Category: Germany

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.

  • Turkish Identity Formation and Political Mobilization in Western Europe and North America

    Turkish Identity Formation and Political Mobilization in Western Europe and North America

    From: Gokce Yurdakul <g.yurdakul2007@googlemail.com>
    List Editor: Mark Stein <Mark.Stein@GW.MUHLENBERG.EDU>
    Editor’s Subject: H-TURK: Call for papers for a special issue in Turkish Studies [G Yurdakul]
    Author’s Subject: H-TURK: Call for papers for a special issue in Turkish Studies [G Yurdakul]
    Date Written: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:47:20 -0400
    Date Posted: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:47:20 -0400
    CALL FOR PAPERS FOR A SPECIAL ISSUE IN TURKISH STUDIES (to appear in June
    2009)
    
    We would like to invite papers for a special issue in Turkish Studies
    journal on Turkish Identity Formation and Political Mobilization in Western
    Europe and
    North America. We are specifically interested in original articles that
    focus on Turkish immigrant associations and their participation in politics
    in
    FRANCE, BELGIUM, and in the UNITED KINGDOM.  Articles that contain primary
    data will be preferred. If you would like to submit your article to this
    special
    issue, please contact: Dr. Sebnem Koser Akcapar at sa364@georgetown.edu and
    Dr. Gokce Yurdakul at g.yurdakul2007@gmail.com (special issue guest
    editors).
    Please note that all articles will be peer-reviewed. The submission date is
    July 30, 2008.  This special issue is currently in preparation and has the
    following articles:
    Turkish organisations in Europe: how national contexts provide different
    avenues for    participation? Pontus Odmalm   //  Divided We Stand?: Turks
    and Turkish associations in the United States, Sebnem Koser Akcapar //
    Immigrant associations in Canada: Included, accommodated or excluded? Saime
    Ozcurumez// Islam, conflicts and immigrant integration in Germany: The cases
    of Diyanet
    Isleri and Milli Gorus, Gokce Yurdakul // Organizing for access? The
    political mobilization of Turks in Amsterdam, Laure Michon and Floris
    Vermeulen //
    "The light of the Alevi fire was lit in Germany and then spread to Turkey":
    The debate about
    the relationship between Alevism and Islam, Esra Ozyurek //
    Towards a success story? Turkish immigrant organisations in Norway, Jon
    Rogstad, // The Gulen Movement in Ireland: Civil society engagements of a
    Turkish religio-cultural community, Jonathan Lacey.
    
    Best regards,
    Gokce Yurdakul
    Post-doctoral Fellow
    Freie Universitaet Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies
  • PKK Says Kidnapped Tourists Well, Urges Germany to Back Kurds

    PKK Says Kidnapped Tourists Well, Urges Germany to Back Kurds

    By Ben Holland

    July 14 (Bloomberg) — The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, said the three German tourists it kidnapped last week are well, and urged Germany to end a crackdown on Kurdish groups.

    The three men, seized on July 8 while they were climbing Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey, “have no problem with their health,” the PKK said in a statement to the Kurdish Firat news agency yesterday.

    To ensure their safe return, Germany should press Turkey to stop military operations against the PKK in southeast Turkey, the group said. Germany’s “anti-Kurdish policies” make it likely that incidents such as the kidnapping will occur again, it said.

    The PKK has been fighting for autonomy in largely Kurdish southeast Turkey since 1984 in a conflict that has caused about 40,000 deaths. The group has been banned in Germany since 1993.

    To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Holland in Istanbul at bholland1@bloomberg.net.

    Last Updated: July 14, 2008 03:36 EDT

  • Iran vs. the West

    Iran vs. the West

    Iran vs. the West

    Source: Aljazeera.net
  • Turkey and Germany positive for a Union for the Mediterranean

    Turkey and Germany positive for a Union for the Mediterranean

    Turkey’s foreign minister said Ankara would play an active role in the new grouping despite initial fears that Sarkozy devised it as an alternative to Turkish EU membership, which he has long opposed.

    “Regarding the initiative of a Union for the Mediterranean, we think it will promote peace, stability and development in the region, and Turkey supports this initiative,” Foreign Minister Ali Babacan told a news conference.

    Babacan said Ankara’s role would be the same as in the existing Euro-Mediterranean partnership, known as the Barcelona process, which France says needs revitalising.

    Read the full story…

  • Germany wants quick solution to hostage drama

    Germany wants quick solution to hostage drama

    The German government wants to find a fast solution for a hostage drama in eastern Turkey. On Tuesday, three German mountain climbers were kidnapped in eastern Turkey by Kurdish separatist PKK fighters.

    Although it is not clear whether contact has been made, Berlin says it will not give in to blackmail by Kurdish rebels.

    The hostages were part of a German mountaineering expedition. The other mountaineers are expected to return to Germany today.

    Source : radionetherlands.nl

  • Help Needed for a research – proof of document

    Help Needed for a research – proof of document

    If you have any information about the original copies please contact Turkish Forum

    Attention: below documents are for general information only. The exact sources of these excerpts are not located yet!

    [These excerpts reaffirms Chapter 21 of my book “The Genocide of Truth” in particular pages 433 > 435]

    (Translated from FRENCH text or translation into English)

    (Page  225) “HAYASTAN” No.2 – German paper in Armenian Language – (Text in Armenian speaks of definite German Victory)

    (Label on the face of the newspaper in French)  

    February 1945 – The newspaper of the Armenian volunteers always announces final victory (to the left above: their badge decorated of one symbol resembling the swastika)! There are not more than very few copies of these Nazi Armenian newspapers, the most copies  have been destroyed by the Armenians. Here is a copy of “Hayastan” which succeeded, survival!

