Berlin votes on Sunday, with left-wing party Die Linke polling as high as 23%. Its lead candidate, Elif Eralp, could become mayor of the German capital with the support of the Greens and the Social Democrats.
Posters for Die Linke\'s Elif Eralp in Berlin ahead of an election that could make her the first governing mayor from the party since German reunification. Photo: John MacDougall/AFP/AFP/Profimedia
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Berlin elects a new state parliament on Sunday, and Die Linke, polling as high as 23% in some surveys, could emerge as the strongest party. Should that be enough for a coalition with the Greens and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Elif Eralp would become governing mayor, moving into the Rotes Rathaus, the red-brick building that has housed Berlin's mayors since the 19th century.
For Die Linke, this would mark a historic return. The party traces its roots to the Party of Democratic Socialism, itself descended from the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), the regime that built the Berlin Wall and used armed force to stop those who tried to cross it, at the cost of many lives. Since reunification, its successor party has repeatedly held a share of power in Berlin's state governments, but has never led one.
Eralp, 45, is no product of the old East German functionary class. Her parents, socialists and trade unionists in Turkey, fled to Germany in 1980 after the military coup there. Born in Munich, she grew up in Dortmund and Hamburg before studying law. After completing both state law exams, she moved to Berlin in 2010 to work as a legal policy advisor for the Die Linke's parliamentary group in Germany's federal parliament.
She did not join the party itself until 2017, yet within a year sat on the Berlin state executive committee, and by 2021 had entered the state parliament. Today, as deputy state chair, she is leading her party into the election. Under her, the image of Berlin's Die Linke has shifted too: less of the old Ostalgie, the nostalgia for East Germany that long defined the party, more migrant activism, and a campaign built almost entirely around social media.
Eralp's role model is New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, from whom she has borrowed a friendly brand of social populism, slickly produced short-form videos, and a relentless focus on young renters who can no longer afford to live in their own city.
It is working. As many as 38% of Berliners aged 16 to 34 want Die Linke to lead the next government. On Instagram, Eralp and her state party have at times drawn nearly three times as many views as their rivals, and the party's short videos were watched more than half a million times in a single month. One clip has the lead candidate jogging through Berlin, Baywatch-style. Another has her appearing alongside influencers. Campaign messages also go out in Turkish and Spanish. By comparison, the Christian Democratic Union and Social Democratic Party in particular look like parties that only recently discovered the internet.
Die Linke's offer is easy to grasp. Around 85% of Berliners rent their homes, and housing costs have become the dominant everyday concern for many of them. Eralp wants to expropriate corporations that own more than 3,000 apartments, fulfilling a 2021 referendum in which 59% voted in favor of expropriating large real estate companies.
Around 220,000 apartments would be affected. On top of that would come a rent cap for state-owned housing companies and a dedicated office to combat rent-gouging. SPD lead candidate Steffen Krach warns that the compensation payments alone could cost Berlin €20bn–€30bn ($23bn–$34.5bn). Eralp nevertheless wants to begin implementation on her very first day in office.
Her opponents talk about costs, constitutional law and the lack of new construction. Eralp talks about landlords, corporations and tenants who can no longer pay their bills. That is simple, and it is left-wing populism. But it works. Die Linke has understood that elections are not won with the most complicated concept, but with a story that can be told in 30 seconds.
Eralp's party, however, also harbors a milieu in which open hatred of Jews is no longer a marginal phenomenon. In late August, the rapper Dahabflex performed at the party's event in Berlin's Neukölln district, where his song "Stop the Genocide" included the chants "Yalla Yalla Intifada" and "Death to the IDF", a call for the death of the Israeli army.
The audience danced and applauded, and the party politicians present let the performance continue. Only after the media reported on it did Eralp express dismay and demand consequences. She affirms Israel's right to exist and has presented a five-point plan to protect Jewish life, promising more funding for anti-antisemitism projects and better protection for Jewish institutions. At a campaign forum held in a mosque in Neukölln, however, the tone was different.
"Just as antisemitism in this city is discussed, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian racism must also be discussed", Eralp told the audience there, drawing applause. Within a single sentence, the topic of antisemitism in Berlin had turned back into a complaint that Muslims and Palestinians are not heard enough.
This stance is the prevailing tone within Eralp's political circle. Together with Ferat Koçak, a current member of the federal parliament, she helped found Links*Kanax, an alliance of migrant leftists. In 2025, Koçak won a seat in Germany's federal parliament, securing the Neukölln constituency, a Berlin district with a large migrant population, outright. He is one of the most prominent figures in the party's pro-Palestinian wing.
Die Linke is also fielding Ahmed Abed as its candidate for district mayor in Neukölln. When the mayor of Bat Yam, one of Berlin's Israeli partner cities, visited Berlin, Abed referred to him as a "genocidal murderer", a remark he defends as legitimate criticism of the Israeli government rather than antisemitism. His party is standing by his candidacy to lead a district of more than 320,000 residents.
A Reckoning Eralp Cannot Avoid
While politicians like Koçak and Abed rise within the party, prominent figures from its pro-Israel wing have left. At a state party congress in 2024, an attempt to pass a clear declaration against antisemitism and in solidarity with Jewish life failed, and five well-known members resigned shortly afterward, including three former Berlin state ministers: Culture Senator Klaus Lederer and Senators Elke Breitenbach and Sebastian Scheel.
In March 2026, Brandenburg's Antisemitism Commissioner Andreas Büttner also left the party, citing irreconcilable differences over how it deals with antisemitism. Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, subsequently accused the party of giving hatred of Jews a political home. Just how routine the symbols of this milieu have become was illustrated at the Wahlarena, an election debate on the public broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB), where an audience member handed out Stars of David to the lead candidates as a gesture of solidarity with Jews following an antisemitic attack. The moderator immediately collected them again, saying political props were not allowed on the program.
Shortly after, Michael Lüders, lead candidate of the left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, was allowed to keep his own pin, which depicted Israel and the Palestinian territories combined as a watermelon in the colors of the Palestinian flag. Lüders spoke of "Palestinian will to resist" and avoided the question of whether this meant he was questioning Israel's right to exist.
Eralp rules out a coalition with Lüders' party, saying she wants to govern with the Greens and the SPD instead. Green Party lead candidate Werner Graf has already stated that he will not form a government dependent on the votes of the radical Neukölln district branch.
Eralp cannot dismiss this milieu as an insignificant fringe of the party. As lead candidate and deputy state chair, she has herself been connected to its most prominent figures for years. If she wins on Sunday, these people will no longer sit on the sidelines. Then they, and antisemitism with them, will belong to the political center of power in the German capital.
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