Debate after election victory: What is true about the allegations against the Left Berlin

Ferat Koçak went underground for the time being. The Left Party member of the Bundestag from Berlin-Neukölln wrote on Monday on his social media channels that he wanted to take time to dispel doubts. Since then there has been radio silence. Except on the left. There is an alarm there.

Everything looked so good for the left on Sunday at 6 p.m. She got 25.7 percent in the election in Berlin, and the pictures of the jubilant top candidate Elif Eralp were broadcast across all channels.

Other pictures made the rounds that evening. That of two visitors at the election party of the Neukölln district association: Issa Remmo, head of a large family whose members were on trial for various crimes - jewel theft, money laundering, burglaries; and Ibrahim Ibrahim, who promotes the left-wing terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and called slain Hamas leader Jahia Sinwar a "martyred hero."

Left-wing Bundestag member Ferat Koçak posed at the party with Ibrahim, who was wearing a shirt with the words “See you in Palestine.” Likewise his Neukölln comrade and newly elected MP Vanessa “Vedi” Emde.

It is these images that could now endanger the first government led by the left in Berlin. The ones with Ibrahim in particular represent a bigger problem. They are all a target for a right-wing campaign from the AfD to Springer-Verlag, who see Berlin on the verge of a caliphate. CSU boss Markus Söder wants to cut off financial aid to Berlin if the Left comes into government. He called similar measures “absurd” for an AfD-governed Saxony-Anhalt.

On the left, some believe the excitement is fake. They believe it's about preventing red-green-red and thus the expropriation of large real estate companies.

But Left members also say that the party has an anti-Semitism problem. And they fear that some radicals in the party are sabotaging a left-wing government. “I’ve had enough,” former Bundestag Vice President Petra Pau wrote publicly to Koçak. “As an MP you have a responsibility, I can no longer believe in naivety.” The Thuringian Left MP Katharina König-Preuss demanded that Koçak should resign his mandate because he did not represent credible anti-fascism - and let the specialist work slide.

In order to unravel the current allegations, it is worth taking a step back and looking at the development of the Berlin Left. Does the party have an anti-Semitism problem?

The Left in Berlin has grown extremely in the last year and a half; the number of members of the Neukölln district association alone has tripled. It was mainly young people who came, many of whom were politicized by the Gaza war. In autumn 2024 there was already a clash at a state party conference: after an initially failed resolution against anti-Semitism, leading leftists such as Klaus Lederer and Elke Breitenbach left the hall - and later the party. But the pro-Palestinian camp in the party did not back down after that. It is loudest in the Neukölln Left Association.

The movement includes the State Working Group (LAG) Palestine Solidarity and the Trotskyist group Marx 21. The latter declared in 2023 that “Zionist” Israel “must be destroyed in the course of an anti-imperialist, revolutionary uprising throughout the region”. Palestine is the only political issue for these people, say members of the Neukölln district association. How strong this faction actually is is unclear. If you ask around among comrades in Neukölln, many say that the radical Palestine solidarity groups are not the majority in the district association with its 3,000 members.

But in the end they determined the public image. And their representatives are among those in the party who are critical of participation in government anyway - and would not be unhappy if the coalition with the SPD and the Greens did not come about.

The Neukölln district association has represented radical positions for years and is often at odds with the rest of the regional association. Especially since the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023.

After the murders of almost 1,200 Israelis and around 250 hostage-takings, the Neukölln Left's first statement was one of its district faction, in which it criticized a "massive restriction on the freedom of assembly" of pro-Palestinian protests. Three days later, the Left District Association also commented. And it's quite balanced. One condemns “the horrific attacks by Hamas on Israel” and at the same time one condemns the “Israeli bombings” on Gaza and its closure. Ferat Koçak made the statement on Instagram.

But while the Israeli army escalated and committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip, the Neukölln Left also became more one-sided in its attitude - and entered into questionable alliances. One man kept appearing: Ibrahim Ibrahim, the guest at the election party.

Ibrahim has been at the forefront of demonstrations for years. He gives speeches and sends out statements for the United Palestinian National Committee. This is what the Office for the Protection of the Constitution sees as the umbrella organization of Hamas supporters and the PFLP in Berlin. The PFLP was also involved in the October 7 massacres. In 1977 the group hijacked the Lufthansa plane “Landshut”. It was classified as a terrorist organization by the EU in 2002. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, in Berlin she works “closely” with Hamas supporters and has a “link function” to Islamists.

Ibrahim posts a picture on Facebook of a man hooded with a keffiyeh, complete with a machine gun and the PFLP logo: “All guns against the enemy, glory to the freedom fighters”. At a demonstration speech in Berlin in April 2025, he praised the "martyrs who gave their lives to keep this cause alive until the Al-Aqsa Mosque is liberated and all of Palestine 'from the river to the sea' is liberated."

