Immigration from Turkey to the Federal Republic of Germany

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The increased immigration from Turkey to the Federal Republic of Germany began in the early 1960s, initially as labor migration with an open time horizon. It was justified by the signing of the recruitment agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and Turkey on October 30, 1961, after around 150 young Turks came to Germany for vocational training for the first time in 1958 . Today, some of the fourth generation of immigrants from Turkey live in Germany.

prehistory

In 1960 there were not even 1,500 Turks in the Federal Republic . Most of them traditionally stayed in Germany as students or businessmen, which is why many had no permanent residence in mind. The figures for the Turkish resident population in Germany in the previous years are correspondingly and also fluctuating due to wartime:

  • 1878: 0041
  • 1893: 0198
  • 1917: 2046
  • 1925: 1164
  • 1933: 0585
  • 1938: 3310
  • 1945: 0079

Labor migration in the 1960s

General

From 1961 Turkish job seekers were given the opportunity to be recruited by German companies, based on the recruitment agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and Turkey, this affected 678,702 men and 146,681 women, i.e. a total of 825,383 people, as Turkish guest workers . From the beginning, this contingent also included Kurds , who only later distinguished themselves from ethnic Turks in Germany. There was a labor shortage in Germany during the economic boom . Initially, the federal government concluded recruitment agreements with Italy (1955) , Spain and Greece (1960) . However, the initiative for these agreements came from the sending countries. They hoped to find a solution to their own economic and social problems by posting their workers. They wanted to solve their foreign exchange difficulties arising from the strength of West German exports, reduce domestic unemployment or channel the already ongoing emigration among the more qualified workers and at least prevent their emigration.

The Federal Republic, in turn, had an interest in ensuring that trading partners as such were retained and not prevented from trading with Germany by their balance sheet deficits. Domestic political motives were added. Former Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt was critical of the recruitment policy at the time:

“Basically, it was for him [the then Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard ] to keep wages low by recruiting foreign workers. Instead, I would have preferred German wages to have risen. "

In the middle of the era of the economic miracle, the Federal Republic of Germany signed a corresponding agreement with Turkey in 1961. The agreement came about under pressure from Turkey. Anton Sabel , President of the Federal Employment Agency (predecessor of the Federal Employment Agency), said on September 26, 1960 that an agreement on the recruitment of Turkish workers was in no way necessary in terms of labor market policy, but he could not judge “how far the Federal Republic is going can close any such proposal by the Turkish government, since Turkey has applied for membership in the EEC and, as a NATO partner, occupies a not insignificant political position. "

Initially, the federal government was reluctant to negotiate, as the great cultural difference to Turkey was viewed as problematic. At first it was not considered that the workers referred to as “guest workers” should stay in Germany permanently.

Description of the recruitment process

Employers in the Federal Republic reported their labor needs as "requirements" via a German liaison office in Istanbul to the foreign department of the Turkish Labor and Employment Agency IIBK , which in turn sent a preselected selection of workers to the German liaison office for further examination. In addition to this procedure, there was a second group of requirements that were person-related and that were carried out without tests in the German liaison office.

Applicants for work in the Federal Republic of Germany were subject to certain age limits when they registered with the IIBK, unless an obviously poor state of health precluded them from being placed. At last, these were 40 years for qualified workers, 45 for female workers, miners were allowed to be no more than 35 years old and for unqualified workers the age limit was 30. For the presentation for registration, a photo, an identity card, an addressed and stamped letter envelope and, if possible, certificates, certificates and information about the professional qualification were to be brought. In total, between 1961 and 1973, over 2.6 million people applied for a job in the Federal Republic. Those who were selected by the IIBK to be presented to the German liaison office in Istanbul had to go through two departments and fifteen examinations from the German authorities. The first department checked the placement by the IIBK. First, an attempt was made to evaluate the professional suitability and qualification more precisely: in this context there were reading and writing tests, checking of the professional knowledge level by means of an interpreter or on site during practical work in a company. After successfully completing the first liaison department, an extensive health examination followed.

Trip to the Federal Republic of Germany

Most of the migrant workers were brought from Istanbul to the Federal Republic in special trains. The route, initially through Greece throughout the 1960s, meant a journey of at least fifty hours for the workers. From the 1970s, there was then a more direct entry option via Bulgaria.

Increased family reunification in the 1970s

A second phase of immigration can be seen in the period after the general recruitment ban on all contracting countries on November 23, 1973, during which family reunification took place.

As early as the late 1960s and early 1970s, family reunification was observed among both Turkish and foreign workers. As a result, doubts about a reasonable cost-benefit analysis with regard to the employment of foreign workers and the fear of social conflicts increased in the German discussion.

