With an estimated number of at least 2.1 million Turks in Germany, they form the largest ethnic minority. The vast majority are found in what used to be West Germany. Berlin, Frankfurt,Hamburg, Rhine-Ruhr (Cologne, Duisburg and Dortmund) have large Turkish communities. The state with the largest Turkish population is North Rhine-Westphalia.
BERLIN — Turkey’s foreign minister said Saturday that a killing spree of mainly Turkish immigrants in Germany between 2000 and 2007 was “a racist attack that should not go unpunished,” as he visited victims’ families in Berlin.
At a closed-door meeting with families, Ahmet Davutoglu vowed that Turkey would keep a close eye on the high-profile case that has shocked and shamed Germany, according to a foreign ministry official.
On Monday, the hotly anticipated trial opened of 38-year-old Beate Zschaepe, accused of being at the heart of the murderous neo-Nazi cell that called itself the National Socialist Underground (NSU).
Zschaepe denies the charge of complicity in the murders of eight ethnic Turks, a Greek immigrant and a German policewoman.
via AFP: Turkey FM: German neo-Nazi murders must not go unpunished.
Turkish media closely watched the opening of the NSU trial in Munich on Monday. Newspapers describe the feelings of the victims’ families and the main defendant’s attitude in court.
Beate Zschäpe’s appearance in room A 101 of the Munich court on Monday was the main topic in many Turkish newspapers a day later.
“Nazi-bride in a Hitler pose,” the paper Habertürk headlined, showing a photo of Zschäpe with folded arms next to an image of Adolf Hitler in a similar pose.
Other Turkish papers also commented on the main defendant’s attitude on the first day of the trial. On its front page, Hürriyet calls Zschäpe an “impudent Nazi”, emphasizing that the 38-year-old turned her back on the court and the relatives of the eight Turkish NSU victims. The day in court, the paper continues, was a stage for the defendant’s “show.”
Air of defiance
The papers report Zschäpe’s appearance in the courtroom deeply affected the relatives of the NSU victims present for the trial. Sabah and other papers quote Dilek Özcan, the daughter of Ismail Yasar – shot dead in 2006 in Nuremberg – as saying she “shivered when she saw Zschäpe and felt deep hatred.” A tearful Özcan is reported to have added she was certain Zschäpe would get her just punishment.
Semiya Simsek wants to know why her father was singled out
Other relatives focused on the many open questions in the trial. Enver Simsek’s daughter Semiya says she wanted to know why neo-Nazis singled out her father of all people as a victim. According to the Vatan daily, she says her trust in the Federal Republic of Germany has been destroyed by the murders.
Offended by a crucifix
The Turkish media are particularly interested in the court’s shedding light on the bungled investigation. The Milliyet daily terms the trial “Germany’s Nazi check.” However, even ahead of the trial, commentators doubted the German judiciary was up to the task. Speaking to Turkish reporters before proceedings began in Munich, Ayhan Sefer Üstün, chairman of the human rights committee in the Turkish parliament, expressed hopes for a just verdict, despite the defense’s obvious delaying tactics. “That is what we expect and we will continue to keep a close eye on developments,” he said.
Opened and adjourned
Not all Turkish observers were as open-minded, however. Mahmut Tanal of the opposition CHP party and a member in Üstün’s delegation, called for the removal of a crucifix from the courtroom. He argued the Christian symbol is a “threat” to all non-Christians that contradicts the principles of a secular constitutional state.
Anti-democratic forces
The court’s upcoming assessment reminds some Turkish observers of the situation in their country. The Star newspaper compares the NSU trial with proceedings against the nationalist killer of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. Zschäpe, the prime suspect in the German case, presented herself with as much defiance as Dink’s murderer, Ogün Samast – who, according to Dink’s lawyers, had willing supporters from within the Turkish state.
Erdal Safak, chief editor of Sabah – the Turkish paper whose German subsidiary successfully complained to Germany’s highest court about the allocation of seats for foreign media at the trial – also draws a comparison with Turkey.