The Left Neukölln initially does not keep Ibrahim and his association at a distance, on the contrary. In August 2025, she organized a joint “neighborhood event” for Palestine with the Palestinian National Committee. “Your resistance is our resistance,” Ibrahim is said to have declared as a speaker there, according to the Tagesspiegel.

A few weeks earlier, Koçak and Ibrahim demonstrated together in front of the Neukölln town hall. Later, Ahmed Abed, the left-wing mayoral candidate for Neukölln, will also do the same there. Members of other Berlin district associations also appear with Ibrahim at Palestine Demos and give speeches. Two of them are now moving into the House of Representatives. A third is Hannah Bruns, spokesperson for the State Working Group on Palestine Solidarity, who advocates for “armed resistance” in Palestine. At a demonstration she postulated that the liberation of Palestine would end “when Tel Aviv is again in the hands of Palestine.”

Ibrahim had a lot of contacts with the Neukölln left - and yet Ferat Koçak didn't recognize him in the selfie on election evening.

Koçak does not want to comment to the taz, and Ibrahim Ibrahim also does not respond to a request. Shortly after the election, Ibrahim sent “our warmest congratulations” to the Left Party on Facebook on behalf of his association. “I am proud that we made a clear decision to support the left last year,” he writes. The Palestinian and Arab communities have also been mobilized for the left with regard to “the Palestinian question”.

The Neukölln Left Party leader Jorinde Schulz tells the taz that no other organizations were involved in the election campaign. When asked how she assesses the joint appearances of leftists with Ibrahim, she replies that war crimes are condemned, no matter who commits them. But: “We see the spread of accusations of contact guilt in the political debate as an expression of an authoritarian change.” Distancing sounds different.

Another personality has made headlines around the Neukölln Left in recent years: Ramsis Kilani. In an internal chat after October 7, the activist is said to have written: "I think it will take more than 'a murder of Israelis'." Kilani was expelled from the Left Party in 2024, but the Neukölln district association “sharply” criticized his exclusion. This is bowing to a “right-wing smear campaign” and “reasons of state”. There is no criticism of Kilani's statements in the statement.

Then in August 2026, in the middle of the election campaign, the Neukölln Left candidate Vanessa Emde invited people to an event at which Kilani offered a workshop. The Morgenpost told Emde that Kilani was “warmly welcome in the district association”.

Also during the election campaign, the Neukölln Left had the rapper Dahabflex appear at one of their events. There he raps lines like “Death to the IDF”. In other songs he raps about “Intifada like the PFLP” – i.e. about terrorist attacks.

On the day of the election for the Berlin House of Representatives, the Neukölln left-wing district candidate Basem Said shares the call of a Palestine activist who calls for an “election intifada”. In the end, the party received 32 percent of the votes in the district and doubled its parliamentary group. Basem Said and Vanessa Emde win their mandates.

These positions are causing hardship for the state board led by Elif Eralp. He has to justify it again and again. After the Dahabflex appearance, Eralp was “horrified” and commissioned an ombudsman to take action. When asked about anti-Semitism, Eralp said she stood for the protection of Jewish life as well as for the protection of every life. In fact, the Berlin Left Party has repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism. A party expulsion process is currently underway against the speaker of the LAG Palestine Solidarity, Hannah Bruns.

But then there is Ferat Koçak's connection to the Remmo family - and thus, at least according to the allegations, to organized crime in the capital.

After the election party, Issa Remmo's son published a chat with Koçak from February. Koçak writes in it, “I can come by in the morning”. He then asks to distribute a speech from him criticizing the approach to “clan crime” and sends “greetings with respect back to your father.” The Remmo son replies: “Gladly, brother”.

Jorinde Schulz from the Neukölln Left says there is no contact between her district association and the Remmo family. But it still remains tricky: Ferat Koçak, who sits on the Bundestag's Interior Committee, has repeatedly criticized the political and police actions against "clan crime". On Tuesday, Koçak announced that he would withdraw for the time being.

But the political damage has been done - and it endangers the explorations with the Berlin Greens and the SPD. They demand from the Left Party a commitment against anti-Semitism and a government majority that should not depend on the Neukölln Left.

A left-wing official assured the taz that a reliable agreement against anti-Semitism and organized crime would be reached in the event of a coalition. Red-red-green would also have a majority of 15 votes in the new Berlin House of Representatives - possible deviations could be tolerated.

Meanwhile, the radicals in the Left Party are going on the offensive. In a video, speakers from the LAG Palestine Solidarity said they stood “behind comrades Ibrahim Ibrahim and Basem Said” and would not allow themselves to be divided. Hannah Bruns also wants to defend herself against exclusion from the party.

And Vanessa Emde had already said before the election that she was not up for “abandoning positions of solidarity with Palestine”. She would “rather be right in the opposition than wrong in government”.