On 12 July 2003 he was sworn in at the Belgian Chamber of Representatives as a substitute to the elected SP.A MP Freya Van Den Bossche, who became a minister.
[citation needed] During his term as a Belgian MP, he went back to Turkey in April 2005 for a few weeks to make his shortened (for emigrants) military service.
When this was made public, there was a small controversy about the loyalty of dual citizens towards the Belgian State.
In April 2011, he was officially announced as the fourth candidate on the list of the Islamic conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) for the upcoming (12 June 2011) parliamentary elections in Turkey in the Eskişehir Province.
Out of five candidates from the Turkish emigration, only the Swiss Fazilet Dağcı Çığlık, who had already been elected in Erzurum in 2007 for the AKP, was elected, but neither the Belgian Cemal Çavdarlı nor the Germans (all from Köln) Turgut Öker (leader of the German Alevi together with Association and independent candidate in Istanbul for the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party), Metin Keskin (an architect and CHP candidate in the province of Sivas) and Aydın Yardımcı (CEO of Aydin, a meat company in Köln, former member of the right-wing ANAP Party, Democratic Party candidate in Ankara).