Suzan Gülfirat

Suzan Gülfirat (* 1963 in Malatya , Turkey ) is a German journalist and publicist . The author's texts have also appeared in German school books and anthologies .

Life

Gülfirat came to Germany with her parents in 1970 and attended elementary school there . After a secondary school recommendation due to inadequate language skills, she nevertheless completed secondary school and began training as a doctor's assistant in 1978, but later did the Abitur and studied. She has been living as a journalist in Berlin since 1994.

Journalist

Presentation of the Gazetel Review within the print edition of the Tagesspiegel (excerpt from March 5, 2007)

Gülfirat completed her apprenticeship as a trainee at the Adolf Grimme Institute in the project More color in the media . First as a freelance journalist for the Berliner Morgenpost , from 1998 when Tagesspiegel , where she served as Pauschalistin (flat rate paid journalist) u. a. wrote a regular Turkish media column.

Your so-called Gazeteler Rückblick ("Gazeteler", Turkish for newspapers) was published weekly from October 2000 to December 2008 with the aim of giving German readers an insight into the topics and reporting of a "second (German-Turkish) press landscape" (Gülfirat) .

The author is one of the first journalists of Turkish origin in the German-speaking media world and, at the beginning of her career, had a ^Which? Journalist Prize-winning career still struggling with "attempts to rewrite" German colleagues.

Small Turkish course

It can (...) be very useful to understand a few words in Turkish. After all, this is the native language of 160,000 of your neighbors.

In July 1998, Gülfirat started a well-known 21-part Turkish course in the Berlin Tagesspiegel , which promised the reader a “minimal vocabulary for everyday Turkish” “and a little (...) about (Turkish) customs and traditions (...) to experience". The series was characterized by entertainment and a tongue-in-cheek ironic writing style.

The first episode nonetheless caused violent protests from readers who perceived the short Turkish course as an “ingratiation to anything foreign”. But soon there were also letters of approval. By the end of the series in September 1998, other daily newspapers, press agencies, television and radio stations outside of Germany became interested in the unusual “Turkish project” of the Tagesspiegel and its journalist of Turkish origin.

Bibliography (selection)

Anthology and competition contributions

• Your own children become strangers or “Where are you, you godless?” (Competition entry ). In: 40 years of "guest workers". Germany on the way to a multicultural society? The writing competition of the Süddeutscher Rundfunk / ed. by Karl-Heinz Meier-Braun / Martin A. Kilgus / Wolfgang Niess; Stauffenburg Verlag, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-86057-037-4
• Kesik Burun (contemplation). In: Kanaksta - by German and other foreigners / ed. by Joachim Lottmann; Quadriga-Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3886793338
• Suzan Gülfirat and the "Second Language German" (autobiographical report). In: New impulses - for political and social studies classes; Klett-Schulbuchverlag, Leipzig; Stuttgart; Düsseldorf 2002, ISBN 3-12-065300-4

See also

• List of German-Turkish writers
• Intercultural Competence

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1. ↑ Gazeteler review in the online archive of Tagesspiegel.de
2. ↑ Heike Steinmetz: “Only agitation and generalizations? - Reports in the Turkish media “ ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), Migrare , 2/2001
3. ↑ Helmut Höge: "Duz Corporations" , tazblog , August 31, 2006
4. ↑ “'Now go, Ibrahim!' Suzan Gülfirat and the 'second language German' ” ( Memento of the original from December 13, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , AiD - Foreigners in Germany , September 30, 1999