The Munich trial is about Germany’s “deep state,” Safak says, referring to the Turkish term for an interdependence of rightwing forces in the state and violent criminals.
The Turkish government regards members of the alleged ultra-nationalist underground network Ergenekon, currently on trial in Turkey, as representatives of the “deep state” that planned to seize power from elected politicians. That is why Turkish organizations must continue to keep a close eye on the NSU trial, Safak says: after all, the “German Ergenekon” is on trial in Munich.
via Turkey’s media has a watchful eye on NSU trial | Germany | DW.DE | 07.05.2013.
When a majority of fellow citizens believe that the religion you follow is incompatible with their nation then you may be inspired to move elsewhere.
When you are less likely to get a job that you are as qualified as anyone else to perform because of the way your name sounds that may inspire you to want to leave.
It appears that after years of being treated as second-class citizens a large number of Turks are going back to Turkey. No doubt Islamophobes will be partying, but who will they scapegoat now?
The euro crisis and Islamophobia are making Turkey more appealing to the descendants of Turkish immigrants who have been living in Germany.
In 1961, desperate to increase its labor force, West Germany signed an employment agreement with Turkey and launched a wave of immigration that continues to have repercussions today.
Now, after years of being treated as second-class citizens in Europe’s economic powerhouse, large numbers of Turks — descendants of the first wave of immigrants — are returning to Turkey.
In A Strange Land
Yucel Yolcu, 44, has a good life in Istanbul. He likes his job as a film director; his sunny apartment on a hill above the Bosphorus is alive with the sounds of guests and pets.
But when he thinks back to his early childhood in Germany, he’s amazed things worked out this way. His early memories are of being left on his own at age 5 while his parents went off to work in a German factory.
“It was a backyard of an old Berlin building, and I saw there were other black-haired kids like me … staying all the day in the backyard, and we didn’t know what we are doing there,” he says. “And there were other kids, blond, looking a little bit different, and we couldn’t understand each other.”
Some would argue that Germans and their growing Turkish minority never learned to understand each other.
Reasons To Leave
At first, the Turks believed they would soon be returning home with the wealth to start a better life. But as Turkey’s political situation was roiled by violent unrest and military coups, more and more Turks opted to stay in Germany.
Semra Guzel-Korver with the European Broadcasting Union has made two documentaries on Turks in Germany. She’s not surprised that a growing number of them are leaving Germany, now that Turkey’s economy is robust and growing.
“A lot of Turkish, especially young generation, come back to Istanbul and other Turkish cities, because … they cannot find jobs anymore in Germany,” she says.
“They finished the university, they know three or four languages, everything is perfect — but their name is Turkish,” Guzel-Korver adds.
She says the euro crisis has increased racism and Islamophobia.
Resorting To Gangs
Racism and Islamophobia are what drove some Turks in Germany to make a stand. They watched in dismay as a recession in the 1980s and the reunification of Germany after 1989 brought a rise in neo-Nazi violence against immigrants.
As the neo-Nazi attacks spiked in the early ’90s, young Turkish immigrants began to form street gangs and confront them. Al Jazeera’s English channel aired a documentary about the most famous of the Turkish gangs, known as “36 Boys.” In the film, former gang member Soner Arslan said organizing was a matter of survival.
“The 36 Boys, people think we’re dangerous and beat people up all the time, but the reality wasn’t like that,” he said. “We had a war here, and we had to protect ourselves. They wanted to kill us, and the German police and politicians did nothing about it.”
Coming ‘Home’
For decades, the Turks kept coming, but now the flow is reversing. One recent study concludes that some 193,000 Turks left Germany to come home between 2007 and 2011. The most commonly cited reasons were better job prospects in Turkey and discrimination in Germany.
Yolcu was a member of the 36 Boys gang (named after the postal code of a tough Berlin neighborhood where many of them grew up). But one day, he decided that he was never going to get work in films if he stayed in a drug- and violence-prone gang.
