Sibel Arslan is a Swiss lawyer and politician of the party BastA!
Life and work
Sibel Arslan is of Zaza origin, and arrived in Switzerland in 1991 with her mother and two brothers. Her father had already arrived six years previously as a refugee. The family settled in Kleinbasel. In 2002, she graduated from the Gymnasium Bäumlihof in Basel. She studied law at the University of Basel and graduated in 2011. In 2004 she became a Swiss citizen and is a Turkish and Swiss dual citizen. Along with her brother, Arslan managed the shisha bar 'Susam' in Barfüsserplatz from 2006 to 2007. Arslan has been working as a legal advisor to the Basel Gewerkschaftsbund since 2012. From 2013 to 2015 she was a career adviser at the Office for Counseling and Adult Protection of the Canton of Basel-Stadt. Since March 2015 she has worked as a lawyer in the General Secretariat of the Security Directorate of the Canton of Basel-Landschaft. Arslan joined BastA! in 2004, a leftist ecological party in the canton of Basel-Stadt. BastA is a member of the Green Party of Switzerland. From 2005 to 2016 she sat in the Grand Council of the Canton of Basel-Stadt. From 2007, she became a member of the Justice, Safety and Sports Commission and, from 2013, the Pardon Commission. In the Swiss parliamentary elections in 2015 she was elected to the National Council. She is a member of the Foreign Policy Commission and the Legal Commission. At the end of 2014, the Basellandschaftliche Regierungsrat Security Director Isaac Reber revoked an agreed appointment of Arslan as head of the cantonal penal sanctions and measures committee, after the Basler Zeitung had led a campaign against her. The newspaper had alleged lack of qualifications and debts of about 60,000 Swiss francs. These claims covered three agreements that Arslan had also mentioned in the application process. The fact that these claims were recorded in the debt collection register "was not clarified in all media reports". At the time of Arslan's application, only a residual debt of CHF 5,000 had to be paid. This happened within a short time. Arslan was elected to the National Council in the 2015 Swiss federal election. On 30 November 2015 she took the oath of office. The ceremony was held in Bern. In Parliament she joined the fraction of the Green Party of Switzerland. In October 2019 she was re-elected to the National Council.
