Turks in Germany: Overview 
of the Literature
Jenny B. White, University of Nebraska-Omaha

A COMPLETE bibliography of just German-language literature dealing with the Turkish minority in Germany could easily double as a coffee table. The best one can do for a short introduction to German-, English- and Turkish-language sources is to separate out major categories into which one can organize the thrust and style of these writings and to select several examples of particularly representative or insightful recent publications. Of necessity that leaves a large barrel untapped. For those interested in acquiring a more complete bibliography, to furnish their home or not, I have appended several sources.

There are 1.8 million Turks in Germany, 139,000 of them in Berlin alone, making them the largest group of foreign workers. The first workers were recruited to labor-short Germany after 1961 and were greeted enthusiastically. The migrants dreamed of earning money and retiring to a small business and a secure life back in Turkey. Many of their families joined them. In 1973 after the oil crisis, recruitment stopped, and many did go home. But a decrease in return migration, the continued flow of family members from Turkey and a high birth rate has kept the population of Turks in Germany high.

Many Turks of the second and third generations born or raised in Germany have only limited exposure to Turkey. Turkey retains the status of a geographical origin myth, kept alive through a myth of final return, particularly among the first generation who came to Germany as adults. They plan for a retirement that will take them back to Turkey for good, but more and more older German Turks are retiring in Germany. They want to be close to their children and grandchildren, the second and third generations, who show little inclination to “return” to a place and a culture with which they are increasingly unfamiliar.

Over the past thirty years, German interest in their minority has increased. By far the most extensive body of literature in German is in the field of social work and deals with problems of integration, particularly of Turkish women, children and youths. These studies are often commissioned by the German government or presented before government commissions. The government supports a wide variety of skills-training programs, counseling centers, Turkish cultural productions and the like in an attempt to assist integration, in part by helping Turks distance themselves from what are characterized as oppressive Turkish traditions. Hence the problem focus of most of this literature: young Turkish women are forced into arranged marriages, are not allowed freedom of movement to go out at night, date or live alone; they are oppressed by the traditional Turkish patriarchal family.

Integration is measured along a sliding scale of such behavior, with ideal-typical "traditional" Turkish behavior at one end and "modern" (read German) behavior at the other. The social work literature is designed to measure progress along this scale and to suggest remedies. A fly in the integration ointment is that German behavior will not guarantee integration, since Germanness is still based on blood, not behavior or even citizenship. A Turk raised in Germany, even a German citizen, fluent in the Bavarian dialect, will still have trouble renting an apartment because s/he is not German.

This literature deals with such topics as socialization practices, interest in obtaining German citizenship, contact with Germans and the German mass media, problems in schooling, language acquisition (of both German and Turkish) and obtaining job training. Many of these are, of course, real concerns which need to be addressed. The problematic assumptions underlying the social work literature, however, makes it difficult to evaluate and not particularly useful to scholars. This is a shame, since it is full of interesting detailed case studies.

Useful compendia of German studies and migration facts are published regularly by the Berlin Senate (Ausländerbeauftragte des Senats von Berlin, Potsdamerstr. 65, 10785 Berlin, Germany). See also the encyclopedic annotated bibliographies by Boos-Nünning (1990) and Abadan-Unat and Kemiksiz (1986), covering literature in a number of languages that appeared between 1960 and 1984 on the subject of Turkish migration.

Several German scholars offer more sophisticated approaches to the study of the Turkish minority, focusing on migration as a continuous process. Heckmann (1980, 1981) and Elwert (1982) use migrant networks, rather than self-contained ghettos, as a framework for understanding cultural transition.

While much of the literature on migrants in Germany works from the assumption that there is an identifiable “Turkish culture"”or community, other researchers focus on the shifting boundaries of ethnic identities. Mandel (1989), for instance, discusses the manipulation of symbols in constructing such categories of identity as Sunni, Alevi and Kurd among German Turks. Economic, geographic and confessional coordinates of ethnic identity are the subject of a series of studies published under the auspices of the Berlin Institute for Comparative Social Research (Potsdamerstr. 91, P.O. Box 1125, 10785 Berlin).

Several scholars do sensitive comparison studies between Turks in Turkey and in Germany or follow the same people over the long term on their migration journey to Germany (Schiffauer 1987, 1991) and, in the case of Wolbert (1984, forthcoming), back again. Pfluger-Schindlbeck (1989) takes a comparative look at Turkish (Alevi) socialization in Berlin and Turkey; Mhçyazgan (1986) compares the way Turkish women in Turkey and in Germany reconstruct their life stories. Schiffauer concentrates on the male migration experience in a finely textured exploration of Turkish men's relations with their families and environment (1991) and of how honor plays itself out among Turkish youths in a German environment (1983). Mhçyazgan, Schiffauer, Wolbert and Mandel (1990) all approach the issue of return-migration from different perspectives.

Some of the most interesting recent literature is less concerned with the boundaries of identity than with the microprocesses of the migrant experience itself. All of these works are rich in ethnographic description and make cutting-edge theoretical forays from the data. Wolbert (1991, 1992, forthcoming) gives a "thick description" of Turkish women's return-migration, sensitively examining the process as a rite of passage. Çalar (1991, 1994) makes fascinating connections between Turkish popular culture in Germany and the global economy. She provides a thoughtful critique of the usefulness of concepts like culture and ethnicity for understanding migrant experiences and suggests creolization and bricolage as more appropriate conceptualizations. The theme of social and political space occupied by migrants is taken up by Soysal (1994), who uses the Turkish German experience to develop a new transnational understanding of citizenship.

