Evrim Sommer

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Evrim Sommer, born Hêlîn Evrim Baba, is a German politician from Berlin. She was a member of The Left party and served in the Berlin state parliament and in the German Bundestag from 2017 to 2021. She left The Left in May 2022.

Early life
She was born in Varto, Turkey, into a Kurdish Alevi family. Her Kurdish name Hêlîn was not allowed in Turkey after the 1980 coup, so she was named Evrim (meaning evolution in Turkish). Her father was a socialist trade unionist who faced persecution. After the 1980 coup, her family fled to West Berlin.

Education and work
She worked as an interpreter and translator, ran a translation agency, and did official work for notaries, courts, and the Federal Office for the Recognition of Foreign Refugees. She studied Social Sciences at Humboldt University (2005–2007) and later History and Gender Studies, earning a BA in 2016.

Politics
She joined the PDS in 1997. Two years later she was elected to the Berlin state parliament, representing Lichtenberg until 2016. The PDS became The Left in 2007, and she led the Lichtenberg local chapter from 2012 to 2016. In 2016 she ran for mayor of Lichtenberg but withdrew after not gaining a majority; there were unfounded accusations about a false degree claim.

In 2017 she was elected to the Bundestag, where she served on the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development, participated in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, and was deputy chair of the German–Transcaucasian parliamentary group. She ran again in 2021 but was not re-elected when The Left failed to meet the electoral threshold. In May 2022 she resigned from The Left, citing pro-Russian views within the party amid the invasion of Ukraine.

Personal life
She grew up in Schöneberg and later lived in Lichtenberg. In 2009 she married Holocaust historian Robert Sommer, and they have one child.