Turks
in Germany have found
themselves at the centre of a squabble as Ankara
and Berlin
exchange blows over ‘integration’.
March 2008
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish
Prime Minister RecepTayyipErdogan
have become entangled in a row over the integration of Turks in Germany.
Erdogan angered his German counterpart and the German
right when, during a recent visit to Germany,
he addressed a 20,000-strong crowd of Turks in Cologne.
Although he told them that they must integrate
into German society and see themselves as part of Germany, they should also not lose
their Turkish cultural identity. The Turkish leader went on to describe forced
assimilation as “a crime against humanity”.
Some German commentators have speculated that Erdogan’s comments were motivated by his sense of being
jilted by Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy who have expressed reservations about Turkey’s
future membership of the EU.
And Erdogan’s
comments on German Turks would appear to be an analogy of how he feels about
his country’s position in the EU fold: that Turkey should be allowed to become
a full member of the European community without having to
discard its cultural identity and history nor settle for the “privileged
partnership” mooted by Merkel. I am personally in favour of Turkey, which has been a major player on the
European stage for centuries, becoming an EU member, especially if it keeps up
its current pace of reform.
Perhaps annoyed at Erdogan’s
ability to pull such a large crowd of German-Turks, Merkel quipped: “If you
grow up in Germany
in the third or fourth generation, if you have German citizenship, then I am
your chancellor.”
The trouble for Merkel is that, due to Germany’s tough nationality
laws (which were relaxed
somewhat by Gerhard Schröder), not many Turks in Germany
fit her description. Only an estimated 500,000 of the 2.7 million or so Turks
living in the country have German nationality. If Merkel wishes her Turkish
population to feel more ‘German’, perhaps she ought to give them a greater
stake in society by making it easier for them to acquire citizenship.
Of course, Turkey is in no position to be
throwing stones at Germany given the way it handles its own minorities and the
nationalist pressures it exerts on its citizens to conform to a certain notion
of‘Turkishness’
that has been a hallmark of the Kemalist republic
established by Mustafa Kemal ‘Atatürk’ (Father of
the Turks).
“I have nothing against most of what Erdogan said,” Thomas, a German friend, told me. “But what
would’ve been the reaction if Merkel had gone to Turkey and demanded
Kurdish-language schools and told Kurds how far they should integrate into
Turkish society? Turkish conservatives and nationalists would’ve reacted much
more harshly to such a speech than their German counterparts have.”
Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after the first world
war, Kurds lost most of the autonomy they had enjoyed for centuries and
saw their native land divided between four countries. In Turkey, although Kurds
theoretically have equal rights under the law, they have endured decades in
which their civic and cultural rights have been curtailed. Turkish laws still
severely limit the use of the Kurdish language, and ban Kurdish names and
traditional dress.
Luckily, Turks in Germany do not suffer the
same oppression as Kurds in Turkey and Erdogan would
do well to take home his own advice and give Kurds the cultural and political
space they deserve in order to bring an end to the century-old conflict between
them and the state.
Despite the heated rhetoric of the Erdogan-Merkel row, the two conservatives seemed actually
to agree on the basic issues: “I am pleased he [Erdogan]
pronounces himself in favour of integration and learning the German language,”
Merkel acknowledged.
However, she had a ‘but’ up her sleeve:
“Long-term life in a country also involves a stronger acceptance of its
habits.”
This raises the vexed questions of how far
integration should go before it becomes harmful, whether assimilation is more
beneficial than diversity or vice-versa, and how much cultural difference a
society should tolerate.
To my mind, there is a fundamental
contradiction between the importance liberal democracies in Europe
assign to individualism and this type of conformist pressure. For instance,
which “habits” precisely does the German chancellor wish Turks to be more
accepting of? Does “acceptance” mean understanding and making allowances for
these habits or does it mean adopting them?
If it means adoption, what should we, then, do
with all those native Germans who reject those same traditions? Should native
German cultural minorities, such as environmentalists, communists and converts
to other religions be ostracised or penalised for not accepting certain “ habits”?
That would be a huge problem for Germany
which has an old tradition of eccentric individualism. For instance, in the
inter-war years, ‘Orientalist’ lifestyles were all
the rage among the Bohemian crowd, including Baron and Baroness ‘Omar’ Rolf and
Elfriede von Ehrenfels, and
Lev Nussimbaum,
akaEssadBey and Kurban Said.
Moreover, all this talk of integration would be
more convincing if Europeans tended to practise what they preached when living
abroad. But the general western habit is to set up little islands of home
wherever they settle down, whether that is in Dubai,
Cairo, Beijing or
Singapore.
Despite many notable exceptions, the majority
tend to describe themselves as ‘expatriates’ even if they have spent the
greater part of their lives in another country – some even continue to do so
for generations. In Cairo,
I have run into ageing Brits, Italians and other Europeans who can hardly
string together a sentence in Arabic and live in a cocoon of expat institutions.
An example that might interest Merkel is Helenendorf, a Black Forest village, located not in the
Schwarzwald, but nestled rather bizarrely between the
Azeri desert and the foothills of the Caucasus.
In the heart of this Muslim region, German immigrants constructed a typical
German hamlet, kept up with the latest trends in Germany,
brought in German teachers and established Azerbaijan’s only cognac and wine
industry. But instead of facing animosity at their failure to assimilate, they
were generally viewed with fascination and thrall by the local tribes and were
accepted as a bizarre addition to the region’s cultural mix.
More grimly, if we were to turn to one of the
darkest chapters of European history, what good did assimilation do German
Jews? Their faith in ‘Bildung
