Özdemir was born on 23 June 1987 in Duisburg's Homberg district, Germany to Gastarbeiter parents Zeki and Aynur, who had moved there from Turkey. After finishing high school with Abitur, he studied law at the University of Düsseldorf, graduating in 2011. He was then employed at the district court in Düsseldorf as a jurist trainee. He spent his whole life in his hometown even during his university years.
Political career
Özdemir joined the SPD in 2001 at the age of fourteen, and was active in the Young Socialists in the SPD organization. Özdemir climbed up to the top position in the regional organization of the party in Homberg. In the regional elections of 2009, he became a member of the city council in his hometown Duisburg. With the declaration of Johannes Pflug, the foreign-policy expert of the SPD in the Bundestag, to resign from active politics and not to run again for the 2013 federal election, the party nominated Mahmut Özdemir as the direct candidate for Duisburg II. He won a seat in the Bundestag as the youngest member of parliament. He has since been serving on the Committee on Internal Affairs. In addition, he was a member of its Sub-Committee on Municipal Affairs from 2014 until 2017. In 2018, he joined the Sports Committee as well as a parliamentary inquiry on the 2016 Berlin Christmas market attack. In addition to his committee assignments, Özdemir has served as deputy chairman of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Relations with Arabic-Speaking States in the Middle East, which is in charge of maintaining inter-parliamentary relations with Bahrain, Irak, Yemen, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates and the Palestinian territories. From 2014 until 2017, he held the same position in the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Relations with the States of Central Asia. He is also a member of the German-Turkish Parliamentary Friendship Group and the German-Swiss Parliamentary Friendship Group. Within his parliamentary group, Özdemir belongs to the Seeheim Circle. He has also been member of the working group on municipal policies since 2014.
