Tag: 50th anniversary

Conference in Munich Highlighted Assyrian Human Rights Issues

Munich (AINA) — On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of signing an agreement between Germany and Turkey to recruit migrant workers from Turkey (German: Anwerbeabkommen), official celebrations were held across Germany. State representatives of Germany and Turkey met in Berlin, while celebrations were held in various cities in late October through November. However, most of those events did not properly reflect the ethnical and religious mosaic of Turkey. Most politicians and the mainstream media continue to talk about “Turkish workers” that came to Germany as ‘Gastarbeiter’ (guest worker), ignoring the fact that among the migrants also many Kurds, Assyrians (Turkish: Süryani), Armenians and Alevis arrived in Germany to work and live with their families.

During December 15-18, Kurdish Mesopotamia Association organized an anniversary event on this same occasion with a rich program that included three political panels, an exhibition and a musical event. This was done in cooperation with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Green Party in Munich along with the city’s cultural board.

The political panels were held on Friday, December 16th in Munich’s old City Hall with more than 300 people attending, including Kurds, Assyrians, Alevis and Germans.

The first panel focused solely on the situation of the Assyrians in Turkey. Panel speakers were Erol Dora, the Assyrian member of Turkish Parliament, attorney and member of the Peace & Democracy Party (BDP) together with the former chairman of the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD) and lawyer Yusuf Alatas, while moderation was done by Haydar Isik, a Kurdish writer.

The second panel discussed the situation of the Kurds in Munich while the third panel focused on the political conditions of the Kurds in Turkey; the latter highlighted BPD member Leyla Zana, also member of Turkish Parliament, as well as attorney Yusuf Alatas.

The panels were opened by a short speech of Munich’s mayor Hep Monatzeder who said that based on the agreement signed between Turkey and Germany “people from all ethnic groups came to Germany to work and live here. Among the people who came to Germany were Assyrians and Kurds that were in Turkey even not [officially] recognized to exist”.

After an opening message by Haydar Isik, who moderated the first panel, Erol Dora gave a short historical outline on the Assyrians in Middle East as indigenous people, briefly touching their current political and social situation in Iraq, Syria and Iran.

With respect to Turkey, Dora focused on the legal status of the Assyrians in the Turkish Republic in the framework of the Treaty of Lausanne (of 1923), underlining that Assyrians lacked recognition as a ‘non-Muslim minority’, whereas Greeks, Armenians, and Jews received certain religious and cultural rights; still all of them have been discriminated. Dora further touched on the background of the mass migration of Assyrians from Turkey to Europe since the 1970s, hinting that currently more than 80,000 of Assyrians from Turkey and other Middle-East countries live in Germany.

Lawyer Yusuf Alatas characterized the situation of the Christians and specifically that of the Assyrians as a “bleeding wound” and stressed that they “are among the oppressed people in Turkey”. But compared to others, “they are oppressed religiously, too”, he said. He stressed that, “as long as the Kurdish question in Turkey is not solved”, issues related to democratization will not be resolved in a satisfying manner. Alatas pointed out that, despite Turkey’s constitutional commitment to equal rights for all citizens, Assyrians “have not even been regarded as citizens”. Despite being one of the oldest people in the region, they have actually been “regarded as aliens”. According to Turkey’s constitutional court, all people are equal, but obviously some are not!

Alatas as well briefly addressed the legal status of the ‘acknowledged’ minorities in context of the Lausanne Treaty and pointed out the school situation and the supposed educational freedom they enjoy: each of the minority schools has to accept a deputy director of Turkish origin while the children have to start class lectures every morning with nationalistic Turkish songs praising Atatürk, like “Türküm dogruyum ….Ne mutlu Türküm diyene!” (“I am a Turk, honest and hardworking… How happy is the one who says I am a Turk!”).¹

Alatas concluded his initial statements by calling the Turkish school textbooks, where Assyrians are depicted as collaborators and indicted of treason, a scandal and also criticized the continuing legal siege of Mar Gabriel Monastery.

Early in the same week (see hristiayangazete.com), Dora organised a press conference at the Turkish Parliament in Ankara, criticizing the textbooks published by the Turkish Education Ministry as abusive to Assyrians and Armenians. Dora also met with the Education Minister Ömer Dinçer on December 15, 2011 to discuss the problem; according to a statement by Dora, the Minister expressed his discomfort with the textbooks and that they “were printed in 2009, which is earlier than he took office.” The Minister promised to act immediately on removing the insulting statements. Dora is convinced that the Minister will do his duty to make sure that the children and youth will not grow up in a world full of prejudice.

