A 50-Year Journey for Turkey and Germany

ISTANBUL — It was cold and wintry in Istanbul, that day in 1961, when Mehmet Ali Zaimoglu boarded a train to Germany carrying a small bag with a few items of clothing, his only pair of shoes and some beans and bread to eat on what he knew would be a days-long trip to a strange country.

Mr. Zaimoglu, now 73, was one of 750,000 Turks who eventually made that trip to Germany between 1961 and 1972 as so-called guest workers. What was then West Germany needed their labor, because some of its industries had trouble filling vacant jobs.

Sunday marked 50 years since Turkey and Germany first formed an agreement to bring in Turkish workers — a step that neither country, it seems, realized would usher in profound social change.

Before 1961, Germany turned to other European countries — Italy, Spain, Portugal — for workers. The arrangement with Turkey lasted until a German economic downturn in 1973. Today, about 2.5 million of Germany’s 82.2 million inhabitants are of Turkish background; some have been in Germany for three generations. Neighborhoods in some German cities, like Kreuzberg in Berlin, are palpably Turkish, and debate rages about integration, and whether the German government should drop its opposition to Turkey joining the European Union.

Mr. Zaimoglu grew up in the mountainous countryside of Afyon Province in western Turkey, very different from the packed train he boarded 50 years ago, which he recalled was jammed with other anxious young men and women.

Like most of the other men, Mr. Zaimoglu left his wife in Turkey — along with three children and a sick, elderly father. Back then, the agreement was just between the laborers and their employers. Many families remained separated for years, because the guest workers had been expected to leave Germany eventually.

That was one reason Germany did little to integrate the workers. Most guest workers stayed in housing set up specifically for them. “We lived with other men from Turkey, Italy, Spain or Portugal,” Mr. Zaimoglu said, smiling. “It was great because I mixed with people from other cultures, but none of them could speak German and that was a problem.”

Cem Özdemir, now the co-chairman of the German Green Party and the son of Turkish guest workers who arrived in Germany in the early 1960s, said many politicians today forget history. “I know of people who started to ask for German language courses, but the answer they got was: ‘People speak enough German to understand orders,”’ he said in an interview. “It’s unfair to blame the generation of my parents if their German is not as good as it should be.”

Mr. Özdemir’s parents met and married in Germany, where both worked for years in textiles. “I remember when I was a child, my mother came home with bloody arms” from lifting heavy goods, Mr Özdemir said. “It was work which a lot of Germans didn’t want to do. That is a fact which many people like to forget.” His mother later opened a tailoring shop, which she still runs.

Many of the Turkish applicants had to go through a selection process. Although the existence of this sometimes humiliating process is acknowledged by all sides, many are ashamed to talk about it.

Ümmu Yavas, 65, applied with her husband for jobs in Germany in 1971. She got a confirmation letter before her husband, and was invited to the German consulate in Istanbul. “My husband accompanied me and he waited in a room when I was asked to go and meet a doctor from Germany,” Mrs. Yavas said. She paused. “There were nine other women in the room and we were asked to take off all our clothes.”

Mrs. Yavas was then 25, raised in a small town near Antalya. She had never undressed in front of others in her small circle growing up; in the consulate, she had a gynecological examination in front of the other women. “I felt terrible,” she said. “They also checked our teeth and I thought, ‘Why are they treating us like animals?’ We just want to go for work in Germany.”

Days later, Mrs. Yavas got a letter informing her that she should fly to Germany to work in a hotel. In December 1971, she boarded the plane, leaving behind her husband and 10-month-old daughter. Her husband followed her two months later, and they worked together in the cleaning crew at a hotel near Freudenstadt in southwest Germany and then in a factory. “All the workers were foreigners, mainly from Turkey,” she said. “We didn’t learn any German — no time for a language course.”

Over the decades, her health — like that of many guest workers — has deteriorated. They blame the heavy work and the strain of splitting their lives between Turkey and Germany. Several — like Mr. Zaimoglu — still move between the two.

He was among workers who boarded a special train in Istanbul last week, arriving in Munich on Sunday, to mark the 50th anniversary of a pact that changed their lives.

Ibrahim Yorgun, now 76, was another who had boarded that first train to Germany and was making the anniversary trip. “I left my health and youth in Germany,” he said of his years working in an iron factory. “But at least it was worth doing for my children.” His son is a lawyer and his daughter a teacher, both in Frankfurt.

Mr. Özdemir said it was important to acknowledge that Germany for years missed the chance of integrating the guest workers. “Neither Turkey as the sending country nor Germany as receiving country did enough, for a long time, to take care of these people,” he said.