Turkish delight at German cult series’ new hero

Rough talking, leather jacket-clad and quintessentially Teutonic: the intrepid detectives in the cult German-Austrian crime series Tatort have always been one of a kind. Until now that is.

Enter Cenk Batu, the latest addition to the crime squad, who has given the hit show something it has never had before: a hero of Turkish descent.

Millions tuned in for last week’s episode, shown at its usual Sunday prime-time slot. Tatort, translated as crime scene, serves up a typical dose of criminal-chasing antics, but the arrival of Batu, an undercover agent in Hamburg, made history for the 37-year-old series.

“Finally we see a Turkish-German character who is not a bully or a drug dealer but a clever commissar,” said Cinar Safter of the Turkish Union in Berlin, which represents Germany’s 2.6m-strong Turkish community – its largest minority. “This is good news but it comes far too late.”

Although the country’s Turkish population is Germany’s largest ethnic group, it is still under-represented on television.

Sabine Schiffer, who heads the Media Responsibility Institute, argued that more “normal shows” should include minorities. She also complained that newsreaders in particular were rarely from minority communities, projecting an image of the country that is “blonder” than it really is.

Actor Mehmet Kurtulus is well aware of his character’s symbolic value. When he was given the part last year he said the pioneering role had “social and political implications”.

Kurtulus, who moved to Germany from Turkey when he was two years old, has described himself as a representative of a “bridge generation” between the two countries. He sees Batu, who speaks broken Turkish and has no contact with the Turkish community except through his father, as a realistic character.

“The third generation is a lost, identity-less generation,” he said, referring to those whose grandparents moved to Germany as “guest workers” during the economic boom after the second world war.

“They speak a mish-mash of German and Turkish and are not properly linked to Turkey or Germany.”

in Berlin

Guardian