By Abdulmesih BarAbraham

¹Türküm, doğruyum, çalışkanım. İlkem, küçüklerimi korumak, büyüklerimi saymak, yurdumu, milletimi, özümden çok sevmektir. Ülküm, yükselmek, ileri gitmektir. Ey büyük Atatürk! Açtığın yolda, gösterdiğin hedefe durmadan yürüyeceğime ant içerim. Varlığım Türk varlığına armağan olsun. Ne mutlu Türküm diyene!

English: I am a Turk, honest and hardworking. My principle is to protect the younger to respect the elder, to love my homeland and my nation more than myself. My ideal is to rise, to progress. Oh Great Atatürk ! On the path that you have paved, I swear to walk incessantly toward the aims that you have set. My existence shall be dedicated to the Turkish existence. How happy is the one who says “I am a Turk!”

January 8, 2012
Turkish, German or both? ‘Guest worker’ families have everything

Germany signed the “guest worker” agreement with Turkey 50 years ago which allowed companies to fill empty workplaces with Turks and changed the country forever. Süleyman Cözmez was one of the thousands who came – and and stayed.

Driven by hopes of a prosperous life for his family, Cözmez pushed fear and doubt to the back of his mind as he packed his suitcase and boarded one of the special trains from Istanbul to Cologne.

Cözmez had been invited to work in Germany by car manufacturer Ford who, like many companies in the country at the time, was desperately trying to build up its workforce.

Germany found the manpower it needed in Turkey, and so hundreds of thousands of “guest workers” made the journey north to begin work, on contracts which were expected by all sides to be limited. By 1972 the Cologne Ford factories alone employed 12,000 Turkish workers.

The majority, like Cözmez, only planned to stay a couple of years – yet many, like he, stayed and put down family roots in German soil.

When the 27-year-old Cözmez took the train to Germany back in 1970, he left his wife and children at home. He disembarked the train in Cologne alone, yet was greeted with a warm welcome and live music at the station.

He shared a room with four other Turkish production-line workers and sent most of his earnings back home to his family.

Describing his early experiences in Cologne, Cözmez said “the German people were very welcoming and helped us a lot.”

“For example, when shopping, at the beginning I could only make myself understood with my hands,” said the 68-year-old. But he soon started a German language course.

“It’s only when you speak the language that you can begin to feel at comfortable in a foreign country,” he explained.

There were also advantages to be had at work – better wages for those who could speak German “as the lack of language skills was also a problem at work.”

Yet he had not planned on staying in Germany. “I worked here, but my heart was still in Turkey” he said. “I wanted to make some money and then go home. But Germany is a great country.”

And he realised that the quality of life in Germany could be much better for his wife and five children then it was in eastern Turkey – so he brought them over in 1980.

“A new life began for us,” said his son Mustafa, 47. Everything was different – the language, school, their entire environment. “That was very difficult for us at first.”

But he gradually made both Turkish and German friends and settled in. And although his dream originally was to study medicine, Mustafa followed his father to the Ford factory and completed an apprenticeship there. He became a production worker and has been a Works Council representative on the company’s supervisory board since 1997.

Mustafa Cözmez has a German passport but at the same time, remains true to his roots. “I think in German, I write German, but I live a German-Turkish life.” He said. His wife comes from the same town as the Cözmez family, and joined Mustafa in 1989.

“Unfortunately she doesn’t speak very good German,” said Mustafa, saying she never really found time to go to German classes.

Mustafa’s son, Ahmet, has a different outlook which illustrates the effect of being in Germany for two generations has had on the family.

Although the 16-year-old has followed his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps to work at Ford where he is an apprentice mechanic, his first language is German, and is having to learn Turkish.

“I find Turkish difficult, but my father places a great deal of importance on me speaking it fluently,” he said.

Every two years Ahmet and his parents visit relatives in Turkey. “I just could not imagine a life there,” he said. “I consider myself German.”

His grandfather Süleyman feels differently. “I am, and shall remain, Turkish” he stressed.

“Turkey is my first home and I cannot deny that, but Germany is my second. I want to keep them both.”

DPA/The Local/jcw

via Turkish, German or both? ‘Guest worker’ families have everything – The Local.

November 1, 2011
A talk with Turkish guest workers on Turkey-Germany train

30 October 2011, Sunday / ALI ASLAN KILIÇ, ANKARA

Turkish Parliament Speaker Cemil Çiçek met with the migrants in the commemorative train that set off to Germany to mark the 50th anniversary since the first group of Turks left their homeland for a new life in Germany as part of a labor agreement signed by the two countries. (Photo: AA)

I have spent most of the week traveling between İstanbul and Munich. This was an extraordinary trip that I am unlikely to have again.

The Turkey-Munich train journey sponsored by the Turkish State Railways (TCDD) and organized by the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) to mark the 50th anniversary of the first wave of Turkish migration to Germany featured unforgettable memories.

