The Unraveling of Centrist Politics in Germany: The September Elections
What is striking is that the AfD at least doubled its vote share in subsequent elections in Germany.
Voters cast their ballots at a polling station in the Charlottenburg district during state elections in Berlin, Germany on September 20, 2026. Voters went to the polls for state elections in both Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to elect their respective regional legislatures. Photo by Anadolu Images.
I
n 1945, following the end of World War II, Germany began confronting its Nazi past and gradually turned this process of reckoning into a political tradition and culture. The Nuremberg Trials, denazification policies, investigations into Nazi crimes, the prosecution and punishment of perpetrators whenever they were apprehended regardless of how much time had passed, and a culture of remembrance that manifested itself in different forms over the years became the principal elements of this political process.
A tradition of confronting the past emerged. However, this reckoning was neither continuous nor uninterrupted. Particularly in West Germany, silence and social repression concerning the Nazi past persisted for a long time during the early postwar period.
One of the slogans traditionally associated with this process has been “Nie wieder,” meaning “Never Again.” On the one hand, the phrase draws a firm line between Germany’s Nazi past and the present; on the other, it calls upon German society to assume a political responsibility.
“Never Again” serves both as a reminder of the atrocities committed in concentration camps and as a political responsibility imposed upon society. Despite this political responsibility, however, the situation today appears to contradict the principle embodied in the slogan “Never Again.”
Never again?
Despite the call of “Never Again,” developments in Germany’s recent history have demonstrated that the country has not been immune to racist and far-right movements.
In addition to racist attacks in the early 1990s in places such as Solingen, Hoyerswerda and Rostock-Lichtenhagen, the racist and far-right National Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist organization, which was exposed in 2011 after carrying out attacks against people of Turkish origin, entered German history through acts of terror that called into question the “never” in “Never Again.”
Meanwhile, research has shown that a layered form of far-right thinking had become embedded in the center of German society from around 2010 onward.
In the 2013 federal elections, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which narrowly failed to enter parliament in its first election after receiving 4.7 percent of the vote, was initially not even taken seriously. Gradually increasing its vote share in subsequent federal and state elections, the AfD emerged from the 2025 Bundestag elections with approximately 21 percent of the vote and became the main opposition force.
In the state and local elections of 2026, it subsequently increased its support significantly and emerged as a potential governing force.
In the state elections held in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate at the beginning of 2026, the CDU emerged as the largest party after narrowly increasing its vote share. However, its analysis of the results overlooked an important development: in both states, the far-right AfD had at least doubled its vote share.
For the CDU, these election victories created an environment in which it could feel comfortably secure until the September elections. But following the Saxony-Anhalt election, the CDU was forced to confront a harsh reality.
First, the CDU lost the election held in the state of Saxony-Anhalt at the beginning of September. It then suffered such a major loss of support in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern that it was excluded from the state parliament. Finally, it lost the Berlin state election.
In the meantime, the CDU also failed to achieve the expected breakthrough in the local elections held in Lower Saxony, one of the party’s traditional strongholds.
What is striking is that the AfD at least doubled its vote share in all these elections. With its high vote totals, it also won the elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
From one extreme to the other
The winner of the Berlin state election held on September 20, meanwhile, was Die Linke, or the Left Party. The other political extreme that doubled its vote and won an election, this time in the federal capital Berlin, was the Left Party.
What made the Berlin election particularly interesting was that a politician of Turkish origin, Elif Eralp, was serving as a leading figure within the Left Party and was likely to become the next governing mayor of Berlin.
Unlike Berlin, the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony-Anhalt, where the far-right AfD won, are former East German states. The AfD therefore adopted a different electoral strategy in these states.
The far-right AfD made effective use of distrust and dissatisfaction with the federal government. By mobilizing voters and listening to them directly, it managed to turn the situation in its favor in both states and won overwhelming victories over the CDU.
More fundamentally, the sense of being treated as second-class citizens and the identity crisis experienced in the former East German states also played a role in the AfD’s success.
Although the AfD’s success is viewed as a warning to Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz, it does not appear that Merz has fully recognized this warning. In his speech on election night on September 20, Merz accepted responsibility but stated that he would continue serving as chancellor and would not step down.
The most critical of the September elections was undoubtedly the Berlin state election. Under the state’s constitutional arrangements, the head of the Berlin state government also serves as the city’s “Governing Mayor.” Consequently, an election result in Berlin involving a CDU defeat would effectively have represented a major political loss of prestige for Chancellor Merz.
