Merkel Asks Migrants She Welcomed to Vote Against AfD
Angela Merkel urged Germany's naturalized citizens to unite against the AfD, reigniting a fierce national debate over who belongs — and who gets to decide.
For millions of immigrants, Angela Merkel has a message: your vote matters, and she wants it cast against the party that argues you shouldn't be here.
In a podcast interview released March 6, the former chancellor urged "people with a migration background" to "join forces" against the AfD — the right-wing Alternative for Germany party that captured 20.8 percent of the vote in the February 2025 federal election, making it Germany's second-largest party. Current polling has since narrowed the gap further: CDU at 26 percent, AfD at 24 percent.
The appeal carries the full weight of Merkel's legacy. She was the architect of the 2015 open-border policy that brought more than one million refugees to Germany, many of whom have since become citizens. Her interview with journalist Jagoda Marinić for the hr podcast "Freiheit Deluxe" — titled "Wer ist das Volk?" (Who is the People?) — was recorded March 3 and aired March 6 on ARD Mediathek, sparking immediate controversy across the German political spectrum.
"I would like people with a migration background… or with a migration history… we join forces with those who do not make common cause with the AfD," Merkel said during the hour-long interview. She pressed further, warning against fracture within Germany's political center. "We do not split ourselves as a political center, I say, onto those who have a migration history and those who have none. Because then our country would become weaker against the AfD."
She did not stop there. Merkel directly challenged the AfD's definition of who constitutes "the German people." "Whether a German citizen has been a German citizen for two years or for four days or the entire family for three generations, it doesn't matter," she stated. "We are the German people."
She also offered a pointed philosophy of political conviction — one that doubles as a rebuke of those who would soften their positions to court conservative voters. "Who doesn't have their own core won't convince and inspire others either," Merkel said. "And I may not convince a die-hard AfD voter immediately, but I won't convince them by adapting to them either; I must take my own basic values."
AfD co-chairwoman Alice Weidel fired back within days. "Merkel has inflicted severe damage on Germany," Weidel said. "In addition to the ruin of our energy infrastructure and the open borders for everyone from all over the world, she is now calling on naturalized 'people with a migration background' not to vote for the AfD."
Merkel left office in 2021 after 16 years as chancellor, but she has remained a visible figure. Her memoir "Freiheit" appeared in late 2024, and Germany awarded her the European Order of Merit in March 2026. The episode's title cuts straight to the fault line her remarks reopened.
The stakes are measurable. More than 200,000 Syrians have gained German citizenship since arriving during the 2015 crisis. Meanwhile, the current government has moved in the other direction: Chancellor Merz has imposed border controls that cut illegal entries slightly, from 83,572 in 2024 to 62,526 in 2025, and has ordered police to turn back undocumented migrants at the border. A government that campaigns on closed borders while quietly maintaining the same intake levels it inherited raises a question Merkel didn't ask: whether the urgency is electoral, not existential.
The AfD could become the second-largest force in several Hesse districts in municipal elections this month, a trajectory that makes Merkel's intervention anything but symbolic. Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt also hold state elections in 2026.
Whether Merkel's voice shifts a single vote remains to be seen. But for the naturalized citizens she addressed, the question she posed is already personal: in a country still arguing over who belongs, the answer they give at the ballot box may define the answer for everyone.