This was in fact a remembrance of the forgotten people and citizens. The Turkey-Germany train ride was a symbol of the message: “We have forgotten you for five decades, but we have not totally abandoned you. We have failed to respond to your demands and problems, but now, we are there for you as the state.”

We, the parliament speaker, deputies, artists, writers, bureaucrats and journalists, heard the emotions and thoughts of our workers and tried to better understand them.

The number two of the state, Cemil Çiçek, who joined the trip for the Belgrade leg of the journey, made a concise statement: “Both we, Turkey, and the countries hosting our workers, including Germany Austria, France, Holland and Belgium, have to make a thorough evaluation.” Neither Turkey nor Germany or other countries were aware of the outcome of a labor exchange agreement that they signed 50 years ago. The culture shock to be experienced by the people who were moving towards uncertainty out of hope for a better future, the problems they would encounter, their demands of their children and expectations were not considered back then. In a way, Turkey sent these people and forgot about them, while Germany thought they would stay temporarily and then go back to their home country.

However, this did not happen. Hasibe Altun, who moved to Germany assuming that she would come back one year later, said she had been there for 41 years, bringing to light the reality that the German and Turkish governments failed to address.

I wish the Turkey-Germany train could have made the journey on the 10th, 20th and 25th anniversaries of the migration so that this would have served as an opportunity to identify the problems and negligence as well as address the problems of the guest workers before I was too late.

On the train, hopes, negligence, sadness and homesickness were expressed and voiced. In addition to the sadness associated with having been forgotten for five decades, these people also expressed their happiness at being remembered. The attendants cried out of sadness and the feeling of being a guest worker was eloquently articulated by TRT artists Zeynep Cihan and Metin Altun through heart-rending folk songs. Writers Ayla Kutlu and Nazlı Eray discussed the notion of being an immigrant and guest worker as well as the relation between an individual and the place.

People from different social and ethnic backgrounds, with different feelings and emotions, focused on the same issue during the five-day trip. Diversity should be celebrated. It is pleasant to become acquainted despite differences. We traveled through many villages and towns, as well as the cities of Sofia, Belgrade, Zagreb and Salzburg and breathed in the beauty of the nature in the fall. It was an unforgettable trip. The best part was that the people who traveled five decades ago were now confident in themselves and what they would be able to achieve because both Turkey and Germany were aware of them. They have already left their troubles behind and are ready to embrace the future.

Thanks to TRT and the TCDD, and thanks to everyone who contributed to this endeavor.

via A talk with Turkish guest workers on Turkey-Germany train.

November 1, 2011
A 50-Year Journey for Turkey and Germany

By SOUAD MEKHENNET

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.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 31, 2011, in The International Herald Tribune with the headline: A 50-Year Journey for 2 Countries.

November 1, 2011
Turkey and Germany remember days of immigration in 50th year

26 October 2011, Wednesday / HATİCE AHSEN UTKU, İSTANBUL

It was 50 years ago when thousands of Turkish workers, all filled with hope and expectations, waved at their families and loved ones from trains headed for Germany.

It was the year 1961 when the bittersweet story that was to connect Turkey and Germany started. It was when the word “immigration” would gain new meanings and dimensions for Turks. It was when Turkey and Germany signed the Gastarbeiter protocol — the Worker Recruitment Agreement. During the 50 years that have passed since, many things have irreversibly changed.

The 50th anniversary of such a seminal event is now being commemorated via a host of art events by the Goethe-Institut İstanbul, from stage plays to films, and from conferences to concerts, workshops and exhibitions from Oct. 20 through Dec. 10.

One of the main events of the project, an exhibition titled “Fiktion Okzident” (Fiction Occident), features the works of 18 artists at the Tophane-i Amire Cultural Center. Another event on the lineup, a film program titled “Karşıdan Bakış — Göç ve Sinema” (A Look from Across: Migration and Cinema), provides a selection of films exploring the perspective of “the other.” Other events include concerts and workshops by Turkish-German hip hop artist Sultan Tunç at Babylon; the project “Gidenlerin Öyküsü” (The Story of Those who Left), which will be detailed in an upcoming documentary that follows a train headed for Munich from İstanbul’s Sirkeci Railway Station on Oct. 26; and the conferences “Ulusaşırı Göç” (Supranational Migration) and “Göç ve Edebiyat” (Migration and Literature) at Bilgi University’s Dolapdere Campus. Finally, a musical titled “Yaşamayı Beklerken” (Waiting to Live), written by Anja Tuckermann and Haluk Yüce, will be staged at the Beyoğlu Kumbaracı50 as the closing event.