That is precisely what happened.
This time, however, the winning party was not one of the parties on the far right, but Die Linke, the party positioned at the opposite end of the political spectrum.
In the state, where the CDU suffered major losses, the far-right AfD doubled its vote share and became the third-largest party.
While the AfD increased its support in the other two states by mobilizing voters and listening to them individually, the Left Party and Turkish-origin candidate Elif Eralp used a similar strategy in Berlin and won the election.
The results also appeared to undermine the conventional assumption that low voter turnout benefits extremist parties, as turnout was higher than in previous elections.
Is Elif Eralp antisemitic?
Another notable aspect of the Berlin election was that, among 10 representatives of Turkish origin elected to the Berlin Senate, five came from the Left Party, four from the SPD, and one from the Greens.
Similarly, it was striking that one in every two Muslim voters in Berlin who cast a ballot voted for the Left Party. Among the other Muslim voters, 17 percent voted for another left-wing party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), 16 percent voted for the Greens, and 11 percent voted for the SPD.
The fact that Muslim voters remained notably on the center-left and that more than half voted for the Left Party may have created the impression that the party itself had an antisemitic discourse. However, party officials, particularly Elif Eralp, challenged this interpretation in statements made after the election.
One of Eralp’s particularly notable pre-election statements was that, if elected, she would seek to have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if he came to Berlin, arguing that Netanyahu had committed extremely serious crimes, including genocide, and was being prosecuted at the International Criminal Court.
This statement subsequently led to accusations that Eralp was antisemitic.
In an article written by the editor-in-chief of the Jüdische Allgemeine on the morning of the election, the author wrote that Berlin had finally received the election it deserved and that an overwhelming victory had been achieved over the CDU. The article argued that anti-Zionism,or, more precisely, what it described as “the destruction of Israel” , along with Arab immigrants and the children of German citizens allegedly spoiled by the welfare state, had become the strongest political force in the capital through parliamentary representation.
The article also referred to the “Yallah-Intifada” chants that, according to the author, had filled Berlin’s streets for nearly three years with slogans characterized as antisemitic and glorifying terrorism.
Drawing comparisons between the present and Nazi Germany, the article argued that Berlin had become unlivable following the Left Party’s victory and called on every non-Jewish democrat in Berlin not to accept the election result.
It even called on representatives of the Berlin SPD and Greens to form a coalition with the CDU rather than with the Left Party.
Even a week after the election, instead of questioning the success of the far-right and racist AfD, claims that the Left Party was anti-Jewish or antisemitic continued to be voiced at the highest levels.
Even more strikingly, the Bundestag recently debated the issue of antisemitism within the Left Party,ironically at the initiative of the far-right AfD.
The Left Party was urged to distance itself decisively from Islamists and the far left in light of the election results. The far-right AfD even claimed that the fact that half of Berlin’s Muslim voters had voted for the Left Party demonstrated the party’s “determined antisemitism” policy.
This debate has unfortunately overshadowed the fact that the far-right and anti-Islam AfD won the elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, as well as questions surrounding the performance of the government and Chancellor Merz.
Through this strategy, pressure is being exerted through the mainstream media in an apparent attempt to prevent a possible coalition between the SPD, Greens and Left Party in Berlin and to prevent the Left Party’s success in Berlin from being transferred to the federal level.
From the perspective of the Left Party and its voters, however, the reason voters chose the party was primarily its promise to address the housing and accommodation crisis, one of the state’s biggest problems.
Similarly, voters’ belief that the party would deliver greater social justice, address inequalities in education policy, and provide solutions to problems surrounding asylum and migration policy emerged as one of the main reasons for the Left Party’s appeal.
The threshold has been crossed
The state elections held in Germany in September 2026 have once again demonstrated that the far-right AfD has grown stronger following the 2025 federal elections and has begun making inroads into state governments.
The “Brandmauer,” or institutional firewall, maintained by the centrist parties against the AfD is effectively playing into the party’s hands and contributing to its growth.
In December, the first government led by the AfD will presumably be formed in the state of Saxony-Anhalt.
The “Nie Wieder,” or “Never Again,” call associated with Nazi Germany has lost its force 81 years after the war. The number of people arguing that the far right should be given a chance is increasing and, unfortunately, the democratic threshold has been crossed.
As centrist politics begins to unravel in Germany, the extremes are moving to occupy the space once held by the political center, and German politics is becoming increasingly polarized.
(Orignally published in Turkish by Kriter)