    (Page 226) “HAYASTAN” German paper in Armenian Language, No. 1(125)    Year  1945

    Translation and summary of the Armenian newspaper ” Hayastan ”
    The newspaper has three pages

    First page

    An address to the officers and the soldiers of Armenian volunteers units:

    <Good wishes for the New Year, accompanied with the assurance of a certain victory and an absolute liberation of the country.>

    A. Mouradian

    Second page

    Best wishes of General Sarkisjan addressed to Armenian volunteers.

    < Congratulations and courage, to the volunteers who for many years, were forced to live far from the country, and those who are dear to them! However, everything depends on volunteers; happiness, as well as the freedom of motherland. It is the trust put in the bellicose ardor and weapons, which will bring freedom and will make possible to celebrate in the liberated country once again.>

    Armenian wishes to all volunteers!

    < The New Year will be placed under the signature of the battle, reinforced for the release of fatherland. Our volunteers cannot, receive like other friends, letters or parcels from their relatives who stayed at the home. Our parents and our friends in Soviet Union do not have celebration party; they are plunged in a state of distress, they hope and with beating hearts that we come back as liberators. Here, in Germany, the children have the bright eyes of joy in front of presents and decorated Christmas trees. Our children, in the country, have nothing similar. They are hungry and cold and ask their parents when the liberators will arrive. It is because of them that our primordial duty is to implement everything for the freedom of fatherland. They shout revenge for the injustice, which was made towards them, and towards their parents by Bolchevistes and it is our duty to avenge them. The old year is about to end, and a new begins. Something will happen once again!  Bolchévisme also comes near to its end, and something else will replace it. You, the Armenian volunteers must be the torchbearers of this new order; it is necessary that you must be victorious.

    Full of confidence, we enter the New Year. Victory will belong to us!  Long live Armenia! Long live Armenian people! > Saharuni

    (Page 241) (Photograp)

    ” DRO ” (Drastamat Kanajan), was born in 1884 in Igdir (which today is the favorable place of departure to the ascent of Ararat). Already at the age of 19 years he joined the party of Dashnaks and fought against Tatars in Sanzegur. He assasinated prince Nacashidsé and the General Alichanov and he ran away to the Ottoman Empire.

    After 6 years in security in Turkish banishment, he returns back to the Empire of Tsar, immediately after the start of war in 1914, to fight Turks there.  In 1918 he is the leader of the Armenian troops, which attack the neighboring country.

    Only 90 kilometers before Tblisi, the Giorgians could push back, the completely unjustified war and the Armenian attack. For the first time, the worldwide opinion was absolutely misinformed by news of massacres, acquainted with the true character of Armenian nationalism. At the end of 1920 Dro became the “Minister of the Defense” of Vratsian’s Armenian government! Together with Hovannes Terterian he signed the capitulation of his motherland in Bolsheviks, and was dictator of the military sovereignty for few weeks.

    Stalin was received in Moscow; some time before Dro would have obviously saved the life of the Giorgian Dshugashvili (Stalin).

    After a brief stay in Romania, he joined the Nazis and fought as commander of group of soldiers of an Armenian unit on the Crimea and in Caucasus and soon he became the leader of the Armenian Information Service.

    He was so-called,  the best informed perso about the third Reich.

    In April, 1945 Americans arrested him, but they soon released him, because American Dashnaks of Boston had intervened in his favor.  After a stay in Lebanon and many trips, he died in Boston in 1956.

    Because of his eventful and completely immoral life, which was exclusively orientated in an exaggerated and irrational nationalism, in which he submitted everything without having ever made sacrifices himself, “Dro” can be classified as one of the most tragic faces of wrong valuation which has ever existed in the bloody history of the Armenian people.

    A typical case of Armenian political madness: Hitler, Himmler and Henjakistes…

    This was not all of H.

    Political fanatics of all colors, camps of the political ghosts of  Armenians joined the “crusade” of the Nazis against their ancient Soviet confederates, with whom they had just shared in brothers Poland and Baltic countries, to die so for absurd phantasm to give rise by Hitlerian help  to a National Socialist Great Armenia under the shade of the Great Germany.

    The peak of the absurdity of this alliance was reached when in December 1942, General Armenian Dro (Drastamat Kanajan), who was considered to be the Armenian hero par excellence, and the writer Garo Kevorkian visited to the “leader of the Reich ”

    Mr. Heinrich Himmler and presented him a book of the pastor Lepsius:  “The walk to death of the Armenian people “.

    It is obvious to think that this upset neither “Dro” nor Himmler,  because they were themselves sending people in death!

    Himmler having given orders to kill millions, “Dro” nevertheless to thousands, appearing a priori on the list of death of Russians, and about 30.000 Armenians, who followed on the appeal of Mr ” Dro ” and affected to the Nazis!

    But Dro,  had practice and experience to kill without scruples and Himmler was so impressed by him as after a talk of one hour and a half in prisoners’ camp east of Berlin, that he made him drive in his own car, so that “Dro” could choose his men there.

    He visited Armenian units in the oriental front several times, to impress them by his eloquence.

    As he knew the Soviet situation particularly well, he was soon taken for the most important German spy, in Soviet matters.

    Precisely for his level of incomparable information, it is unpardonable that he forced his Armenian compatriots literally until the last minute in the battle that was a hopeless since a long time, and had no glory. While he was released already after a short time by American occupying force, thanks to his very good relations in United States and died very esteemed, even loved immoderately by his compatriots and after several world tours, in Boston, where the mighty party of Dashnaks still are in command.

    Armenian commitment for the national socialist Germany probably had the purpose to delimit Jews in a very clear manner from the Armenians in territories dominated by the Nazis, though many ignorant, among of those who shared… (Rest is unreadable)

    (Thanks to Mr. Taner Ertunc  for providing photos and French version, translated by A.B. into English)                  Sukru S. Aya