“I have to make a new start. I felt like I have to earn money with art, and all my friends were dealers. I mean, they are still dealing,” he says.
Yolcu wound up in Istanbul, sleeping on a friend’s couch and trying to break into the film business. It was around that time that he began a new, unexpected process of adjustment. For all his efforts to cling to a Turkish identity while in Germany, he now found that in some ways these Turks were utter foreigners to him.
He was surprised to find a Germanic desire for order welling up in him one day while walking down Istanbul’s teeming downtown thoroughfare, with masses of people jostling this way and that.
“You know, I can’t understand why all the people are walking like this! And one day I was nearly to cry, ‘Stop! You go right and you go left!’ ” he says. “I mean, I couldn’t understand why there is no people who says, ‘It’s too much people here! You don’t see it?’ ”
Over time, Yolcu grew to embrace the relative chaos of Turkey and now feels at home here. He also keeps an eye out for his fellow Almancis, or German-Turks, because he knows what it’s like to feel like a stranger in your homeland.
via German-Turks Leaving Germany For Turkey | loonwatch.com.
Syria opposition must distance itself from “terrorists:” Germany
Sat Apr 20 16:29:00 UTC 2013
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Saturday the Syrian opposition must distance itself from extremist forces and he said Germany was skeptical about supplying weapons to the rebels.”We expect from the opposition that they clearly distance themselves in Syria from terrorist and extremist forces,” Westerwelle told reporters in Istanbul at a meeting of Syrian opposition leaders and their international backers.
“We are skeptical as the German government when it comes to delivering weapons because we are concerned that weapons could fall into the wrong, namely extremist, hands, but it is a matter that must now be discussed in the European Union.”
A U.S. official said on Friday Washington planned to provide about $100 million in new non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition that could include for the first time battlefield support equipment such as body armor and night-vision goggles.
Secretary of State John Kerry was expected to announce the new aid package, which would mark a recalibration of U.S. policy toward Syrian rebel groups at Saturday’s meeting. Fresh U.S. humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees is also likely.
The new assistance would stop short of supplying weapons to rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It is also far less than what is sought by Syrian opposition leaders, U.S. allies Britain and France and some U.S. lawmakers.
The 11-nation “core group” of the Friends of Syria, including the United States, European and Arab nations, has been deadlocked over how to remove Assad, whose security forces killed and arrested thousands of protesters who took to the streets to demand democratic reforms in March 2011.
Syria’s opposition has said it hopes the Istanbul meeting will give teeth to a tacit agreement that arming rebel groups is the best way to end Assad’s rule.
More than 70,000 have been killed in the revolt and subsequent civil war. But a military stalemate has set in and much of Syria is left in ruins because of a divided and ineffective opposition, a lack of action by foreign allies and Assad’s ability to rely on support from Russia and Iran.
(Reporting by Nick Tattersall; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Stephen Powell)
Germany’s Deutsche Boerse has decleared its interest in Istanbul’s renewed bourse, which is looking for international partnerships with technlogy providers, market makers and investment funds.
The newly reorganized Borsa Istanbul is looking for strategic partners in three different categories to elevate its reputation amid attention from the German bourse, which has expressed interest in the Turkish bourse’s partnership plans.
“The first of these [categories] will be selected from among the groups that will support our technological infrastructure, enhance our market access and increase our international popularity. The second will be among the market makers that could permanently provide liquidity, and the third will be among large and private investment funds that are acknowledged as opinion leaders in the global markets,” _brahim Turhan, Borsa Istanbul’s chairman and CEO, told daily Hrriyet yesterday, adding that 40.5 percent of the stock exchange would be given to strategic partners in the three categories.
Borsa Istanbul has already attracted attention from Germany following its recent reorganization.
“Turkey has a spectacularly fast-growing economy between Asia and Europe,” Deutsche Boerse Corporate Affairs Deputy President Frank Herkenhoff told Anatolia news agency yesterday.
