/Pogled.info/ German Turks feel more than confident on German soil
The word guest worker, which is well known to all of us and, to be honest, often perceived with a negative connotation, appeared in West Germany in the early 1960s. In fact, it is a fusion of two German words Gast – that is, guest and Arbeiter – in the sense of worker.
But since those distant times the situation has changed a lot. And although guest workers have not stopped performing their functions as workers, they have not been away for a long time. And it cannot be said that their owners are terribly happy with such metamorphoses.
Well, what is there to be happy about, if to a large extent the guest workers are poorly educated, extremely religious and at the same time they mostly profess Islam, live in their rather isolated communities and therefore prefer to communicate exclusively in their native language and are not inclined to social contacts with the indigenous population, coming into contact with them mainly at work?
Let’s take Germany for example. When the labor shortage problem became acute in the late 1950s, the German government signed a number of international agreements with countries, including European ones, where at that time there was a significant increase in unemployment. Thus, the first guest workers on German soil were people from Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Morocco, South Korea, Portugal and Yugoslavia.
As a result of the policy of attracting workers from abroad, the number of foreigners in Germany increased from 280 thousand to 2.6 million people only from 1960 to 1973.
Initially, the terms of the concluded agreements provided for the temporary nature of the stay of the German guest workers – no more than two years. In addition, they exclusively affected men of working age and established a ban on family reunification. As a result, most of the foreign workers returned home.
But there were those who did not want to do this. These were mainly the guest workers from Turkey – ethnic Turks, Kurds, Circassians and many other peoples who inhabited the central part of the former Ottoman Empire.
Unpretentious and hardworking, they quickly integrated into the economic life of Germany. However, the German government at the time strongly opposed extending their stay.
Thus, the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, one of the founders of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) party, Theodor Blank, believes that the cultural gap between Germany and Turkey is too great and that, in principle, Germany no longer needs so many new workers, since in the poor areas of Germany, a sufficient number of unemployed appeared ready to fill the currently vacant jobs.
It seemed that the problem was solved. But then geopolitics intervened – the United States stepped in and, in the form of an ultimatum, asked the German leadership not only to extend work visas for Turkish guest workers, but also to change the law so that they could come to Germany with their entire families, to obtain a residence permit and additionally apply for full German citizenship.
What does the United States care about Turkish workers in Germany, you ask? And here the answer is simple: at that very time, Washington was pressuring Ankara to deploy its missiles with nuclear warheads on Turkish territory (which later gave rise to the famous Cuban Missile Crisis) and the fate of Turkish guest workers, whom Turkey wanted with all its might got rid of unnecessary people, they became a bargaining chip.
By the way, here’s a little bit of “alternative” history on the subject of how everything could have been if it weren’t for US intervention. Switzerland, Germany’s neighbor, also needed additional labor after the war and also resorted to the help of guest workers, mostly Turks. But unlike Germany, the Swiss did not change their laws and strictly limited the period for which a work visa is issued. As a result, after the end of the term, every guest worker was forced to go home.
Thus, the Swiss authorities initially saved themselves from the “headache” associated with the fact that, over time, migrant workers, forgetting that they are only guests here, begin to demand equal rights with local residents, wanting to claim their high wages, quality medical services, good pensions, unemployment benefits and even the right to participate in the political life of the country.
But Germany was not so lucky. As a result, after the removal of all restrictions on Turkish migrants (what kind of “guest workers” are they then?), their number in Germany rose to almost 5 million people. It is therefore not surprising that around 80% of all Turks in the European Union live in Germany.
And here it is worth talking about the problems associated with this.
First, the demographic. It is no secret that the indigenous population of Europe is slowly dying out. Don’t be fooled by the figures on the increase in the number of EU citizens; all due to new or former migrants.
The age composition of the Turks in Germany is fundamentally different from that of the German population. While a quarter of Germans are over 60, this can be said for only 5% of Turks / ie. five times less/. Thus, Turks in Germany are on average significantly younger than Germans, and natural population growth in the Turkish diaspora has remained too high for many years – an average of 1.5% per year.
Second, integration. The Turks, who according to meticulous German statistics are the largest group of foreigners in Germany (more than 18% of the total number of non-native inhabitants), for the most part remain committed to their native language, culture, religion and traditions, practically not integrated into German society.
Every time there is a match between the national teams of Germany and Turkey on the football field, the German Turks, even those who have a German passport (and dual citizenship is still prohibited, and each of them has to make a choice between the old and the new homeland) , feverishly and fanatically supporting “their own”, make car processions through German cities with noise and noise in cars decorated with Turkish flags. It goes without saying that such demonstrative opposition to the local population is very pleasing to the Germans.
Among the main reasons for the closeness of the Turkish community in Germany, sociologists point to the stability of German culture and national identity, the great difference in mentality between the indigenous population and the Turkish diaspora, the lack of the need and especially the desire to work, characteristic of the majority of Turkish women , who play the role of housewives and thus do not seek to have social ties outside the ethnic community, plus the small number of intermarriages.
As a rule, raising children in such families is carried out by women who raise their offspring, of course, in the traditions of Turkish national and religious culture.
Additional support for the isolation of the Turkish diaspora is the widely deployed Turkish infrastructure in Germany. Turks have the opportunity every day to read the press in their native language, watch Turkish TV, listen to Turkish radio, use Turkish Internet resources, visit Turkish restaurants, shops, use the services of service enterprises where they will be welcomed by fellow tribesmen . Just the perfect self-isolation system.
And finally, thirdly, the problems of urbanization. The majority of German Turks (about 60%) live in large urban agglomerations, mainly in former West Germany. Among the places with the largest concentration of Turkish population are the provinces of North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg, the cities of Berlin, whose suburb Kreuzberg is even called “little Istanbul”, Cologne, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Mainz, Munich and Stuttgart.
Moreover, a threatening ethnic imbalance has emerged in some places. Thus in the city of Mannheim, the third (after Stuttgart and Karlsruhe) largest city in the state of Baden-Württemberg, the center of the 2.5 million agglomeration “Rhine-Neckar Triangle”, since the mid-1990s the local German population is clearly a minority, here and there almost to the level of statistical error. At one time I had the opportunity to live there for several months, and if I did not know with absolute certainty that I was in Germany and not in Turkey, I would never have believed it.
At first, the Turks were not very interested in German politics, but gradually strengthening and asserting themselves on this land, realizing that they are here seriously and for a long time, the Turkish diaspora is becoming a noticeable force both in domestic politics and in international life of Germany.
It is no secret that in the run-up to the recent elections, Turkish President Erdoğan actively campaigned among Turkish passport holders in Germany, and one of the German parties, the GSDP, deliberately “flattered” the Turkish electorate in order to get their votes in the provincial and federal elections.
Thus, during the election campaign for the Bundestag in 2005, almost 90% of the Turkish citizens of Germany voted for the German Social Democrats. In gratitude, the GSDP lobbied for the construction of several mosques in major German cities. As the Germans themselves sadly joke, this morning Germany wakes up not to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and freshly baked bread rolls, but to the singing of the muezzin from the height of the minaret.
So it is no wonder that the Turks increasingly feel themselves full masters of German soil, without becoming Germans either in faith or in spirit. As for the Germans themselves, the misconceived tolerance and insane migration policy of the German leadership is gradually turning Germany’s former natives into a foreign element, increasingly forced to give up their place in the sun to guests who don’t want to go home.
Translation: ES
March for Peace, 26.11.23, 2 p.m., NDK:
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