02 February 2023

Muharrem Demirok, an alumnus of Linköping University, has been elected as the new leader of the Swedish Centre Party.

A person stands outside and peers into the camera.
Muharrem Demirok, alumnus of Linköping University, is the new leader of the Center Party. Photographer: Fredrik Wennerlund

Muharrem Demirok 46, was raised in Stockholm and moved to Linköping for studies at LiU in the late 1990s. He studied various single-subject courses and earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 2004. His interest in politics began a few years earlier, when he became a member of the Centre Party. Muharrem Demirok remained in Linköping after his studies and quickly built a political career. In 2007 he became deputy mayor of Linköping, a position he held until the autumn of 2022 when he was elected to the Riksdag (the Swedish parliament).

It is now clear that he will succeed Annie Lööf as leader of the Centre Party, after just six months as a member of the Riksdag.

“I see the role of party leader as being one of team leader. I want to involve the whole of the Centre Party in the journey we have to make, and I want everyone to feel invited,” he said to his party before the extra party conference.

The last LiU alumni to have been the leader of a political party in Sweden before Muharrem Demirok was Gustav Fridolin. The former spokesperson of the Green Party (2011-2019) studied to be a folk high school teacher at Linköping in the late 2000s. The current Speaker of the Riksdag, Andreas Norlén, from the Moderate Party, who was both an undergraduate and doctoral student in commercial and business law at LiU, was named one of the Alumni of the Year in 2019.


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