“That’s why we are closely interested in the efforts [of Turkey] to make Istanbul an international finance center. We are interested in the plans of the Turkish government about this issue,” the Gruppe Deutsche Boerse spokesman said.
Global interest
Herkenhoff said the recent consolidation of the gold and stock exchanges under the single umbrella of Borsa Istanbul was an important step in Istanbul’s attempt to become a financial center, adding that the Deutsche Brse viewed possible strategic partnerships with the Turkish exchange favorably.
“Our Bourse has an understanding to build a successfully strategic partnership with the stock market in Istanbul,” Herkenhoff added.
The Turkish government and Borsa Istanbul have both said their next move will be to form international partnerships.
Some media reports claimed Borsa Istanbul was in talks with information technologies (IT) departments of leading global stock exchanges including the Deutsche Brse, Nasdaq, the London Stock Exchange, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange-CME and The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for technology infrastructure equipment partnerships.
After the completion of all required works by the end of 2015, bourse officials plan to offer 49 percent of the entity to the public, Turhan said.
Trial of a Neo-Nazi in Germany Is Delayed Over Media Concerns
By MELISSA EDDY
BERLIN — After weeks of outrage in Germany and Turkey over how seats for members of the foreign news media were allocated at the trial of a prominent neo-Nazi, a state court in Munich said Monday that it would delay the opening of the trial by three weeks to allow for a new accreditation process.
Reuters
Beate Zschäpe
The decision — only two days before Beate Zschäpe, the sole survivor of a neo-Nazi cell that killed 10 people, was to go on trial — was met with a mixture of relief and anger. Representatives of the relatives of victims expressed frustration that the court had waited so long to find a solution to a problem that had drawn in government officials.
Revelation of the cell’s existence in late 2011 shocked Germans and raised questions about how security authorities could have failed for the better part of a decade to stop the group from killing minorities. The cell’s members killed eight men of Turkish descent, a Greek and a German policewoman.
Among the most dismayed at the trial’s delay were the victims’ relatives, many of whom had made travel arrangements and taken time off from work to attend the trial, said Barbara John, the ombudswoman appointed by the German government to represent their interests.
Jens Rabe, a lawyer for Kerim and Semiya Simsek, whose father was the cell’s first victim in 2000, called the last-minute decision “more than annoying.”
“The delay of the trial opening is the result of the court’s unyielding position and refusal to accept criticism or constructive suggestions for solutions,” Mr. Rabe said.
Since it became clear last month that no Turkish journalists were among the 50 reporters — out of more than 100 who applied — to be guaranteed a seat in the courtroom, calls for their inclusion spread from the news media to politicians in Turkey and Germany.
On Friday, Germany’s highest court ruled in favor of a Turkish journalist who had filed a petition to be allowed into the courtroom, citing what he called an unfair distribution of seats. The journalist, Ismail Erel, an editor at the Turkish newspaper Sabah, had argued to the constitutional court in Karlsruhe that the e-mail informing him about the accreditation arrived 19 minutes later than at several German newspapers, enough of a delay to jeopardize his chances for a guaranteed seat.
Officials including Philipp Rösler, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy, and Germany’s minister for immigrant affairs, had urged the court to show “sensitivity” in handling the Turkish media’s appeals to attend the trial.
Margarete Nötzel, a spokeswoman for the Munich court, said in a statement that given the constitutional court’s ruling on Friday, “a new accreditation process will be necessary. ” She gave no details about how the process would be conducted.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 16, 2013, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Trial of a Neo-Nazi in Germany Is Delayed Over Media Concerns.
via Trial of German Neo-Nazi Is Delayed Over Media Concerns – NYTimes.com.
BERLIN — Turkey’s foreign minister said Saturday that a killing spree of mainly Turkish immigrants in Germany between 2000 and 2007 was “a racist attack that should not go unpunished,” as he visited victims’ families in Berlin.
