The Left | Debate about “clan crime”: Standing up to the smear campaign

Berliners voted for the Left Party not despite, but also because of, among other things, the anti-racist and anti-police demands in their election program. Photo: Leonhard Lenz Just hours after the Left Party's success in the election to the Berlin House of Representatives, media companies and representatives of the competing parties began an unprecedented smear campaign against the district association of the Neukölln Left. The obvious aim is to prevent the implementation of its political program by delegitimizing prominent representatives of the Neukölln Left. The focus of the attacks was initially Ferat Koçak, a member of the Bundestag from Neukölln, who then decided to leave the Bundestag's Interior Committee last Wednesday. Ostensibly, it's about Koçak's contacts with two people from the Remmo family, whose family name has become something of a media figurehead for so-called clan crime in recent years. And that brings us to the heart of the problem, which is completely drowned out by the noise of the accusations and the scrutiny of Koçak's admittedly questionable communication behavior.

The term “clan crime” suggests that all family members have an inherent criminal tendency based on the name. This is the racist core of clan criminalization, in which all family members are held jointly liable for their relatives. Racist because this label only applies to certain families; According to the Berlin police's situation report on "clan crime," only those who "have familial-social connections predominantly to the Mhallami-Kurdish, Lebanese or Palestinian areas." In the course of the campaign, not only Koçak's personal efforts in recent years against the concept of "clan crime" but also all anti-racist work against clan criminalization as a whole are being treated as illegitimate. The increasing criticism of the term and the associated police practices seems to have been forgotten. Left politics can and must take a clear position against this – and that is not a scandal.

“Left politics can and must take a clear position against clan criminalization – and that is not a scandal.”

In recent years, the term “clan crime” has been institutionally established – for example in police situation reports – and has been so widely normalized in society that it is hardly questioned in media reporting. Both the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy and the Justice Collective have been working together with other organizations and individuals for years against this practice that violates fundamental rights and its consequences. KOP Berlin, the Fundamental Rights Committee and the Neukölln initiative “No General Suspicion” organized a first series of events on the topic in 2021. This collaboration resulted in a joint book project. The Neukölln district is, like no other, always at the center of this racist politics - correspondingly, resistance in this district is particularly high. Unfortunately, this only finds programmatic resonance in parts of the Left Party, supported by people who have long been committed to anti-racist civil society.

Koçak and the Left Neukölln are now being accused of exactly that: that they have been campaigning against racist policies for years, which are being promoted with recourse to the term “clan crime” both in Berlin and in other federal states. Parliamentary questions such as those that are currently being presented as a scandal involving Koçak and his party colleagues can provide insights into the disproportionality with which the police act against “clan crime”: This shows, for example, that the Berlin police carried out a total of 919 operations related to “clan crime” between January 2019 and September 2022, which together amounted to more than 122,247 working hours 16,000 police officers claimed. These mostly involve large-scale commercial inspections of migrant-run businesses, sometimes including road closures - which explains the enormous number of working hours. Nevertheless, even considering the questionable criteria they use, the Berlin police only assign around 0.2 percent of their registered crimes to this area.

Anthony Obst is a research associate at the Justice Collective and contributed as a co-author to the anthology “General Suspicion: How the Myth of Clan Crime Is Used to Make Politics.” Michèle Winkler is a political advisor at the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy and co-editor and author of the anthology.

As participants in the commitment against racist criminalization, we authors demand that the Berlin State Association of the Left also commit to this commitment instead of distancing themselves. The attacks on Koçak are clearly part of a broad campaign against the Berlin Left, aimed primarily at preventing a red-green-red coalition in Berlin led by the Left Party. In particular, this is intended to thwart progressive policies that not only hold out the prospect of a democratically elected socialization of large real estate companies and call for a break with Germany's support for Israel's genocidal warfare in Gaza based on international law, but also the dismantling of a police apparatus that has grown massively and been uninhibitedly repressive in recent years.

As the Justice Collective 2025 found out in a report, the capital's police budget has increased by over 75 percent since 2010 - to over 2.14 billion euros in 2027. This means that Berlin spends more than twice as much money on police as it does on culture and social cohesion. With 723 full-time equivalents per 100,000 residents, there are more police per capita in Berlin than in New York City. The use of these enormous material and human resources is particularly concentrated on migrant-dominated neighborhoods and population groups. In Berlin, for example, the staffing level of Directorate 5, which includes Neukölln, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Mitte, the districts with the highest proportion of people with a migrant background, has increased continuously since 2010. In addition, all so-called crime-prone places lie within this area of ​​responsibility. These locations, which the police themselves designate, have been proven to provide a gateway for racial profiling in urban areas and thus contribute to racist criminalization. And as part of protests in solidarity with Palestine, police violence against the migrant population of Berlin has been widely documented, especially since October 2023.

It is important to see the context here: The myths of “clan crime” and “imported anti-Semitism” are part of a symbolic-political repertoire that serves both right-wing conservative culture wars and right-wing radical plans to ethnically cleanse the country. Bourgeois parties have long since allowed themselves to be infected by this coherent moral panic offensive and are allowing themselves to be harnessed to the cart for the fascist “remigration” project - such as in the framework of the GEAS reform passed in April 2026, which, among other things, tightens the reasons for exclusion from refugee protection for criminally convicted persons in the Residence Act. Racist criminalization is essential to this fascist project. Therefore, anti-fascist politics must consistently oppose it.

"The Left Party must insist that there is an end to the free pass for racist security policy, as well as to the speculation with housing."

Even though the Left Party, as part of the Berlin state government, is partly responsible for the long-standing expansion of police resources and powers, it denounces this development in its most recent election program and vows a change of direction. For example, she explains that she wants to stop the "ever-increasing, expensive upgrade of the police" and "redistribute the resources." It should be examined how police staffing levels can be reduced to the level of other city states so that funds are freed up for “financing positions in emergency and crisis services, street social work, etc.” Implementing these resolutions at the state level could also pave the way beyond Berlin for an evidence-based and, above all, human rights-based security policy that does not intend to solve social problems with more and more police.

On September 20th, Berliners voted for the Left Party with an impressive majority not despite, but also because of, among other things, the anti-racist, anti-genocidal and anti-police demands and housing socialization in their election program. It is a shame that parts of the Left Party have lost sight of this clear approval of their program in the last few days and have allowed themselves to be drawn into distancing themselves not only from their party colleagues in Neukölln, but indirectly also from their own election program. Especially since they are also falling for the racist stories about Neukölln, which also make the myth of “clan crime” so powerful. As representatives of progressive and anti-racist civil society, we demand that the elected politics be aggressively represented in possible exploratory discussions. According to its election program, the Berlin Left Party must insist that there is an end to the free pass for racist security policy in the capital, as well as to an end to speculation with housing.

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