| German President Christian Wulff was to arrive in Turkey later on Monday for a five-day visit that comes amid a heated debate in Germany on the integration of Muslim immigrants, an overwhelming majority of whom are Turks. | |
 In a sign that religious freedoms will also be high on the agenda, Wulff will visit religious sites in İstanbul and in the southern Turkish town of Tarsus and have talks with the head of the Religious Affairs Directorate, Ali Bardakoğlu, in Ankara and the Greek Orthodox patriarch, Bartholomew, in İstanbul.Another highlight of the visit is an address by the German president to the Turkish Parliament, which is scheduled for today. The integration of 2.5 million Turks into German society is likely to be a key issue in Wulff’s address. Wulff, the first German president to visit Turkey in 10 years, has won praise from Turkish and other Muslim immigrants when he said earlier this month that Islam was a “part of Germany.” But these remarks have also set off a row in Germany, prompting German Chancellor Angela Merkel to say that German culture is based on “Christian and Jewish values.” Wulff, who was recently depicted as a Muslim imam on the cover of a German journal because of his comments on Islam, faces the most difficult visit of his young presidency, according to some in the German media.The debate on the integration of Muslims into German society intensified when Merkel said during a weekend meeting of young members of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) that Germany’s attempts to create a multicultural society have “utterly failed.” The chancellor, who is under pressure from other conservative politicians to toughen the stance on immigration, said too little had been required of immigrants in the past and repeated her usual line that they should learn German in order to get by in school and have opportunities in the labor market.
Official German data show about one in five Turks living in Germany speak either poor German or no German at all and that language difficulties were the main obstacle to the successful integration of Turkish immigrants. Turkish President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have recently called on Turks to advance their German skills and to speak German “without an accent.” The debate over Germany’s immigrant community has intensified since former Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin published a book accusing Turkish and Arab immigrants of lowering the intelligence of German society. A survey that was published last week showed that more than one-third of Germans say immigrants, some of whom had been living in the country for more than 40 years, should be sent to their native lands when jobs are scarce. Some 58 percent backed limitations on the religious practices of Muslims, while 10 percent said a “führer” is needed to run the country “with a strong hand.” Wulff will visit Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s mausoleum and then proceed to talks with Gül today. He will also have talks with Prime Minister Erdoğan and head of the Religious Affairs Directorate Bardakoğlu before addressing Parliament in the afternoon. On Wednesday, he will travel to the Central Anatolian province of Kayseri, where Gül is from, to attend a business forum, following which he will fly to the southern province of Adana. On Thursday, he will visit the St. Paul Museum in Tarsus, a former church, and attend a religious ceremony there. On Friday, the German president will have talks with Patriarch Bartholomew and then visit Sultanahmet Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. He and Gül are then expected to attend a groundbreaking ceremony for a Turkish-German university in İstanbul. Todays Zaman |
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Category: EU Members
European Council decided to open accession negotiations with Turkey on 17 Dec. 2004
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Integration, religious freedoms weigh heavily during Wulff visit
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Wulff visits Turkey as integration row simmers
German President Christian Wulff flew to Turkey Monday for a four-day visit amid a heated debate in his country over the integration of Muslim immigrants, many of them Turkish.
His visit comes just days after Chancellor Angela Merkel weighed in for the first time in a heated debate on immigration, saying that Germany’s attempt to create a multi-cultural society had failed completely.
“Multikulti,” the concept that “we are now living side by side and are happy about it,” does not work, Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party.
“This approach has failed, totally,” she said, adding that immigrants should integrate, learn German and adopt German culture and values.
Germany has four million Muslims among its 82 million inhabitants. Turks form the largest ethnic minority with a 2.5-million-strong presence. While many later generation Turks have integrated with German society, large sections have never learned German and live in closed communities.
In a speech this month, Wulff said Islam was “now part of Germany” but also urged his countrymen and immigrants to make an effort at integration.
In a weekend newspaper interview, Turkey’s Gül also urged Turks living in Germany to master the language of their adopted country.
“When one doesn’t speak the language of the country in which one lives that doesn’t serve anyone, neither the person concerned, the country, nor the society,” Gul told the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
“That is why I tell them at every opportunity that they should learn German, and speak it fluently and without an accent. That should start at nurseries.”
Although traditionally strong, Turkish-German ties have been overshadowed by Merkel’s opposition to Ankara’s bid to join the European Union.
