Have You Ever Wondered Why There Are So Many Turks In Germany?

The first thing that comes to your mind when you are walking in the busy streets of Berlin - why do I not hear any German but Turkish everywhere? I as a Turkish from Turkey wondered for so long about this issue, but never found out more than that the Turks came here as workers. But now that I do so much research on it, there is a certain background of that issue that dates back in Ottoman Empire times. But of course, what you are going to read about is more recent- Turkish migration in Germany mainland starting in 1961.

I have met the granddad of a Germany-born-Turkish friend of mine that immigrated to Germany with the first wave of oppoturnity to immigrate to Germany and had the chance to ask him in person, what he and his family had been through. He was in his 20's and for his age, he was remembering everything pretty clearly. As the Germans were constructing their famous Berlin Wall, it led to some sort of labor crisis as the labor exchange was restricted and people from East Germany could not easily move to West Germany to work. So, West German government signed a labor recruitment agreement with Turkey, inviting the citizents of Republic of Turkey to their country, and using their work force and providing them with enough money to secure their living after their return to Turkey, as many people thought of working for a limited time and earning money to spend back home. He was one of the first ones to sign in and he had a family with a kid already, but he had to leave his family as it was not allowed to bring them with him. 

There, they were mostly building railways, and the work was pretty hard and challenging, but living standards were good enough to keep most of the Turks and in fact, the number of the ones that returned to Turkey were lower than the ones that stayed in Germany.

Nevertheless, he said that many of his friends returned after 5-6 years of work, they thought they had earned enough money to make a living in Turkey, and by that time they could also speak German pretty okay. But he was able to send money back home and he said that the conditions were pretty good, so he decided to stay a bit longer and that's when his luck turned around and rewarded him with a new opportunity: in 1974, the government of Germany introduced the Turkish workers the right to bring their families to Germany. That was when the population of Turks in Germany were doubled, and the women were also given work permit to work in a wide range of possible areas such as textile and manufacture, that could be counted as ''low status jobs''. 

He also included the fact that over those years, he and many other Turks around were exposed to ethnicism/nationalism and xenophobia and discrimination. 

Nowadays, it is very easy to come across so many Turkish shops, mosques, restaurants almost everywhere in Germany and it almost seems like German people got so used to their existence. You can see a döner store almost in every city in Germany and they seem to make a good business out of it. What I found out was that after the work force was not needed anymore by the government, Turks in Germany opened up those so called Turkish fast food restaurants and became a huge hit amongst German people. 

Of course, after reading all this information, you would not be surprised to hear that Turkish is the second most spoken language in Germany. There are even places like Kreuzberg in Berlin that almost everyone in the neighborhood is Turkish and they have their own stores, restaurants, barber shops, mosques and so on. 

Also, there are many famous Turkish people in German media, from movie directors to actresses, sportsmen to politicians. Fatih Akin, director of the movie called ''Gegen die Wand'' along with the starring acress Sibel Kekilli who also took part in Game of Thrones Tv-Series. Footballer Mesut Özil that was in the German national football team along with Nuri Şahin, his fellow teammate. 

For more, check; 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turks_in_Germany