The summer holidays have started in some parts of Germany. And with that the great “summer migration of German Turks”: once again hundreds of thousands get into their cars and travel 3000 km to visit their relatives in Turkey.
In some parts of Germany, the summer holidays have already started. For example in the province of North Rhine-Westphalia. In the coming weeks, the other German states will also go on vacation. This is the period in which hundreds of thousands of Germans of Turkish origin and Turkish guest workers leave Germany through the Balkans to the homeland of their parents, writes an extensive report on the website of the newspaper “Stuttgarter Nahrichten”. It tells about the journey of three Turkish families by car from Germany, through the Balkans and Bulgaria to Turkey.
This summer, the authorities in Turkey expect about 1 million people to arrive in the country in a similar way. According to data from the Federal Ministry for Migration and Refugees, about 3 million people with Turkish roots live in Germany. Nearly 1.5 million of them have Turkish citizenship.
The Erdem family of four is one of those presented in the report. They left in their Mercedes from Wuppertal and are taking a short vacation in Bulgaria, reports “Stuttgarter Nahrichten”. The publication describes their impromptu meal consisting of sandwiches, Coke and peaches.
The father, Özgür Erdem, told the journalists that they set off the previous day at 8 o’clock in the morning. He says he and his wife take turns driving. The total length of the section Wuppertal – Malatya is 3600 km.
Even the Bulgarian customs officers are kind
“The parking lot is full of cars with roof racks and German license plates. The lawns are full of spread blankets and children playing in the air” – this is how the newspaper describes the pause on the road. “It’s very nice everywhere we’ve been,” son Quan describes the trip here. “We were in Serbia, before that we passed through Slovenia, Austria, it was terribly beautiful,” he recalls. Even the Bulgarian customs officers, who have a bad reputation among drivers of Turkish origin, were nice, says Özgür Erdem, quoted by “Stuttgarter Nachtrichten”.
Özgür brings chocolate and whiskey for relatives, and on the way back he wants to fill the empty space in the trunk with clothes, which are much cheaper in Turkey than in Germany. He also wants to get apricots from Malatya. Back in the day, Yozgur’s parents also traveled like this in the summer.
Second generation, same route
“Stuttgarter Nahrichten” also describes the journey of Arafat Chetinkaya from Duisburg. He drives his five children and his wife to Kayseri in Central Anatolia. He has already flown his mother to Turkey, as traveling by car would be too exhausting for her. He then flew back to Germany to take the family by car. The man admits that it would be too expensive for everyone to fly: “If I had to take my whole family by plane, it would cost me 4,000 to 5,000 euros. By car there and back it would be 1,500 euros or at most 2000 euros.”
In Kayseri, where the family has a house, Arafat Chetinkaya wants to visit his father’s grave. He says that he also wants to “rest, eat, drink, hike”.
More comfortable roads and conditions
Funda Suner of Gladbeck rolls up the rugs and blankets she sent for her family’s picnic. Like many other travelers, the Suener family is also the second generation to travel the same route. But unlike Funda’s childhood memories of crossing the border with her nine siblings, her children are much more comfortable today. “Then we traveled through Yugoslavia with twelve people and without air conditioning,” Funda told the Stuttgarter Nahrichten reporter. “It was terribly dangerous,” says the woman. The roads in Greece were also bad, and the route there went through the mountains.
Today, the biggest tests are the traffic jams at the borders. Last year, the Suner family waited 7 hours to cross from Serbia to Bulgaria. This time, however, to her surprise, everything went smoothly. “My husband said, ‘That’s the limit,’ and I told him, ‘It can’t be. Where’s the traffic jam?”.
This year, the Suner family will not visit their native Hatay in southern Anatolia. He was devastated by the terrible earthquake. Meetings with relatives are also not planned. This time, Süner just wants to take a break – somewhere at the sea, he shares via “Stuttgarter Nahrichten”.
And other German publications dwell on the great summer “immigration” of German Turks. “Rainische Post” points out that many of those traveling from Germany to Turkey spend two and a half days on the highway alone. And the portal renk-magazin.de dwells on an old Turkish tradition, which is still practiced by many Turks – at home and abroad. Setting off on a long journey, they each pour a bucket of water behind the departing vehicle. This brings half-light. The car should move on the road as light as water, explains the post on remk-magazin.de.
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2023-06-30 16:30:00
#Germany #Bulgaria #Turkey #hundreds #thousands