Along with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Merkel argues that the mainly Muslim country of more than 70 million has no place in Europe and should settle for a “privileged partnership” instead of full membership – a proposal that Turkey categorically rejects.
On the business front, Germany remains Turkey’s principal economic partner – bilateral trade amounted to $23.8 billion (€17 billion euros) in 2009. More than 4,000 German companies operate or have partnerships in Turkey.
Wulff’s visit will also take him Wednesday to Kayseri, a booming industrial city in central Turkey, and then to the nearby Cappadocia region, famous for its cone-shaped rock formations, rock-carved underground cities and early Christian churches.
On Thursday he will go to the southern town of Tarsus, the birth place of Saint Paul, to visit the historic Saint Paul’s Church.
He will then fly to Istanbul, Turkey’s cultural and economic hub, where he will meet Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, on Friday.
Wulff will tour the city’s historical sites and lay the foundation of the Turkish-German university before leaving.
AFP/mry
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German president goes to Turkey as Islam row rages at home
Berlin/Istanbul – On Monday German President Christian Wulff will arrive in Turkey for his third state visit in his three months since becoming head of state – and this ostensibly ceremonial visit will be the most difficult by far.
On October 3 Wulff, a conservative ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel and former regional premier, added fuel to an increasingly heated debate about the place of Islam in German society.
‘By now, Islam belongs in Germany,’ Wulff said, to the chagrin of many conservative colleagues who wish to preserve what they see as Germany’s mainstream judeo-christian culture.
Since then, Chancellor Merkel has proclaimed that ‘multiculturalism has utterly failed’ in Germany.
Most of Germany’s four million Muslims are of Turkish ethnicity, the families and descendants of the tens of thousands of Anatolians came to the former West Germany as ‘guest workers’ who were greatly needed during the booming economy in the 1960s.
Wulff is set to give a speech before the Turkish parliament on Tuesday, and the event is being keenly awaited, and not just because it is the first time that a German head of state has addressed lawmakers there.
His recognition of Islam as being part of German culture despite the rancour at home has won him the highest praise in Ankara.
‘I very much appreciated his speech on the 20th anniversary of German reunification (October 3),’ Turkish President Abdullah Gul said.
The last time that a head of state from Europe’s largest economy was in Turkey was ten years ago, just after Ankara began the formal negotiations to join the European Union – a process still far from complete.
Merkel, along with French President Nicholas Sarkozy, has repeatedly said that Turkey should be offered a ‘privileged partnership’ with the EU – not full membership.
Despite this, relations between the two states are good, with Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan attending the Germany- Turkey football match along with Merkel in Berlin in early October.
Wulff’s visit is planned to encompass the whole range of bilateral relations, including the laying of a foundation stone of a German-Turkish university in Istanbul, and talks with religious leaders.
Christian leaders in Turkey complain that their religion has no official legal status, unlike Islam. Wulff is due to meet with the head of the country’s Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), Ali Bardakoglu.
The issue of the treatment of minorities affects not just Wulff’s visit, but in fact the entire EU negotiations, a fact that frustrates the political elite.
‘The negotiation process is constantly being interrupted by intrigues that no other entry candidate has to put up with,’ says Minister for EU Affairs, Egemen Bagis.
If Wulff is to follow the opinion polls at home, he should not give his Turkish hosts any hope of a full EU membership in the foreseeable future. A poll conducted by the Bild newspaper for Monday’s edition showed some 72 per cent of respondents against Turkey joining as a full member.
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Bagis says Turkey, Greece could overcome unresolved issues
Bagıs said he believed the Greek government would take the necessary steps to meet the demands of the Turkish population there.
Sunday, 17 October 2010 16:20Chief Negotiator for Turkey’s accession talks with the EU, State Minister Egemen Bagis, said Turkey and Greece could overcome the unresolved problems between them by adopting new approaches and discourses.In an exclusive interview with Greek newspaper Athens Tipos tis Kiriakis published Sunday, Bagis made comments on Turkish-Greek relations and the minorities issue.
Bagis said everyone grasped that the deadlock in certain unresolved issues between the two countries favoured no one, noting that it was time to move ahead and bring new approaches and discourses in long standing issues to the benefit of both countries.
Bagis pointed out that for the first time since the time of Ataturk and Venezilos, governments of both countries reached out to each other with such vigour.
“We may not have made the desired progress yet, but we can sincerely say that our governments and peoples share the same approach in overcoming unresolved issues,” said Bagis.
