GERMANY'S FUTURE ISN'T GERMAN:

For many Turks, Germany is home (Graham Bowley, October 04, 2004, International Herald Tribune)

[I]n the crucible of the Ruhrgebiet, the industrial region around Essen, East has lived with West for 50 years. It is here that answers can be found about whether an earlier wave of Turkish migrants has integrated successfully and what it means today to be European.

Of the 3.8 million ethnic Turks now in Western Europe, more than two million of them have settled in Germany, forming the country's biggest foreign population. When they started to arrive, mainly in the early 1960s, they were drawn by jobs.

The Ruhrgebiet, a region dotted with spires and churches, had earlier sucked in Prussians, Poles and other migrants to work in the booming coal mines and steel mills.

In the '60s, the German government wanted the Turks; it needed extra hands to work the lathes and foundries of the nation's postwar Wirtschaftswunder, its economic miracle. But by the late 1970s and 1980s, when industry began to decline, Germany encouraged Turks to return home.

"Germans hoped that tomorrow they would wake up and all the Turks would be gone," said Helmut Schweitzer, who works with immigrants on behalf of the city government here.

But the "guest workers" had put down roots, so much so that their compatriots back home began referring to them as "almanci," or German-like: rich, comfortable, some even consuming pork.

Their wives and families joined them in the West, and they had children in their new home.

"People started realizing they were not going back to Turkey," said Lale Yalcin-Hechmann, research professor at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, eastern Germany, who was born in Turkey. "Turkey was not forgotten, but it became a place to go for your holiday, just like for other Germans."

Today, a majority of Germany's Turks have integrated successfully. Take Selgün Calisir, for example. In 1969, his father left Istanbul to become a carpenter in Duisberg, about 30 kilometers, or 20 miles, along the Ruhr valley from Essen. It is a city dominated by the chimneys of the Thyssen steel company.

After attending college, the younger Calisir opened a travel agency.

In his job, he flies Turks back to their homeland. Now he has expanded and runs a tax consultancy and a bank in Duisberg.

Depending on the day, he drives a sleek, black Mercedes-Benz or a blue BMW sport utility vehicle, twin symbols of German middle-class solidity.

"I feel both German and Turkish," Calisir said, standing in his broad-windowed office in a street lined with Turkish dress shops and jewelry stores. "Yes, I go to the mosque, but not that often. We take our son 10 kilometers to a school where there are no Turks so he has to speak German.

"But now I am buying a plot of land for my own house in a German neighborhood."

Turks like Calisir offer a hopeful picture for any future westward migration triggered by Turkey's inclusion in the EU. Yet other Turks here have been less able or willing to part with aspects of their native identity.

In the streets close to Arslan Kaynar's mosque, women wearing head scarves push their children past the Turkish food stores and shops. The head scarves, interpreted by Germans as symbols of political Islam, have suddenly begun to appear again - a sign, according to Bernd Kassner of the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, the local newspaper, of a new "de-integration" by third- and fourth-generation Turks. Their retreat into stricter Islam, he says, may be caused by the economic downturn, which has hit the Turkish community hard, but also by a search for identity.

"They are trying to express themselves by being not German," Kassner said. "Then there is the embrace of Islam as the religion of the underprivileged."

Islam has taken extreme forms in the Ruhrgebiet: Milli Görüs, a group promoting a strict interpretation of Islamic law, has its headquarters in Cologne, close to Essen. The self-styled caliph of Cologne, Metin Kaplan, a militant Islamic cleric and head of a separate group, has called for the violent overthrow of the secular Turkish state.

The return to Islamic roots among some Turks has hardened opposition to immigrants among some in the ethnic German population. Rightist extremists were among those suspected of burning down the mosque in Essen.

But unlike Eastern Germany, where xenophobic parties scored high in elections last month, the western region has been generally tolerant toward its immigrants.

Still, there are new calls for Turks to do more to assimilate. "There is still lots to do on integration," Wolfgang Reiniger, the center-right mayor of Essen, said in an interview at the town hall.

This angers the Turkish community. It believes it should be able to retain a dual identity and blames the government for policies that they say keep Turks in their ghettos.

"Germans attack us for not assimilating, for being in a ghetto, but it is their problem, not ours," said Oylar Saguner, a burly man who runs the German-Turkish Language and Cultural Institute in Essen. "They need to accept us." [...]

But just as some Europeans cling to anti-Turkish views, others are becoming more accepting of the foreigners who already live in their midst. In Essen, the immigrant influence is clear in the meat kebab stalls at the city's main train station, busy with hungry Germans. But change is also evident in more subtle ways.

According to Schweitzer, of the Essen municipal government, Germans are now recognizing the true extent of immigration in their country.

"We are really an immigrant nation and don't know it yet," Schweitzer said. "We are traditionally very monolingual - one citizenship, one passport, one language. But we are gradually accepting other languages. Germany is becoming a normal immigrant country."

That acceptance of a multiethnic future means Turkey will probably get the go-ahead this week to begin negotiations to join the EU. Two weeks ago, Günter Verheugen, the EU commissioner in charge of enlargement and a German citizen, said no "outstanding obstacles" remained on the table. The commission, however, may attach strict conditions requiring Turkey to make progress on human rights and democracy. After Verheugen and his fellow commissioners vote Wednesday, their opinion will be used as the basis for a final decision by European leaders on Dec. 17.

It will end 40 years of talk: Turkey has been offered promises of EU membership for decades. An affirmative decision in December will also reunite the Turkish diaspora in Essen with their country. But while a momentous event for Turks, it will say as much about how Western Europe is changing.

Western Islam, not Western Europe.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 4, 2004 7:17 AM