The reaction to this, the recruitment ban on November 23, 1973, and the accompanying regulation to allow immigration to the Federal Republic only in connection with marriage or family reunification, triggers fears about possible following, even stricter measures. This prevented the intended consolidation of the number of foreigners and instead led to a significant increase, especially in the Turkish resident population in Germany.

The migration scientist Karl-Heinz Meier-Braun remarked:

“The recruitment stop challenged family reunification [...]. This also applies to a measure taken in 1975 when the child benefit rates for foreign children who stayed in their home country were reduced. The statistics clearly show how the number of immigrants has increased as a result of these two measures. "

Helmut Schmidt , Federal Chancellor at the time, added in this regard in 2009:

“I stopped the further immigration of foreigners, very quietly, because I didn't want to provoke xenophobia. [...] First we canceled recruitment, then we made it easier to return to my home countries, so that at the end of my reign [1982] we only had as many foreigners as at the beginning. In the time of Helmut Kohl, the number doubled later. "

From the 1980s to today

German-Turkish flag in Neukölln

The unstable political situation in Turkey at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s led to further immigration by asylum seekers , sometimes favored by family ties to the first generation of immigrants, whose permanent settlement in the Federal Republic gradually came to an end around this time.

A military coup in Turkey on September 12, 1980 triggered a new wave of immigration, which in turn had a strong impact on the demographic structure of the Turks living in Germany. While the Turkish immigration society had essentially remained a working-class society due to the heavy labor migration of the 1960s and early 1970s, with the exception of a number of artists and intellectuals who had immigrated, the political conditions in Turkey now also led to increased immigration of members of the intellectual class political refugees.

This new wave of immigration also led to increasing xenophobia in the 1980s; Numerous media and politicians also took the view that Turkish immigration leads to problems and that integration of the Turks is not possible in this number.

Against this background - as mentioned above, the SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had also pursued similar plans a few years earlier - the deliberations of the Federal Government in the 1980s are to be understood. At the beginning of his term of office, the then Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl planned a massive "repatriation" of the Turks from Germany. As emerges from a secret minutes of the meeting on October 28, 1982, Kohl said it was necessary to reduce the number of Turks by 50 percent. Because it is impossible for Germany to assimilate the Turks in their present number. Germany has no problem integrating other immigrants from Europe or from Southeast Asia, but the Turks come from a very different culture. In an Infas survey in 1982, 58 percent of Germans advocated reducing the number of foreigners. Kohl wanted to capitalize the social security contributions of the Turkish guest workers and offered a severance payment. The program of parting money of 10,500 D-Marks and payment of the pension insurance contributions was unsuccessful. Only about 100,000 Turks returned to Turkey.

The Schleswig-Holstein Higher Regional Court in Schleswig ruled in 1995 that Kurds from Turkish areas to which martial law applies should be recognized as persons entitled to asylum .

In the following years, more immigrants from Turkey came to Germany for multiple reasons. The financial support of the remigration of foreigners between 1983 and 1984 by the government under Helmut Kohl , following an existing social consensus at the time, did not lead to a numerically significant result with regard to the return of Turks to Turkey, but was criticized for promoting existing xenophobic and racist resentment . At the beginning of the 1990s, there was a series of racist arson attacks that also affected Turkish immigrant families, such as the Mölln assassination (1992) or the Solingen assassination (1993), as well as a terrorist series of murders by the neo-Nazi National Socialist underground from 2000 to 2006 predominantly Turkish citizens.

Under the red-green federal government , the requirements for naturalization were relaxed from 1998 and the German citizenship law was supplemented by elements of the ius soli (children born in Germany to foreign parents are given the option of German citizenship ), so that the number of naturalizations subsequently increased Turkish immigrants grew. Today immigration from Turkey to Germany is significantly lower than in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s: the number of Turkish immigrants has more than halved since 1991, and since 2006 it has been below the number of emigrants. In 2015 there was again a slight net immigration for the first time. This is due, among other things, to the economic upswing and declining population growth in Turkey.

According to the Federal Statistical Office, a total of 6.75 million foreigners were living in Germany at the end of 2006 . Of these were u. a .:

  • 1,739,000 Turks,
  • 0.535,000 Italians ,
  • 0.362,000 Poles ,
  • 0.317,000 Serbs and Montegrins,
  • 0.304,000 Greeks and
  • 0.228,000 Croatians.

Only people who are exclusively Turkish citizens were counted. The figure “1.739 million” does not include people with dual citizenship, nor do people of Turkish origin who only have German citizenship (so-called Germans with a migration background ). On the other hand, Kurds are counted here, who are exclusively Turkish nationals.