He said the signing of 22 agreements and the establishment of the High Level cooperation Council between the two countries, was a milestone in Turkish-Greek relations. He said significant progress have been recorded in the commercial relations between the two countries, adding that the new target was boosting the trade volume from $2.7 billion to $5 billion.
Stressing that issues of Greek and Turkish minorities in the two countries were in fact a matter of human rights, Bagis said these should be addressed by the governments of the two countries on the basis of good will. Referring to the principal agreement between Turkish authorities and the Fener Greek Patriarchate to turn the disputed orphanage in Buyukada to an environmental institute, Bagis said this was just one of the major steps taken by the Turkish government about the Greek minority in Turkey.
He said the Heybeliada Seminary issue was Turkey’s internal affair. He said Turkey’s Greek Orthodox citizens had the right to practice their religions, expressing his confidence that Turkey would find a solution to this issue from an human rights perspective. He pointed out that the problems of the Turkish minority in Western Thrace was also a matter of human rights adding that he believed the Greek government would take the necessary steps to meet the demands of the Turkish population there.
Source: Worldbulletin
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Study Calls for EU Talks With Russia and Turkey
BRUSSELS — The European Union should establish a three-way dialogue on security with Russia and Turkey to tackle frozen conflicts and promote stability on its eastern flank, a leading think tank says.
In a report released Friday, the European Council on Foreign Relations said the 27-nation EU must take more responsibility for security in its own neighborhood because the United States has its hands full dealing with Afghanistan, Iran and China and is no longer focused on Europe.
The study says the current system failed to prevent wars in Kosovo and Georgia, or disruption to Europe’s gas supplies, or to resolve a string of legacy disputes on the fringes of the former Soviet Union.
The leaders of Russia, Germany and France will meet Monday in the French town of Deauville to discuss security cooperation amid signs that Moscow is giving new priority to improving ties with the EU, including in former communist central Europe.
In a report titled “The Illusion of Order and the Specter of a Multipolar Europe,” authors Mark Leonard and Ivan Krastev said: “The Merkel-Medvedev-Sarkozy summit has the right agenda but the wrong participants. We need an informal European security trialogue that brings together the three key pillars of European security: Turkey, Russia and the EU.”
The proposed forum would not replace existing institutions such as the NATO-Russia Council or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, nor be a substitute for Turkey’s slow-moving EU membership negotiations, they said.
Rather, it could build mutual confidence by working to defuse potential flash points such as the breakaway Moldovan region of Transdnestr, or the standoff between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The report argues that conditions for such a three-way dialogue have improved. NATO has shelved moves toward admitting Ukraine and Georgia, bitterly opposed by Russia; the United States has pressed the “reset” button on bilateral relations with Moscow, and Poland’s fraught ties with Russia have warmed.
Whether Western Europe’s major powers — Germany, France and Britain — would be willing to entrust the conduct of security relations with Russia and Turkey to the EU’s new foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, remains to be seen.
But the authors said a survey of 250 elite foreign policy professionals in the 27 EU member states, and a review of those countries’ national security documents, showed a growing identity of views on security risks and how to deal with Russia.
The study said the “trialogue” should first draw up a security action plan to reduce tensions by demilitarizing the continent’s most volatile regions and solving frozen conflicts.
If that effort were successful, EU countries could be more receptive to Russian ideas for a European security treaty as the culmination of a process of confidence building, it said.
Most European NATO members and the United States viewed President Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal for such a treaty with suspicion because it was seen as an attempt to gain veto power over NATO actions in Europe.
Source: The Moscow Times
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Merkel’s ethnic remarks add fuel to fire
Published: 18 October 2010
Germany’s attempt to create a multicultural society has “utterly failed,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said on 16 October, adding fuel to a debate over immigration and Islam polarising her conservative camp.
Background
Germany’s Turkish community has around 2.5 million members. In the sixties, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France asked Turkey to provide a labour force for their booming employment markets. A flow of hundreds of thousands of Turkish ‘guest workers’ followed.
However, following the economic stagnation of 1967, Western countries stopped issuing work permits. Following the 1973 oil crisis, they declared that they had abolished immigration for employment purposes.
According to the results of an Interior Ministry study released earlier this year, Turks are the minority group in Germany with the most pronounced integration problems. The study said around one in five Turks living in Germany spoke either “bad” or “no German at all” and that language difficulties were the main obstacle to the successful integration of Turkish immigrants.