“In order to focus Turkish attention on the positive developments of the migrants in Germany and to bring the two cultures closer together, the Goethe-Institut is organizing a wide-ranging program with exhibitions, readings, lectures, concerts, workshops, theatrical performances and a film series,” explains Claudia Hahn-Raabe, the director of the Goethe-Institut İstanbul in an interview with Today’s Zaman.

“… German-Turkish cultural history is characterized by mutual projections, romantic fantasies and prejudices. These imaginary worlds exist on both sides. They are part of the mental foundations of the social, cultural and political German-Turkish reality. When on Oct. 10, 1961, a recruitment contract with Turkey was signed and millions of workers from Turkey were recruited, these notions were put on an entirely new and much broader social and cultural footing. A large percentage of the 2.4 million people of Turkish origin now were born in Germany. They know Turkey only from travels and from what they were told. While many are successfully integrated, there are still strong feelings of alienation on both sides, in large part caused by cultural differences and ignorance. These feelings result in rejection by some groups of the native population and partial withdrawal into the oft quoted ‘ethnic niches’ by some of the Turks. So this program will reflect the cultural, political and social effects of a shared history,” she explained.

For Hahn-Raabe, there are many lessons to be learned — for both the Turkish and the German sides — from this long-term experience. “The cultures of both countries need to be aware that an appropriate manner of dealing with the history of migration is overdue,” she notes. “Germany needs to come to terms with the fact that it is an immigrant country. It must expand its integrative efforts and take care to avoid negatively biased press coverage. Above all, it needs to oppose the negative connotation of the terms ‘Turkish immigrants’ and ‘Germans of Turkish origin.’ The same is true of the Turkish side,” she notes. “‘Against each other’ needs to become ‘with each other,’ but this can only happen when both sides know and respect one another. Exchange between the two countries therefore needs to intensify, especially in the cultural sector.”

In this context, the Goethe-Institut felt committed to undertake a project that would cover the issue in the broadest way possible. “We have decided on a wide-ranging program with an exhibition, readings, lectures, concerts, workshops, a theater performance and a film series in order to present our mutual history in as many facets as possible,” says Hahn-Raabe. “And as a matter of principle, all of the events are organized together with Turkish partners,” she adds.

Shift in time, shift in perspective

This is definitely not the first time that Turkish workers’ migration to Germany has been the subject of art and literature; on the contrary, there has been quite a large number of works on the issue. However, was there no shift in perspective since 50 years ago? According to Hahn-Raabe, is answer is affirmative. “At the beginning of the ’70s, the problems of the guest workers were primarily dealt with. The term ‘guest workers’ in itself is telling,” she explains, and continues: “In the ’80s, the so-called second generation became the focus. These people were either already born in Germany or had moved there at an early age. They differed from the first generation in the importance they gave to questions of identity and their existence between two cultures. The term ‘guest worker’ was now changed to ‘migrant’.”

For Hahn-Raabe, the following decade and the following generations were destined to be more promising in terms of coexistence. “Since the ’90s, the differentiation between the generations has faded,” she says. “Now, artists of Turkish background are individually noticed, known by name and accepted as part of the German cultural landscape.”

This evolution has its reflections on productions as well. While films and stories about the adaptation and identity problems of the Turkish immigrants were very popular in the earlier decades, the focus of the artwork has shifted to a different point of view as well. “By now the image of the erstwhile guest worker has changed considerably,” indicates Hahn-Raabe. “The artists and their works are increasingly perceived as detached from possible historical or problematic connotations. Eminent examples are the film director Fatih Akın, the writer Zafer Şenocak and the music group Microphone Mafia.”

Given this shift in time and perspective, the project is expected to reflect this variety. “We would like to show as diverse a picture of our common history as possible and underscore the changes that have happened,” notes Hahn-Raabe. “Therefore, we have invited artists of the first, second and third generations, and have organized cooperation opportunities between German artists, artists of Turkish descent living in Germany and Turkish artists. For the central exhibition project “Fiction Occident” 18 contemporary artists whose work deals with these imaginary worlds and their clash with reality were invited. Among them are artists who were born in Turkey and today work in Germany, artists who were born in Germany and commute between the two countries and artists in Turkey who reflect the consequences of internationalization.”

Happily, the project is not confined to İstanbul, as it also incorporates Germany. “Parts of the program series will also be seen in Germany,” explains Hahn-Raabe, adding: “For instance, the exhibition ‘Fiction Occident’ will go to Berlin in the spring of 2012, and the concert with Microphone Mafia and Ayben may go to Munich in cooperation with TRT Türk. All German migrants in Turkey are invited to the events and politicians such as Cem Özdemir, Dr. Anna Prinz from the German Foreign Office and North Rhine-Westphalia Minister of Labor Guntram Schneider will participate. Moreover, many events will be organized by German cities.”

October 27, 2011