| Ates Gürpinar | |
| Office: | Member of the Bundestag |
| Term Start: | 26 October 2021 |
| Constituency: | Bavaria |
| Office1: | Deputy Leader of The Left |
| Alongside1: | Ali Al-Dailami, Tobias Pflüger, Martina Renner, Katina Schubert, and Jana Seppelt |
| Term Start1: | 27 February 2021 |
| Birth Date: | 1984 9, df=yes |
| Birth Name: | Ates Gürpınar |
| Birth Place: | Darmstadt, Hesse, West Germany |
| Party: | The Left |
| Alma Mater: | University of Erlangen–Nuremberg |
Ates Gürpınar (born 25 September 1984) is a German politician of The Left who is serving as member of the Bundestag since 2021 and one of six deputy leaders of his party since 2018. He is also co-chairman of the Bavarian branch of The Left since 2016.
Gürpinar was born to a Turkish father and a German mother.[1] He attended the Edith-Stein-Schule in Darmstadt and earned his Abitur in 2003. He studied at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg from 2004 to 2011 and graduated with a magister degree in media science and a master's in ethics of text cultures. He also studied modern German literary history and philosophy but did not earn a degree. He teaches media studies and economics at the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences.[2]
Gürpinar joined The Left in 2010. He became politically engaged due to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as the Europe-wide student protests in which he participated in 2009.[3] He became press spokesman for the Bavarian party branch in 2012, and was state managing director from 2014 to 2016. In 2016, he was elected co-leader of the state party.[2] In the 2017 German federal election, he stood in Munich North constituency and won 6.0% of the vote. He was not elected. Along with his counterpart Eva Bulling-Schröter, he was lead candidate for The Left in the 2018 Bavarian state election, but the party failed to win any seats.[4]
In February 2021, Gürpiner was elected one of six federal deputy leaders of The Left.[2] At a party congress, he was nominated with 52% of votes[5] and confirmed with 77%.[6]
In the 2021 German federal election, Gürpinar was elected to the Bundestag in fourth place on the state list.[7] He also ran in the Rosenheim constituency, winning 2.2% of votes.[8]