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Hanover makes history in mayor election

November 11, 2019

In a historic vote, Hanover has elected Belit Onay, the son of Turkish immigrants, to lead the city. The politician is also among the first Green party mayors in the country.

https://p.dw.com/p/3SoEi
Belit Onay celebrates his mayoral victory with his wife
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/H. Dittrich

A German Green party lawmaker with Turkish roots won a runoff election on Sunday to become the mayor of the city of Hanover.

This is the first time that a German with immigrant parents was elected mayor of a state capital.

Belit Onay received 52.9% of the vote, ahead of the 47.1% for center-right candidate Eckhard Scholz of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats.

"I promise all of you that I will do my best for our city over the next seven years," Onay tweeted on Sunday evening.

Hanover now becomes Germany's fourth major city to elect a Green party mayor, following Freiburg, Darmstadt and Stuttgart. The center-left Social Democrats (SPD) had governed the city for over 70 years.

Onay, a 38-year-old legal expert, was elected after the SPD's Stefan Schostok stood down from his position as mayor of  the Lower Saxony capital earlier this year amid a corruption scandal.

ed/dr (dpa, AP)

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