In 2015, 11.453 million people lived in Germany “ with their own migration experience ” (14.1% of the population). a .:

  • 1,364,000 from Turkey (11.9% of immigrants)
  • 1,334,000 from Poland (11.6%)
  • 0.957,000 from Russia (8.4%)
  • 0.737,000 from Kazakhstan (6.4%)
  • 0.547,000 from Romania (4.8%)
  • 0.442,000 from Italy (3.9%)
  • 0.257,000 from Greece (2.2%)
  • 0.255,000 from Croatia (2.2%)
  • 0.212,000 from Ukraine (1.9%)
  • 0.202,000 from Kosovo (1.8%)
  • 0.769,000 from undetermined countries or no information (6.7%)

The figures from 2015 are therefore lower than those from 2006, as 5.665 million people “ without their own migration experience ” (ie those born in Germany) are not included. Thereof:

  • 1,342,000 foreigners
  • 0.478,000 naturalized
  • 3,845,000 born as Germans (with a one- or two-sided migration background)
Source: Population with a migration background - results of the 2015 microcensus

Celebrities

In recent years, more and more people of Turkish origin have appeared in the German public, for example in literature ( Feridun Zaimoglu ), film ( Fatih Akin ), popular culture ( Bülent Ceylan , Kaya Yanar ), sport ( Mesut Özil ) or politics, In 2010, Aygül Özkan and in 2011 Bilkay Öney, the first women ministers of Turkish origin in German state governments were appointed.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Theo Sommer : Living in Germany (26): How to be a stranger in Germany. In: The time . March 25, 2004.
  2. ^ Ingeborg Böer: Turks in Berlin 1871-1945 . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002, ISBN 3-11-017465-0 .
  3. ↑ Ferda Ataman : Turkish Women: The role of victim has had its day. In: Der Spiegel . March 11, 2007.
  4. ↑ NAVEND - Center for Kurdish Studies eV: Migration. ( Memento of the original from December 12, 2008 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. on navend.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.navend.de
  5. ↑ a b Helmut Schmidt, Giovanni di Lorenzo: On a cigarette with Helmut Schmidt. Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2009, pp. 132-134.
  6. ^ Johannes-Dieter Steinert: Migration and Politics. West Germany - Europe - Overseas 1945-1961. Secolo-Verlag, Osnabrück 1995, ISBN 3-929979-14-4 , p. 307.
  7. ↑ Turkish Employment and Employment Agency : Circular No. 3./7. IIBK, April 15, 1966.
  8. ↑ Aytaç Eryilmaz: How do you go to Germany as a worker? In: Aytaç Eryilmaz, Mathilde Jamin (ed.): Fremde Heimat: A History of Immigration. Klartext, DOMiT , Essen 1998, ISBN 3-88474-653-7 .
  9. ^ A b Karl-Heinz Meier-Braun: 40 years of "guest workers" in Germany In: Karl-Heinz Meier-Braun, Martin A. Kilgus (Ed.): 40 years of "guest workers" in Germany and foreigner policy in Germany - conference report on the 4th Radioforum Ausländer bei Uns, March 20-22, 1995 in Stuttgart . Nomos, Baden-Baden 1996, ISBN 3-7890-4118-1
  10. ↑ Nedim Hazar: The pages of the Saz in Germany. In: Aytaç Eryilmaz, Mathilde Jamin (ed.): Fremde Heimat: A History of Immigration. Klartext, DOMiT , Essen 1998.
  11. ↑ "The rich will draw fences of death". In: Der Spiegel , April 19, 1982.
  12. ↑ Claus Hecking : British Secret Protocols: Kohl apparently wanted to get rid of every second Turk. In: Der Spiegel , August 1, 2013.
  13. ^ Judgment - Kurds are entitled to asylum. In: Berliner Zeitung. April 28, 1995.
  14. ^ A b Claus Hecking: British secret protocols: Kohl apparently wanted to get rid of every second Turk . On: spiegel.de on August 1, 2013
  15. ^ Dramatic scenes . In: Der Spiegel on February 27, 1984
  16. ↑ Kemal Hür: INCREDIBLE EMIGRATION STATISTICS Turks in Germany: Come to leave? . January 2, 2013.
  17. ↑ http://mediendienst-integration.de/migration/wer-kom-wer- geht.html
  18. ↑ Merkel: I am also the Chancellor of the German Turks. In: FAZ. February 12, 2008.
  19. ↑ Microcensus 2015, Fachserie 1 Reihe 2.2 (XLS) Statistischen Bundesam. September 16, 2016. Archived from the original on November 13, 2016. Retrieved on March 22, 2019.