Chancellor Angela Merkel claimed that Germany's multiculturalism "utterly failed" but many Germans whose parents came from Turkey complain that they have never really been made welcome.
by John F Jungclaussen, London Correspondent - Die Zeit Published: 6:24PM BST 23 Oct 2010
Kreuzberg never sleeps. When the Turkish market traders along the canal pack up their stalls for the day, another part of Berlin's notoriously colourful district comes to life instead.
Down the road in Bergmannstrasse, a group of punks gather in the vegan café, the Arab restaurant is filled with sheesha-smoking punters and in one of the many Turkish coffee bars old men role the dice and chat with a bunch of Australian tourists who got lost on their way to a famous gay bar in the neighbourhood.
The world is at home in Kreuzberg. Nowhere does Berlin feel more like a modern metropolis. The Germans call it "Multikulti"; the multicultural society where Germans and immigrants from any ethnic or religious background live happily side-by-side.
"Multikulti" has made Berlin one of the largest Turkish cities in the world and yet Chancellor Angela Merkel is convinced that the vision of a multicultural Germany has "utterly failed." These comments came in a recent speech to a conference of junior Christian Democrats and the next generation of German Conservatives couldn't agree more. They leapt to their feet to deliver standing ovations.
Mrs Merkel is not the kind of politician who uses sweeping statements to grab the headlines but in this instance she waded into a debate over immigration and the integration of foreigners which has occupied the Germans for months. About time too, it is fair to say, because this is a debate the country has avoided for the best part of 50 years. Now it causes an identity crisis and plenty of German Angst.
The trouble started in September when Central Banker Thilo Sarrazin published a book in which he accused Muslim immigrants of being reluctant to integrate. He cited statistics to prove that young Muslims were most likely to fail in school and end up on benefit or in a world of crime.
"I do not have to acknowledge anyone who lives on social benefit, doesn't care for the education of his children and constantly produces new little headscarf-girls," he wrote, predicting that within a few generations Muslim population growth "may well overwhelm the Germans."
It is controversial stuff to say the least, especially from a left-leaning Social Democrat like Sarrazin. But while large parts of the media erupted in fury and accused the author of xenophobia, the tome has sold over 650 000 copies since. Sarrazin clearly struck a nerve.
Out of a total population of 82 million, almost seven million people living in Germany are migrants. The majority, around three million, are Turks. They began arriving in the early 1960s when West-German industry was in desperate need of cheap labour to meet the demands of the post-war economic miracle.
The first of the "guest workers", as they were known, came from Italy and Greece - but soon it was Turks from rural parts of Anatolia who represented the bulk of Germany's foreign unskilled labour force and went down the mines of the Ruhr or manned the production lines of VW, Mercedes and Bosch.
Before long southern Europe experienced its own economic boom and many of the first generation of "guest workers" returned home. Most of the Turks, however, stayed and Turkish quarters like Kreuzberg and neighbouring Neukölln have become a part of most West German cities – and they are synonymous with Germany's dilemma over integration.
Neukölln resident Öztürk Kiran, 36, reacts angrily to the Chancellor's statement. "How can integration fail when it was never really tried in the first place?" he asks. Mr Kiran's parents arrived from Turkey in the 1970s. His mother worked in a textile factory and his father as a building labourer. Mr Kiran himself has been to university and now works as a placement officer in a job centre. He is married with two young children, who he hopes will continue his family's upward trajectory in Germany. The difference between Germany and many other countries such as Britain and the United States is that Germany has never considered itself an "immigration country", Mr Kiran says. Guest workers such as his parents were always expected to go home when their work was done. There never really was an immigration policy let alone a multiculturalism policy, he adds.
Stories like the one of the upwardly mobile Kiran family can be found everywhere in Germany but it happened against the odds. "After 50 years, many Germans still see Turks only as temporary residents," says Berlin-based journalist Peter Littger.
"Instead of appreciating their potential to enrich society there is a deep-rooted fear that foreigners, especially from Islamic countries, could undermine the very foundations of German culture and politics."
The rhetoric of one senior Conservative politician is a case in point. "Germany is not a country of immigration," says Bavaria's Minister President Horst Seehofer. "Integration means to adopt the principles of a guiding German culture based on our Judeo-Christian roots."
A recent poll by Stern magazine has shown that 46 per cent of Germans fear that foreign infiltration could undermine their way of life and threaten the basis of the political system.
This attitude is also reflected in Angela Merkel's stance on Turkey's accession to the EU. The Chancellor wants to link Ankara and Brussels in a "privileged partnership" but is adamant that the cultural differences between an Islamic state and Western Europe stand in the way of full Turkish membership.
No wonder then that even after three generations the Turkish community has barely left an imprint on German society. There is of course Mesut Özil, the 22 year-old star of the German national football squad. But any search for the German equivalent of ITV's Trinidadian-born news anchor Trevor McDonald is futile. Nor has Turkish cuisine found its way onto the national menu in the way that chicken tikka massala has in Britain, and among the 622 MPs in the German parliament a mere five come from a Turkish family.
"The truth is that the Turks were never welcome here," says Mr Littger. "In this respect the Germans are profoundly illiberal, certainly in comparison with the British." Even the most ardent liberals don't deny that language skills and standards in education are issues that affect young German Muslims more than other pupils. But moderate voices point out that unless there is a sea change in public opinion, with more Germans acknowledging the added value that ethnic and religious minorities can have for society, there will be no incentive for German Turks to play their part in the integration.
Polls in recent years have shown that more and more young German-Turkish men define themselves above all as Muslim. Jordan-born Raed Saleh, SPD member of the Berlin assembly, finds that worrying and warns that the alienation of young Muslims "may make them easy prey for radical Islamists." As she is faced with a serious bout of good old German Angst among her electorate, Angela Merkel has to reconcile another major challenge: just like 50 years ago, the German economy needs human capital to keep growing.
Back then it was unskilled labourers who headed the call. Today German industry needs highly skilled professionals. But, as before, they will have to come from abroad - and who wants to live in a country where they can't be sure they're welcome?
Additional reporting by David Wroe in Berlin
telegraph
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