Thilo Sarrazin, a Social Democrat politician and board member of the German Federal Bank, published last August a book in which he deplored the lack of intellectual performance among some ethnic groups in Germany and of Muslims in particular. The centre-left SDP party is now trying to get Sarrazin expelled. He has already lost his job at the Federal Bank.
More on this topic
News:Bundesbank member shocks with racial theoriesSpeaking to a meeting of young members of her Christian Democrats (CDU), Merkel said allowing people of different cultural backgrounds to live side by side without integrating had not worked in a country that is home to some four million Muslims.
“This [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed,” Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam, south of Berlin.
Merkel faces pressure from within her CDU to take a tougher line on immigrants who don’t show a willingness to adapt to German society and her comments appeared intended to pacify her critics.
She said too little had been required of immigrants in the past and repeated her usual line that they should learn German in order to get by in school and have opportunities on the labour market.
The debate over foreigners in Germany has shifted since former central banker Thilo Sarrazin published a book accusing Muslim immigrants of lowering the intelligence of German society.
Sarrazin was censured for his views and dismissed from the Bundesbank, but his book proved highly popular and polls showed a majority of Germans agreed with the thrust of his arguments.
Merkel has tried to accommodate both sides of the debate, talking tough on integration but also telling Germans that they must accept that mosques have become part of their landscape.
She said on Saturday that the education of unemployed Germans should take priority over recruiting workers from abroad, while noting Germany could not get by without skilled foreign workers.
In a weekend newspaper interview, her Labour Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) raised the possibility of lowering barriers to entry for some foreign workers in order to fight the lack of skilled workers in Europe’s largest economy.
“For a few years, more people have been leaving our country than entering it,” she told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. “Wherever it is possible, we must lower the entry hurdles for those who bring the country forward.”
The German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) says Germany lacks about 400,000 skilled workers.
Yet Horst Seehofer, chairman of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU’s sister party, has rejected any relaxation of immigration laws and said last week there was no room in Germany for more people from “alien cultures.
(EurActiv with Reuters.)
Positions
German President Christian Wulff arrives in Ankara today (18 October) as the first German head of state to visit Turkey in over 10 years. In the light of the current media frenzy over Muslim integration, he will be facing the most difficult visit of his young presidency, Deutsche Welle reports.
Wulff is set to give a speech before the Turkish parliament, the first ever by a German leader, in which he will most likely address the topic of integration of Muslim immigrants in German society.
Wulff’s recognition of Islam as “part of Germany,” which he expressed during a speech to the nation during reunification celebrations earlier this month, set off a row in Germany, sparking several high-ranking politicians to address the topic publicly, Deutsche Welle recalls.
Angela Merkel’s speech was the clearest sign yet that the debate on migration and multiculturalism is now open, even in Germany where it was practically taboo, writes The Independent in a leading article.
“While Ms. Merkel’s forthright words suggest that she intends to lead the debate from now on, it was not she who started it. This dubious honour belongs to Thilo Sarrazin, a former boardmember of the Bundesbank, whose recent book, Germany Abolishes Itself, and attendant magazine articles, shocked the country’s establishment, first, by what many saw as its racist content and, second, by its swift rise to the top of the best-seller list.”
“Mr. Sarrazin resigned from the Bundesbank last month, after condemnation from Ms. Merkel, among others. That she has now addressed the subject herself, however, demonstrates how quickly the context has changed. Mr. Sarrazin raised spectres that were too dangerous to be left to become flesh and blood on the far right. They had to be tackled head-on.”
“Germany now joins France, Belgium, the Netherlands and – so far, to a lesser extent, Britain – in questioning the multicultural approach adopted by governments for many years. If integration is now to be the focus, however, the effort will have to be two-sided. As well as requiring migrants to do more, governments and the indigenous population will have to try harder, too. And this will take funds – for language tuition, better schooling and homes – at a time when money is in very short supply,” the Independent concludes.
Polls indicate that a growing number of Germans believe that too many of the country’s foreigners live in what are often referred to as “parallel communities” with little or no connection with German culture, the Wall Street Journal writes.
“Germany’s anemic birthrate has fueled fears that ethnic Germans will eventually be outnumbered by other groups, adding a sense of existential angst to the public discourse. Germany, with about 80 million citizens, is Europe’s largest country but its birthrate is among the lowest in Europe and demographers predict that it will be overtaken in population by the UK and France in the coming decades,” adds the WSJ.