Turks in Germany: from harmony and integration to participation and citizenship

Let us continue, God willing, our unfinished discussion on the nature of the system, the political and Islamism, which, at this rate, will perhaps never be completed. Anyway, today is not my regular column day. Today I am writing exclusively to offer an assessment of an event I attended.

Last Sunday the German-Turkish Friendship Association, headquartered in Munich and chaired by Cihan Sendan, organized an evening to honor those who have contributed to the dialogue and friendship between the two peoples over fifty years of the Turks' adventure in Germany. Award ceremonies are not among the events that interest me much, but depending on how they are conducted and on the manner in which the honorees are approached, they can be an important occasion for understanding the mind and emotional state of a society: who is found worthy of being honored, by whom, and in the name of what, in particular periods. And since the subject was German-Turkish relations, which had reached their 50th year, I thought the ceremony might also be an interesting reckoning of those fifty years. It turned out just as I had expected. The speeches that everyone had carefully prepared for the award ceremony turned into a display and a reckoning in which all the hidden and open problems of Turkish-German relations were laid out, and in which, of course, everyone in general took positive approaches.

The approach of the mayor of Munich, who presented the award to one of the recipients, was a very sincere and courageous self-criticism on behalf of the Germans. Finding unjust the criticisms made by some German writers that Turks constitute a burden on the German economy by continually receiving aid, the mayor compared, crosswise, the situation of Germans and Turks receiving state aid in the state of Berlin with those in Munich. In this comparison, he explained with figures that, thanks to the employment measures they had taken, far fewer Turks in Munich resorted to such aid, whereas Germans, contrary to what is assumed, actually benefited more from it. He then showed that accusing Turks on the grounds that "they do not want to work" is both a great injustice and merely gives administrators an opportunity for taking the easy way out. According to him, it is not possible for German administrators to get off the hook by shifting responsibility for their own failures onto the Turks.

In the speeches at the award ceremony there were very good openings, particularly on integration and adaptation. It was explained that, however tiresome they have become, neither concept can be a concept of a contemporary, democratic society. The Turks who came to Germany fifty years ago and have become part of Germany's whole have undoubtedly also changed Germany's chemistry. It is increasingly noticed and stated that it is not normal to talk so much today about their adaptation problems, and what an authoritarian-totalitarian demand this problematic actually contains. This problem, which belongs to the whole of Europe, while fostering a separate sensitivity toward values such as multiculturalism, democracy and participation, is increasingly felt in its strange and paradoxical dimension.

Talk of the adaptation and integration of Turks or any other element does not befit a democratic multicultural society. The processes that can be discussed for Turks or other elements in such a society are rather concepts such as "participation" and "democratic citizenship." In a democratic society everyone is the owner and shareholder of his or her own state; from the moment one pays taxes and fulfills the basic condition of participation, one can only ask why one does not or cannot participate in the system. Adaptation problems, on the other hand, begin by transforming people and making them different from what they are. "Participation and citizenship against adaptation and integration" became a point on which both the Turks and the Germans who came together on this basis of friendship formed an alliance.

Claudia Roth, a well-known figure of the Green Party, who received the politics award at the ceremony from the hand of the former prime minister of the Munich state, described with her enthusiastic style the last 15 years she has devoted to developing Turkish-German relations. She drew attention to the fact that Germany is increasingly represented at every level of German society by Germany's successful Turkish names. Explaining that, in this state of affairs, the Turks within Germanness have become such a part of Germany that they cannot be uprooted, Roth expressed the Turks' growing influence within Germany as a source of great excitement and hope for the Germany she longs for. This intertwining has also changed and reshaped Germany's culture of Germanness. For a Germany that has lived through the Nazi experience, this historic opening toward the Turks is a great stroke of luck. Otherwise, Roth said, Germanness, left to itself as a monotonous, colorless culture, would be of no benefit either to itself or to the world.

Other German participants, building on Roth's picture, noted that, since recent political and economic developments in Turkey are attracting a significant segment of the Turkish population to return, this migration would be saddening and perhaps in some sense a loss for Germany, and a gain for Turkey. But in any case optimism was also expressed that those who return would continue to fulfill an important function in the development of German-Turkish relations.

At the ceremony, where participation from Turks, Germans and other nationalities was quite high, Minister of Culture Ertuğrul Günay was also expected to be present to receive the "Culture Award," but because the Prime Minister did not want any absences on account of the AK Parti's Kızılcahamam camp, the award was received on the minister's behalf by the Culture Ministry's adviser İbrahim Sarıtaş. On the minister's behalf, Sarıtaş gave an impressive, improvised speech in German about the culture policies and actions of the last nine years.

As can be seen, the award ceremony offered, beyond simple hospitality, an important opportunity for reckoning and dialogue.