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 truck attack.