On the morning of February 24, the headlines were close to unanimous. “The Left are the strongest force,” wrote the Tagesspiegel. “A surprise victory for the Left in Berlin,” read the main banner on Tagesschau. “Berlin is neither black nor green, but left,” announced the Berliner Zeitung. As the dust settled on the German national election, it was Berlin’s political transformation that dominated the discussion. But had so much really changed? To gain a proper perspective on the election success of Germany’s left-wing party, Die Linke, it is important to consider what did not happen.
Die Linke did not win the majority of Berlin districts. In the first vote, they secured four of Berlin’s 12 direct mandates (a number that rose to six in the Zweitstimme, or secondary vote, where tactical voting is less pronounced). They do not control the mayoralty, which remains with Kai Wegner, Berlin’s first Christian Democrat mayor in over 20 years. And, since this was a national rather than a local election, Die Linke remains unable to influence the city budget, leaving in place the punishing regime of cuts to transport, climate protection, universities and culture. The Berlin culture minister Joe Chialo (widely tipped to take over the role federally) has overseen a €130 million cut in cultural funding alone, with plans to remove a further €15 million in 2025/2026.
Any talk of a leftward shift, then, must be viewed against this backdrop. This was an election in which the centre-right CDU won 28.5% of the vote and the far-right AfD took 20.8%, while every major party – apart from Die Linke – adopted a tough stance on migration. Yet the national zig only made Berlin’s zag more distinct: as Germany veered right, Berlin went left. Four of the six direct mandates won by Die Linke nationally came from this city. And they made political history: Ferat Koçak’s victory in Neukölln marked the first time the party, which grew out of the socialist party of the DDR, has ever secured a seat in former West Germany. On the day before the election, the presumptive new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, used his final campaign speech to declare: “The left is over.” Less than 24 hours later, Berlin responded: “No, it isn’t.”
“There was a day in the second week of campaigning when I felt the momentum building,” explains Ferat Koçak, the charismatic Kurdish-German politician whose grassroots organising saw him secure a mandate for Die Linke in Neukölln with 30% of the vote – 10.3 percentage points more than his nearest opponent. “This was the second action week, so the end of January, beginning of February, and we had 650 people out in the cold. In one day, we knocked on 25,000 or 30,000 doors. And this was in the south of Neukölln. Historically, the north is more leftist, more Green, but we also tried to reach out to communities of migrants, workers and people in precarious living situations in places like Gropiusstadt, Weiße Siedlung and High-Deck-Siedlung, where turnout is generally very low,” he says. “Normally, these votes go to the CDU or perhaps the AfD. With our campaign, we proved we could perform, even here.”
The main thing they accuse me of is being too radical. And that doesn’t worry me, because we need radical changes in our society
Koçak is not a conventional politician. Originally from a more central neighbourhood on the border of Kreuzberg, he says his family was “gentrified out” by high rents to southern Neukölln. He has stayed there. Devoted to his community, he’s one of the very few politicians in the world about whom you regularly see graffiti scrawled in their district praising them. When we met him for a photoshoot at Hermannplatz, he was accosted several times by passersby, each stopping to congratulate their new member of parliament.
“Even before the campaign began, we were talking to people, knocking on doors, trying to understand their problems. And the first thing we asked was simple: ‘If you had the power, what’s the first thing you would change?’ That was really interesting, because it opened people up.” In the end, a team of 2,000 volunteers knocked on roughly 139,000 doors; from those answers, they built a platform around four main points.
“Number one was rent and housing. Rents are out of control, and people simply cannot find apartments. Number two? High prices. With inflation, groceries have become so expensive that the cost of living makes it difficult just to survive. The third point was the amount of rubbish on the streets, and the fourth was public transport,” he explains. “So I told people: if I get their vote, these are the issues that will be most important to me. I also made a promise that whatever happens – if difficult topics come up in parliament – I’ll bring these issues back to the people of Neukölln. We’ll have further meetings to discuss them. Because they’re the ones who voted for me, and they’re the ones I represent.”
