in the automotive sector, with rising unemployment and pressure on suppliers, and economic policy emerged as the dominant campaign issue, reported Newsworm. Özdemir argued that his experience and contacts could help the region weather US President Donald Trump’s tariff blitz. His foreign policy credentials – he served as agriculture minister in the Scholz government, sat in the European Parliament, and co-chaired the Greens from 2008 to 2018 – position him to navigate trade friction at a time when German manufacturers face protectionist headwinds.

The Germany-Turkey Economic Dimension

Özdemir’s Turkish heritage carries economic weight beyond symbolism. Germany is Turkey’s most important trading partner and one of the country’s biggest foreign investors, with bilateral trade reaching a record 55 billion euros in 2023, according to the German Federal Foreign Office. German businesses have invested approximately €11.5 billion in Turkey between 2002 and 2022, with over 8,000 German companies operating in Turkey.

Turkey’s exports to Germany include products from the automotive industry, textiles, foodstuffs, boilers, and intermediate goods in iron, steel, and aluminium, while Turkey imports machines, vehicles, plastic products, aircraft, chemicals, and medical equipment from Germany. Whether a minister-president with direct family ties to Turkey can leverage those networks to expand supply chain integration or trade access remains an open question, but the structural incentives are clear.

Turkey is dependent on cheap imports from China, and BYD’s plans to build an automobile plant on Turkish soil by the end of 2026 could lead to growing dependence of Turkish industry on China, noted research from the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik. Nevertheless, Europe remains a central pillar of Turkey’s macroeconomic stabilisation, and modernising the customs union could send an important signal to German companies. A premier with credibility in both Ankara and Berlin may be positioned to advance frameworks that have stalled under purely diplomatic channels.

What to Watch

Coalition formation talks between the Greens and CDU will clarify Özdemir’s policy room. The first test will be whether he secures agreement on state-level support for Germany’s €3 billion federal EV subsidy programme, which begins applications in May 2026. The second will be his stance on EU trade policy, particularly whether Baden-Württemberg uses its Bundesrat influence to push for customs union modernisation with Turkey or to resist EU ‘Buy European’ provisions that could restrict access to non-EU battery supply chains.

Rhineland-Palatinate votes on 22 March, followed by Saxony-Anhalt, Berlin, and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in September. If Green-CDU coalitions prove stable across multiple states, the model gains credibility at the federal level. If they fracture under industrial policy disputes, Özdemir’s centrist positioning becomes a case study in the limits of technocratic compromise when Manufacturing jobs are at stake. The composition of Germany’s next federal government may be negotiated in Stuttgart before it is decided in Berlin.