Turkey has called on Germany to bring those responsible for racist attacks against Turkish communities in that country to justice by handing down the necessary sentences, pointing to increasing attacks against Turks recently.
World Bulletin / News Desk
Turkey has called on Germany to bring those responsible for racist attacks against Turkish communities in that country to justice by handing down the necessary sentences, pointing to increasing attacks against Turks recently.
A Foreign Ministry statement released on Tuesday rebuked growing attacks in the past few weeks against houses, mosques and associations that belong to Turkish immigrants. The attacks, it said, reek of Islamophobia, xenophobia and racism.
According to the statement, assailants have attempted to burn down 10 houses in the past 10 days in various Berlin neighborhoods. “Our citizens face these attacks with fear and concern, and we are carefully following the incidents,” the statement stressed. It added that Turkey expects the relevant German authorities to find the perpetrators as soon as possible and bring them to justice.
Germany is home to Western Europe’s second-largest Muslim population after France. The single biggest minority is Turkish. In contrast to the situation in Britain or France, where simmering racial tensions sometimes explode into violence, German Muslims live relatively peacefully alongside mainstream society, but a lack of integration has long posed a problem.
According to the statement, Turkey believes similar incidents constitute a grave injustice to Turks, who are striving to maintain peace and stability in the country while contributing to Germany’s economic success.
A fraught debate was sparked in Germany last summer when then-Bundesbank member Thilo Sarrazin published a bestselling book arguing that Muslim immigrants were welfare sponges who threatened the country’s economy and long-term future.
Turkey also blamed German politicians and the media. “Statements by politicians and media publications that portray immigrants in a negative and biased way make immigrants, who are an integral part of Germany, a target of xenophobic groups,” the statement concluded.
via Turkey calls on Germany to protect Turks from racist attacks | Diplomacy | World Bulletin.
The multiculturalism debate in Germany is ignoring the glaring flaws in our education system
Aylin Selçuk
The Guardian
‘If you don’t like it here, why don’t you go back to your own country? We Germans would love it, because we like you as much as a terminal illness.” I get emails like this nearly every day. The reason why is that I recently decided to take legal action against Thilo Sarrazin. Sarrazin is a former head of the Bundesbank, a Social Democrat, and the author of a bestselling book, Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab (“Germany is digging its own grave”), in which he claims that the poor intelligence of young German Muslims is dragging down the education system.
“I don’t have to accept anyone who rejects this country’s constitution, doesn’t ensure their children are properly educated, and only produces little headscarf-girls,” he writes. Since I filed my suit, the number of emails I receive has almost doubled: I am threatened, insulted and abused.
In the 70s, when he worked at the finance ministry, Sarrazin had the bright idea to sell off West Berlin to the GDR. This time around, he has it in for Berliners called Mehmet, Zeynep or Muhammad. They are supposed to come up with the solutions for the problems with a 50-year-old migration policy that has left many young Turks in Germany feeling unsure if they are Turkish or German. They are meant to realise on their own that they live in a “parallel society” and start adjusting themselves to the norm. That’s quite a big ask. Yet in Germany, “That man has a point …” seems to be the starting point for most discussions about Sarrazin’s book.
It’s unclear to me where most Germans get their impression of ethnic minorities from. They are, after all, just that: minorities. How many of those who feel threatened by us actually know someone of Turkish origin? Current statistics show that more than 60% of the population have no direct contact with these so-called foreigners. Moreover: how is such a small part of the population meant to be able to destroy the intelligence of a whole country?
In the whole debate people seem to have lost sight of the fact that Sarrazin’s argument rests on one of the most schoolchildish insults around: that Turkish people are stupid. “A large number of Arabs and Turks,” Sarrazin has said, “make no constructive contribution anywhere but the vegetable trade.” I find this personally insulting, not least because my own family’s story proves that this isn’t the case. When my grandparents came to Germany from Turkey, they couldn’t read or write. Today, my mother manages a bank branch in Berlin, while my father works as a journalist. When I was younger, they were so desperate for me to get a decent education that they moved to a more expensive part of Berlin so that I could get into a good Gymnasium, a secondary school with an emphasis on academic learning. I now study dental medicine at Berlin University.
The point I am trying to make is less about bigging up a personal achievement than about shifting attention to the area that I see as the real source of Germany’s social problem: education.
“Human dignity is untouchable”: this universal right is present both in basic German law and in the first article of the general declaration of human rights. You do not have to earn dignity; it is not a trait, like wisdom or beauty; you possess it from birth. The idea that every person is worthy because of their existence alone forms the very basis of the term “human dignity”.
Yet the German worldview that has emerged during the Sarrazin debate is quite different from this. It divides the population into the worthy and the worthless: those with a decent education, and those without. How the worthless are to be turned into worthy members of society – that is a question that has been conveniently left to one side in this debate. It’s worth remembering that not more than 5% of German students come from the so-called lower social classes.
To make things worse, Sarrazin has above all achieved one thing: Germany is changing from being a country that used to attract immigrants into one that makes ethnic minorities feel they would rather emigrate. Exclusion and confrontation with prejudice are becoming a feature of daily life for many of us; we are made to feel like second-class citizens, in spite of having an education and a career. Racist comments are made socially acceptable; double standards prevail for freedom of expression.
Even “desirable foreigners” with a successful career or a promising CV will emigrate to other EU countries or the US. The media are jointly responsible for this. By going along with a publisher’s marketing strategy, they have shown that inciting hatred can lead to financial gain. Well done, Thilo Sarrazin.
• This article first appeared in the anthology Manifest der Vielen: Deutschland erfindet sich neu
via Educating Thilo Sarrazin | Aylin Selçuk | Comment is free | The Guardian.
Immigrants are making Germany ‘dumber’, according to a board member of the country’s central bank.
Thilo Sarrazin claimed the ‘limited education’ of immigrants – coupled with their high birth rate – meant Germans ‘are becoming dumber in a simple way’.
He said: ‘There’s a difference in the reproduction of population groups with varying intelligence.’
It is not the first time the 65-year-old member of the Bundesbank has caused controversy since he joined last year.
In October he described Muslim children as ‘underclass’ citizens.
‘I don’t have to accept someone who lives off a state they reject, doesn’t properly take care of the education of his children-and keeps producing more little girls in headscarves,’ Mr Sarrazin said.
‘That goes for 70 percent of the Turkish and 90 percent of the Arabic population of Berlin.’ He added that they were not fit for much other than ‘fruit and vegetable selling’.
Turkey has called on Germany to bring those responsible for racist attacks against Turkish communities in that country to justice by handing down the necessary sentences, pointing to increasing attacks against Turks recently.
Immigrants are making Germany ‘dumber’, according to a board member of the country’s central bank.