The ANNOTICO Report

Turkish Immigrants helped fuel "The German Miracle"and were accepted. But
as the immigrant wave started to overwhelm the Germans and they found their
Culture in jeopardy, they became resentful, and reacted by resisting
Turkeys entrance into the EU, fearing an even greater immigration.

The state of Turkish Germans now might be compared to the status of
unintegrated Italian-Americans in the 1950s: The parents are traditional,
heavily accented, sometimes religious.

Their kids speak German, act cool, and try to fit in. But nothing in German
or European history guarantees that a third or fourth generation of Turkish
Germans will adjust to Berlin the way Italian-Americans have adjusted to
New York.

Pacific News Service
News Feature
Michael Scott Moore,
Jun 13, 2005

Editor's Note: Turkish immigrants in Germany are feeling increasingly
insecure following recent elections that many say reveal hostility toward
immigrants.

BERLIN--Berlin's annual Turkish-European Street Festival tries to bring a
dose of Near-Eastern culture to a stubbornly white European town. You can
buy kafta and börek in the booths and pretend, for one afternoon, that the
"Strasse des 17. Juni" is a boulevard in Istanbul. But this year, in the
wake of three decisive elections in Europe -- two defeats for the E.U.
constitution, plus a regional victory for the German right -- the street
fair's motto, "We Are Europeans," had a forced multicultural spirit that
not even the festival-goers believed.

"I have a German passport, but I'm still a foreigner," said Aynur Aktürk, a
woman of about 40 with hay-colored, gray-streaked hair, who moved to Berlin
from Turkey as a teenager and now has two German-born kids. "My husband and
I have jobs, we're lucky. But if we lose our jobs, I don't know what will
happen. Germany is my home now, but it could change." She munched
thoughtfully on a sandwich. "Germany could change again. The people aren't
happy."

The mood at the fair was subdued, compared to previous years, Akturk said.
"It's not as full as it normally is. And you don't see many Germans."

The frustrations that handed Gerhard Schroeder's party a defeat last month
in North Rhine-Westphalia, and forced him to call a snap national election
in the fall -- high unemployment, welfare reform -- have sent Germans as
well as Turks to their nationalistic corners. Schroeder and Jacques Chirac
both championed the idea that Turkey belongs in the EU, but voters didn't
like it. The drubbing both men received at the polls last month has been
read, not just by Turks, as a fear of immigrants.

"The elections in Germany and the referendum in France are the first
signs," wrote Turkish columnist Emin Colasan in the Istanbul daily
Hurriyet. "Europeans do not want us, and they are making it more clear with
their choice now ... Slowly parties that say 'No' to Turkey will take over
governments in Europe." The Economist magazine reckoned that both the
French and Dutch EU referendums showed "growing hostility around Europe ...
to the idea of taking in poor, big and Muslim Turkey."

But Turks here, like other immigrants to Europe, still do the sort of work
most natives try to avoid. Aynur and Sezai Aktürk have factory jobs. He
works in a Berlin aluminum foundry, she works for Bosch-Siemens. They came
to Germany about 25 years ago -- separately -- because their fathers had
been guest workers. Hundreds of thousands of Turkish men settled here
between 1961 and 1974, while West Berlin had a labor agreement with Ankara.
They were a cheap work force that fueled West Germany's "economic miracle."

The guest workers were allowed to bring in wives and children; now Berlin
has the largest concentration of Turks in the world outside Turkey. Around
2 million Turks live in Germany, about 2.4 percent of the population. But
they're not integrated, and they don't feel secure.

"You feel at home in your homeland, not in some other country," Sezai said,
squinting up the Strasse des 17. Juni and wiping his mustache with a
napkin. "If things get bad for us here, perhaps we'll go back."

"I'd rather stay," said his wife.

The state of Turkish Germans now might be compared to the status of
unintegrated Italian-Americans in the 1950s: The parents are traditional,
heavily accented, sometimes religious. Their kids speak German, act cool,
and try to fit in. (Aynur and Sezai make up a middle generation.) But
nothing in German or European history guarantees that a third or fourth
generation of Turkish Germans will adjust to Berlin the way
Italian-Americans have adjusted to New York. America has never been a
nation-state, for one thing; and the most interesting side of the EU
project -- the idea that Europe could move beyond its nation-state
traditions and become more integrated, more open, more American -- is stuck
in the economic mud.

Besides, becoming German has never been exactly cool. The surprise of the
afternoon at the Turkish-European fair was that even a table of modern
teenage girls, all speaking fluid German and wearing jeans and red T-shirts
-- each with a different spangled letter on the front -- was so full of
defiant ethnic pride.

"We're all Berliners, but we miss Turkey," said Banu, from the Black Sea
province of Samsun, who was brought here by her parents. "We go back every
year. And we're proud of being Turkish. That's why we're here."

What did their T-shirts spell?

"Türkiye!" they shouted.

"We're cheerleaders," blurted Melek, from Istanbul, who seemed as chirpy as
any mall-raised girl from California. "No, just kidding."

PNS contributor Michael Scott Moore is a novelist and reporter living in
Berlin. His first novel, "Too Much of Nothing," is out from Carroll & Graf.

http://news.pacificnews.org/news/
view_article.html?article_id=bc7c15b273277c
083353c5be19ae2335