Just a few months ago, when polls predicted big victories for the CDU and the AfD and the German election loomed over the country’s political horizon like a dark cloud, few would have anticipated such a success for Die Linke. Yet precisely these high stakes appeared to galvanise voters. As the traffic-light coalition collapsed, the increasingly confident CDU attempted to force through a five-point plan on immigration reform with the AfD’s backing. This act of political recklessness sought to breach Germany’s so-called Brandmauer, the firewall that excludes the far-right from any actionable legislative role.
The ensuing debates were a moment of high political drama, setting the stage for a powerful speech from Die Linke’s new leader, Heidi Reichinnek, whose address has since accumulated 7.5 million views on TikTok. Taking direct aim at the CDU leader, who sat smirking opposite her in parliament, she declared, “Mr Merz, despite all political differences, I could never have imagined that a Christian Democratic Party would make pacts with right-wing extremists. But that is exactly what you are doing! … Two days after we commemorated the liberation of Auschwitz. Two days after we remembered the murdered and the tortured, you are collaborating with those who still uphold this very ideology.”
“You say: if you all don’t vote for [our proposal], well, then we have no choice – we just have to work with the right-wing extremists! What kind of pathetic statement is that?” Reichinnek asked the Bundestag. “You are acting as enablers. You have made this country a worse place today.”
“We were able to say very clearly, We are the firewall,” says Pascal Meiser, Die Linke’s newly elected representative for Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. “Because we’re the only ones who strongly opposed the CDU and the AfD, the only party that refused to demonise migrants. The Social Democrats and the Greens did not truly distance themselves; they were more… how can I say it? Meandering,” he says. “And our solutions are real solutions. Berlin’s lack of space is not a migration issue, it’s a social housing issue. If there aren’t enough places in schools, we need to build more schools and kindergartens rather than engaging in racist discourse.”
Meiser won a direct mandate on election night, but it was a close race. He secured 34.7% of the vote, narrowly defeating his Green opponent, who garnered 30.6%. This loss was a significant symbolic blow to the Greens, who had held Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg since 2002, when it became the first Bundestag seat the party ever won directly.
“I would like to say we won this seat on our own strength, not just due to disappointment with the Greens. But of course, people felt let down by the Ampel [traffic-light coalition],” says Meiser. “Even in this district, there was deep frustration over unfulfilled promises on social issues like tenants’ rights. That was the first disappointment. The second was foreign policy. The Greens emerged from the peace movement, yet in recent years, they have shifted in the opposite direction. People had to ask themselves, ‘How could they abandon their former positions?’”
Ines Schwerdtner, who holds a seat in Berlin-Lichtenberg, has been co-chairperson of Die Linke since last October, and is now one of the most influential voices shaping the party’s new direction. Previous leaders of the party struggled with infighting between different factions. In October 2023, former party deputy Sahra Wagenknecht left to found the BSW (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht), a party named after her and aligned with her particular brand of leftism, which combines promises to end high rents and foreign wars with starkly anti-migrant rhetoric. Since then, Die Linke has found new footing. Freed from internal disputes, the party has taken clear and widely popular positions: opposing arms deliveries, investing in infrastructure, lowering rents, fighting for working people.
As Schwerdtner explains, the days of left-wing infighting are over. “Everyone in our party understands that we can only be successful by standing together. We learned that the hard way. Right now, my attention is focused on the organisation of an effective opposition,” she says. “The new coalition government is taking a completely wrong turn. With the help of the Greens, it is lifting the Schuldenbremse [debt brake] for defence spending – virtually the only additional expense we don’t need.”
Schwerdtner sees the party’s path forward clearly. “Die Linke is working extremely hard to replicate and improve upon our result in next year’s [state] election, when Berlin will elect a new House of Representatives and, hopefully, a new mayor. This city needs change. Berlin needs a departure from austerity, and we need to solve the housing crisis. That is what we’re focused on.”
Talking to the people directly is an anti-fascist act
When the new German parliament convened, Die Linke occupied 64 of 630 seats. Like all Bundestag members, each representative will receive a monthly remuneration of €11,227. This is a sum of money that the country’s parliamentarians have already decided to increase: a resolution to add an extra €600 to their salary will come into effect in June. Ferat Koçak, however, will not be getting a raise. Since 2021, when he first entered Berlin’s state parliament, Koçak has capped his salary at €2,500 per month, donating the remainder to a social fund.
