Berlin, Germany – The morning after Berlin’s historic vote was chilly and overcast, but for Sumeja Skeva, an 18-year-old student in the bustling Neukolln district, the city’s prospects could not be brighter. On Sunday, Berliners delivered an unprecedented victory to The Left (Die Linke in German) party, a camp long seen as radical for its anti-capitalist and pro-migrant stance. Elif Eralp, the party’s Berlin leader, is of Turkish descent and is likely to become the city’s first mayor with an immigrant background.
She would also be Berlin’s first mayor from the Left. The party’s win has brought relief to pro-migrant residents at a time when the far-right AfD party continues to gain support in eastern states, as well as to young people below 30, who, lured by the promise of affordability, represented the bulk of the Left’s voter base at the polls. The neighbourhood, where the smell of sizzling kebabs wafts from stalls onto busy streets, is home to a large immigrant population.
Eralp, who has been likened to New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, campaigned to end high rent prices and chronic housing shortages in the ever-expanding city. The Left party’s plans include issuing rent caps – a phrase Eralp wears on a gold necklace – and expropriating homes from big corporate landlords. She has also promised to clean up dirty neighbourhoods, prioritise social spending on vulnerable groups such as the homeless, and fight for non-citizens’ rights to vote in local elections.
Her party won 25.7 percent of the state’s vote – the highest – and a poll by broadcaster ZDF showed Eralp’s own ratings at 36 percent, the highest among candidates for the mayor’s post. Nearly half of Berlin’s 3.6 million residents have an immigration background, the largest group being from the Turkish community, which helped rebuild the then-West Germany after World War II. The city is also home to a sizable Arab community, including the largest Palestinian diaspora in Europe.
As leftists celebrated in Berlin, the far-right AfD party, which opposes migration, also cheered its strong gains in the election. The party clinched 16 percent of the vote in Berlin to come in third place. On the same day, it also won state elections in northeastern Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state, making it the AfD’s second state election victory in two weeks.
Against that backdrop, there was “no question” about whom she would vote for, said Ana Pareja, who runs the Bartleby and Co bookstore, a cosy space on the edge of Neukolln. In her bookshop, surrounded by Spanish literature, Pareja organised voting workshops for eligible European nationals and, before the Sunday polls, encouraged those in her network to choose Eralp. Indeed, showing support for Palestine is somewhat of a taboo because of Germany’s strict pro-Israel stance.
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