Yet another area of interest is literature--journalism, commentary, fiction, poetry--by Turks living in either Germany or Turkey and written in German or Turkish. This is part of a thriving and colorful Turkish German subculture that also produces plays, films and fine art. An introduction to this subculture can be found in Suhr (1989) and in Gürsoy-Tezcan's clear and far-ranging introduction to the English translation of Please, No Police, a novel by Aras Ören about a Turk in Berlin (University of Texas Press, 1992). Over a thousand works written in Turkish and dealing with Turkish experiences in Germany are listed in Riemann and Harassowitz (1990). Of particular interest is an edited commentary by Germans and Turks on the possibilities of integration (Leggewie and enocak 1993); it is the first book issued by a major German publisher with the text given in both German and Turkish.

For those interested in a more expansive history and contemporary Gestalt of Turkish-German migration, see Martin (1991), Bagöz and Furniss (1985), and Abadan-Unat (1976). Renter and Dodenhoeft (1988) survey the labor migration literature. Several journals are good sources. In addition to relevant articles, in its first issue every year, the Zeitschrift für Türkeistudien lists research projects, primarily in Germany, dealing with Turkey and migration, including information on project directors and sources of funding. The New German Critique put out a special issue on minorities in Germany (1989, No.46). International Migration, Migration and Migration and Development are more obvious sources. The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in Bonn publishes numerous migration studies.

This snapshot of the literature is inevitably incomplete and quite brazenly guided by my own judgment, which some might find faulty. Nevertheless, I trust that this overview will provide enough handholds and signposts that the interested reader can climb the bibliographic mountain with less trepidation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abadan-Unat, N., ed. Turkish Workers in Europe (1960-1975). Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976.

—& N. Kemiksiz. Türk D Göçü 1960-1984. Ankara: Ankara University Faculty of Social Sciences, 1986. (Also available in German from the Zentrum für Türkeistudien, Overbergstr. 27, 4300 Essen 1, Germany.)

Bagöz, Ilhan, and N. Furniss, eds. Turkish Workers in Europe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.

Boos-Nünning, Ursula, ed. Die Türkische Migration in deutschsprachigen Büchern 1961-1984. Opladen: Leske and Budrich, 1990.

Çalar, Aye. “Das Kultur-Konzept als Zwangsjacke in Studien zur Arbeitsmigration,” Zeitschrift für Türkeistudien 1991, 1:92-105. (An English version is available as Sozialanthropologische Arbeitspapiere Nr. 31, Institute for Ethnology, Free University of Berlin.)

—German Turks in Berlin: Migration and Their Quest for Social Mobility. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, McGill University, 1994.

Elwert, G. “Problem der Ausländerintegration - Gesellschaftliche Integration durch Binnenintegration?”Köllner Zeitschrift für Soziologie 1982, 34:717-731.

Heckmann, F. “Einwanderung als Prozess,” In J. Blaschke and K. Greussig, eds., “Dritte Welt” in Europa. Frankfurt: Syndikat, 1980, pp. 95-106.

—Die Bundesrepublik: Ein Einwanderungsland? Zur Soziologie der Gastarbeiterbevölkerung als Einwanderer-Minorität. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981.

Leggewie, C. & Z. enocak. Deutsche Türken/Türk Almanlar: Das Ende der Geduld/Sabrn sonu. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1993.

Mandel, Ruth. “Turkish Headscarves and the ‘Foreigner Problem’: Constructing Difference Through Emblems of Identity,” New German Critique 1989, 46:27-46.

— “Shifting Centres and Emergent Identities: Turkey and Germany in the Lives of Turkish Gastarbeiter,” In D.F. Eickelman and J. Piscatori, eds., Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination. London: Routledge, 1990, pp. 153-171.

Martin, Philip L. The Unfinished Story: Turkish Labour Migration to Western Europe. With Special Reference to the Federal Republic of Germany. Geneva: ILO, 1991.

Mhçyazgan, U. Wir haben uns vergessen. Ein intellektueller Vergleich türkischer Lebensgeschichten. Rissen: G.B. Verlag, 1986.

Pfluger-Schindlbeck, Ingrid. “Achte die Älteren, liebe die Jüngeren: Sozialisation türkischer Kinder.” Frankfurt/Main: Athenäum, 1987.

Renter, L.-R. & M. Dodenhoeft. Arbeitsmigration und Gesellschaftliche Entwicklung. Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag, 1988.

Riemann, W. & O. Harrassowitz. Über das Leben in Bitterland: Bibliographie zur türkischen Deutschland Literatur und zur türkischen Literatur in Deutschland. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1990.

Schiffauer, Werner. Die Migranten aus Subay. Türken in Deutschland: Eine Ethnographie. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991.

—Die Bauern von Subay. Das Leben in einem türkischen Dorf. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987.

—Die Gewalt der Ehre. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1983.

Soysal, Yasemin N. Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Suhr, Heidrun “Ausländerliteratur: Minority Literature in the Federal Republic of Germany,” New German Critique 1989, 46: 71-103.

Wolbert, Barbara. Der Getötete Pass: Rückkehr, Symbol und Prozess. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, forthcoming.

— “Rückkehr: Statuspassage und Passageriten türkischer Migranten,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1992, 115: 169-197.

— “Aufstieg und Einstieg durch Ausbildung: Eine Reintegrationsstrategie türkischer Rückkehrfamilien,” In H. Barkowski and G.R. Hoff, eds., Berlin Interkulturell. Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1991, pp. 279-298.

— Migrationsbewältigung: Orientierungen und Strategien. Biographisch-interpretative Fallstudien über die Heirats-Migration dreier Türkinnen. Göttingen: Edition Heredot, 1984.