“I take €2,500 for me and my family, and everything else goes into the fund. We organise Sozialsprechstunden, regular social consultation times. People come with their problems and we sit together to try and find a solution,” Koçak explains. “This isn’t just giving people money, but working together to fix things. Perhaps they owe €2,000 on their rent, and we’ll go to the owner of the flat and work out a plan where they can pay €100 monthly. And if they really can’t find a solution? Well, then we have the money to solve the problem that way.
“A family might come to me after they’ve had another baby and want a new Kinderwagen, but the Jobcenter won’t pay for it. So we start to interact. And sometimes that’s enough. The Jobcenter might act a little differently once a parliamentarian comes to talk to them. But if they don’t, we’ll buy the Kinderwagen for the family. The point is to be able to guarantee to people who are struggling that there is a solution. But the first step is to fight together. We want to demonstrate to people that it’s possible to fight for their rights, and to show that we’re there to fight with them.”
Politics runs in Koçak’s blood: his father was a union member in Turkey, and his mother was involved in the Kurdish feminist movement. However, it was the arson attacks on Gastarbeiter in Mölln and Solingen in the early 1990s, when Koçak was a teenager, that inspired him to take up anti-racist and anti-fascist activism. He joined Die Linke in 2016, becoming a candidate in Gropiusstadt, where he aimed to hinder the rise of the AfD.
It was at this point that he became a target for neo-Nazi violence.“Before 2018, Die Linke had no political structure in south Neukölln. I was working to change that. One night, after a meeting, I was followed home. It was coordinated – one person waited at the U-Bahn, another followed in a car. That was two weeks before the attack.”
At 3 am on February 1, 2018, Koçak awoke to a flickering light in his room. When he went to the window, he saw his car engulfed in flames, the fire already spreading toward his home. The attack, reminiscent of the 1990s arson assaults that had first driven him to activism, was carried out by neo-Nazis. One of the perpetrators, named by police as Tilo P., was not only an AfD member but had served on the party’s district executive board for Neukölln. A police search of the suspects’ homes later uncovered an “enemy list” containing names of other victims of right-wing violence in the area.
“I was lucky to wake up. The fire was spreading; it was really dangerous.” In court, Koçak testified that if he’d woken up minutes later, his parents would have died. “But the most disturbing part is that the police knew I was being targeted. They had taped conversations where I was mentioned already one year beforehand. The police knew these men were trying to find my address, and they knew they had found it – but they never warned me.”
Despite extensive evidence, the German judicial system appeared reluctant to convict. It was only last year – following a seven-year battle for justice – that the case was finally resolved. In December, the two suspects were sentenced to three years and six months and two years and ten months, respectively, with the judge stating she had “no doubt whatsoever” that the men had committed the crimes.
They always talk about antisemitism in Neukölln, but they imposed cuts here too
With the arson case behind him, the election victory opens up a new chapter for Koçak. And yet, not all the press attention following his win has been complimentary. An outspoken critic of Israel, he has – unlike any member of the Bundestag before the election – explicitly called the actions of the Netanyahu government in Gaza a genocide.
Such outspokenness has again made him a target. Days after the election, the Tagesspiegel published an article titled ‘Who is Ferat Koçak?’ that took a hostile tone, accusing the newly-elected Bundestag member of being “aggressive”, a “sectarian”, a Trotskyist, a critic of the police, and even of using the arson attacks against him for political gain.
Was he bothered by this sort of coverage? “Some of the details are false, but the main thing they accuse me of is being too radical. And that doesn’t worry me, because we need radical changes in our society,” says Koçak. “They call me an anti-fascist, but that’s also true. I’m a radical anti-fascist.
“One of the things I noticed again during this campaign is how talking to the people directly is an anti-fascist act. When people talk about rubbish on the streets, sometimes they use a racist narrative, as if migrants are to blame. But on the doorstep, you can explain that, no, that’s not the reason. The BSR are on strike! The streets are dirty because the government is not paying street cleaners enough!”
