* As President Erdogan re-elected chair, AK Party
Former Germany, Real Madrid and Arsenal star Mesut Özil, who retired in 2023, became a board member of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) on Sunday.
The German-born 2014 World Cup winner became a member of the AK Party’s central council at a congress in Ankara where Erdoğan was reelected for the ninth time as head of the party which has ruled Türkiye since 2002.
The board, known as MKYK, consists of 75 members in total.
Özil, who ended his club career in Istanbul, is a longtime Erdoğan supporter, having chosen him as his best man in 2019 for his wedding to a former Miss Türkiye, Amine Gülse.
A photo of Özil and Erdoğan with former Germany teammate Ilkay Gündoğan, also of Turkish origin, caused controversy, with Berlin hurling “baseless” accusations at the Turkish state.
Özil turned his back on the German national team, accusing the German Football Association (DFB) of racism. The DFB head later admitted that he had not been supportive enough in Özil’s case.
President Erdogan’s re-election
President Erdogan was re-elected as chairperson of the ruling party on Sunday at the eighth grand congress of the party in the capital, Ankara.
He won 1,547 valid votes during the congress, which also elected new members into the party’s administrative and executive branches.
The president thanked the electorate of his party after his election and said they set out a path “with newfound excitement to serve the nation.”
“Those serving find blessing. But we will have a bigger load on our backs now. The public expects solutions from the AK Party. As they see the sad state of the opposition, they turn to us. The nation sees us, the People’s Alliance, as the solution,” he said.
Erdoğan said they never led the nation to disappointment for the past two decades and won’t do so in the future.
“We won’t stop; we will continue working with resolution without losing our passion to serve the people,” he said
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