With an uncanny similarity to President Barack Obama across the Atlantic, Cem Ozdemir won the German Green Party’s election in November 2008, becoming his country’s first ethnic Turk to be elected the leader of a major political party. At age 43 he is also one of the youngest political leaders in Germany. The son of Turkish guest workers who arrived in Germany in the 1960s, he quickly rose to power. Within a decade of becoming the first Turkish member of the German parliament at the age of 28, Ozdemir served as the interior policy spokesman for the Greens, a fellow for the German Marshall Fund, and an elected member of the European Parliament. In the wake of Obama’s election, Ozdemir—often called “Germany’s Obama”—has the potential to expand greatly the role of racial minorities in European politics, a role that is still quite small across the continent.

The comparison between Obama’s and Ozdemir’s victories is hard to ignore—after all, during Ozdemir’s campaign, his supporters coined the term “Yes We Cem,” modeled after Obama’s campaign slogan, “Yes We Can.” This phrase may be fitting, given their common decision not to make ethnicity a campaign issue, but a closer examination reveals a large distinction between the two. Obama allowed the historical significance of his victory to run its course and focused on the message of change. Ozdemir, however, has made the deliberate effort not to campaign on behalf of Germany’s 2.7 million Turks who make up the country’s biggest, yet still marginalized, ethnic minority. While acknowledging that most Turks live in ghettos and lack good education, Ozdemir has demonstrated no desire to address the specific issues of minority rights and integration policies. In fact, he laments that the very fact that his background has generated such interest shows how much progress is necessary to transcend ethnicity in politics. He has pointed fingers at both native Germans and immigrants for the tense situation, arguing that Germans must accept “hyphenated identities” of fellow citizens of foreign origin and that immigrants should cease to view Germany as “enemy territory.”

Ozdemir’s unwillingness to discuss ethnicity and call for a “color-blind Germany” is unfortunate for Europe. Through his refusal to speak up for more diverse political leadership in Germany, he is failing to take advantage of a unique opportunity to transform the white-male dominated political landscape. Only two lawmakers in the 612-seat Bundestag, the German parliament, can claim Turkish roots, with another eight coming from all other minority backgrounds. On the state level, all 16 premiers are white men. These numbers hardly reflect the fact that almost 20 percent of the population has some minority background.

The disappointingly minimal diversity in politics is by no means unique to Germany. Though only 15 out of 646 members of the British House of Commons are of non-Caucasian origins, ethnic minorities make up at least eight percent of Britain’s population. Even worse, although 7 percent of its population is of North African descent and Islam is the second-largest and fastest-growing religion in the country, France has little ethnic diversity in politics: none of the 577 deputies in the French National Assembly, except for those from the overseas territories, represents these two groups.

In recent months, some minority politicians have joined the European political elite. French President Nicholas Sarkozy has chosen three to serve on his cabinet, including Justice Minister Rachida Dati, a woman of Moroccan and Algerian origin. The Netherlands saw its first mayor of color take office at the beginning of 2008 when Moroccan-born Ahmed Aboutaleb became the mayor of Rotterdam, the country’s second largest city. Unfortunately, these leaders have yet to take an active role in promoting political involvement of minority groups and have brought no major changes to the European power pyramid. In Britain, the 15 ethnic minority members of Parliament have done little to put more candidates of color on the party lists, prompting the head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Philips, to call the political system “mired in institutional racism.”

So far, little progress has been made to increase political leadership and to decrease the social marginalization of ethnic minorities in European countries. Many politicians have avoided the debate altogether due to the sensitive nature of the subject. Others have been reluctant to appear as promoting communitarian agendas, a practice that remains deeply scorned in Western Europe. All of this can change if the Obama effect ripples across the continent, inspiring younger generations of ethnic minorities to enter politics and break barriers as they move up the ranks.

The American presidential elections have already facilitated public discussions of race in Europe. As the coverage of Omdezir’s rise has shown, the political representation of ethnic minorities is becoming a major political concern in Europe. In France, Nicolas Sarkozy has created a government post for “diversity and equal opportunity.” Nonetheless, it remains to be seen whether these developments yield concrete changes in how Europe deals with its ethnic minorities.

With Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats facing a general election in 2009, Ozdemir’s Green Party stands to share power if Merkel does not win a decisive victory over the Social Democrats. In this case, Ozdemir would become one of the leaders of the ruling coalition in Germany, the first politician of Turkish origin to reach this level of influence and visibility. As the Obama-besotted Europe starves for its own Obama, Ozdemir owes it to his own political career, ethnic group, country, and continent to embrace his striking similarities to the new US president and encourage European minorities to take action to gain a larger voice in the political arena to match their rising demographic presence.