Ever since the CDU took power in Berlin following the repeat election in 2023, a series of austerity measures has led to a drastic reduction in public services. Nowhere are these cuts felt more deeply than in Neukölln, whose slashed budget in 2024 and 2025 has seen waste collection in public parks halved, youth and family facilities shut down, outreach for homeless people significantly reduced, and day trips for children from low-income families cancelled – to name just a few of the measures imposed. Yet despite Die Linke’s recent victory, the city budget remains outside their remit. What can they do to improve city services?
“We have a strategy here. Because, you know, it is not the Berlin government but the federal government that has decided to impose the Schuldenbremse [the constitutional debt brake that caps government spending]. We want to get rid of that, but also to raise taxes on the rich,” Koçak says. “And this is not a crazy socialist idea. Until 1997, there was a Vermögensteuer, a wealth tax in Germany, and that needs to come back. Of course, we want to lower taxes for regular people – people who work hard and don’t have enough at the end of the month. Changes on a federal level can lead to a higher state budget.”
As Koçak points out, cuts in social services have tangible consequences in local communities. “People try to make it look like all the problems of Neukölln come from bad people who live here. You know, every year, you have some stories about the Schwimmbäder, the outdoor swimming pools. They get tense, it’s overcrowded. But the problem here is not young Arabic or Muslim people – it’s just that we need more swimming pools. People who don’t have much money can’t go on holiday abroad. They need a space to go to in the summer.” Cuts to the city budget will only make these problems worse, he says. “And you know, it’s the same on the other side. They always talk about antisemitism in Neukölln, but they imposed cuts here too. There was a specific budget for Muslim-Jewish projects in Berlin. They cut it, and that fucked me up – because we need more of those projects. The fight against racism and antisemitism go together; they are ‘Zwei Seiten einer Medaille’, two sides of the same coin.”
We won’t allow ourselves to be divided. Berlin belongs to everyone who lives here
Koçak was not the only Die Linke politician to shake up Berlin’s political scene on election night. In the heart of the city, a 30-year-old nurse named Stella Merendino came just 1.3 percentage points short of securing a direct mandate in Berlin-Mitte. Merendino grew up in Wedding, and continues to work as a nurse at the Vivantes Humboldt hospital in Reinickendorf. Despite narrowly missing out on winning her home district outright, she will enter parliament via the list each faction submits to fill its seats in the Bundestag.
“Right now, I’m on special leave,” she explains. “ But I’ll reduce my time at the hospital so that I can take on one shift each month in the emergency room, alongside my parliamentary work. Politics should stay close to reality. We showed that meaningful social policies can win a majority when you talk with people and demonstrate – authentically – that you’re pulling in the same direction.”
Merendino has carved out a route to national politics whose uncharted course does her credit. She worked through the pandemic, and has described the exhaustion of being one of just three nurses staffing the emergency room on a night shift. In the summer of 2021, she and her colleagues organised a strike with the Berlin Hospital Movement, winning the first collective bargaining agreement for emergency rooms nationwide. She believes that Die Linke’s connection to working people was key to its recent success.
“We knocked on 40,000 doors in Mitte, and people’s concerns were clear: the cost of living. Rising rents, high energy bills, food prices, poor working conditions. Many people are afraid of losing their homes or are barely making ends meet. We showed that there is a party that stands on their side.
“Berlin is not only a city of renters but also a city of workers,” she adds. “The people who keep the city running are the ones who feel it most when rents rise, wages fall short, or hospitals are gutted by cost-cutting. We supported strikes, joined demonstrations and helped people organise – and it paid off. Fight for everyday struggles, and you will earn trust at the voting booth.”
As for how Die Linke build upon the momentum they have gathered in Berlin, Merendino believes that the city’s diversity is a source of strength. “The other parties campaigned on fear, but the real beneficiaries of that are the corporations and landlords who exploit us all – no matter where we were born. We won’t allow ourselves to be divided. Berlin belongs to everyone who lives here.”
