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German Jews versus German Turks
The Jews
Since the introduction of a new citizenship law (Staatsangehörigkeitsge-
setz), the German state has partially discarded the idea of ius sanguinis
(law based on ancestral origin) and has started naturalizing the migrant
population. According to the citizenship law, immigrant children born
in Germany after the year 2000 will be granted German citizenship and
their parents’ native citizenship. In order to be granted permanent Ger-
man citizenship, however, a child born in Germany has to give up the
citizenship of his/her parents’ native country between the ages of sixteen
and twenty-three.
15
According to December 2002 estimates, 7.34 million
migrants live in Germany, and Turks represent the largest group with
1.998 million. According to 2003 estimates, there were 565,766 Turks with
German citizenship in Germany, approximately one-fourth of the whole
Turkish immigrant population.
16
Obtaining German citizenship is not as complicated for many Jews.
German law facilitates the acquisition of citizenship for former German
citizens (and their descendants)—Jews mostly, who were persecuted
during the Nazi period—irrespective of which other citizenships they
may hold.
17
Moreover, on account of the Holocaust, special conditions
have been set up to encourage Jewish immigration to Germany. These
new Jewish immigrants are eligible to apply for expedited citizenship.
It is estimated that there are 5,000 Jews in Germany who are of German
origin.
18
Germany, the argument went, is the last country in which Jews would
want to live.
19
Over the past decades, Germany has been turned into
a land of memorials to the Holocaust. Among these, the Memorial for
the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin occupies a site the size of two
football fields across from the Brandenburg Gate and is surely one of the
most valuable pieces of real estate in Germany, both symbolically and
materially. Another site of memory, the Jewish Museum in Berlin, was
opened to the public in 2001. The building, designed by Jewish architect
Daniel Libeskind, is attached to what was to become the Berlin Museum,
with almost organic passages, thereby symbolically implying that Jew-
ish history is embedded in the history of Berlin.
20
The small population
of Jews in Germany notwithstanding, the Jewish past exists primarily as
Jews and Turks in Germany after 9/11 · 79
museums and monuments in Germany today, albeit often under police
protection and sometimes surrounded by barbed wire.
21
Today, however, German Jews are no longer “sitting on packed suit-
cases,” and especially for Russian Jews, Germany has become an attrac-
tive country in which to live. Obviously, the welfare system that provides
generous health care privileges can be counted as a major reason that
Russian Jews along with all other immigrants are attracted to Germany.
With the arrival of Russian Jews, Jewish life in Germany became livelier.
National Jewish organizations are thriving, such as the Zentralrat der
Juden or the Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle (Jewish social services) and their
own local Jewish congregations (Jüdische Gemeinden), community or-
ganizations and cultural centers in Berlin and elsewhere (for example,
the Jüdische Kulturverein), newspapers (e.g., Jüdische Allgemeine), book-
stores, synagogues, restaurants, cemeteries, and museums. Their congre-
gations have the church tax collected by the state from Jewish community
members in order to finance the communities. The Zentralrat der Juden,
some rabbis, and community leaders enjoy national political recognition,
and the Jüdische Kulturverein in Berlin and other Jewish groups orga-
nize cultural events. Moreover, Jews are entitled to practice sheḥita, the
religious slaughtering of animals, and have their own schools. As they
maintain a certain level of institutional separateness, however, it is ques-
tionable how or whether they feel at home in Germany, and some of the
discussions in Berlin’s Jüdischer Kulturverein concern whether or not a
Jew should also call him/herself a German.
22
German Turks
Only seventeen years after the conclusion of World War II and the atroci-
ties it involved, Turks started migrating to Germany.
23
When the Federal
Republic needed a labor force to rebuild the country, the government
decided to import guest workers from nearby countries.
24
Turkish mi-
grant workers were usually unskilled or semiskilled peasants who were
running away from the lack of choice, scarcity of land, unemployment,
and limited social services at home.
25
Some of them managed to reunite
with their families under the Family Reunification Law of 1972, while
others decided to stay permanently in Germany, leaving their families
behind in Turkey.
26
By 1980, there were 115,000 Turkish people living in
Berlin alone.
27
80 · Gökçe Yurdakul and Y. Michal Bodemann
With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a chaotic social environment and
cheap labor from East Germany led to mass unemployment in the west-
ern part of Berlin.
28
As the federal subsidy for industry was phased out
and plants were dismantled, many Turks who worked in these factories
lost their jobs. Those who came to Germany as workers in the 1960s and
1970s became increasingly dependent on welfare after 1989. The mass job
dismissals have had long-term effects. According to 1997 statistics, it was
estimated that 18 percent of the Turks in Berlin were unemployed.
29
This
number was even worse in the areas that have a Turkish majority: 26.2
percent in Kreuzberg.
30
In February 2000, the federal commissioner for
foreigners, Marieluise Beck, stated that “the unemployment rate among
migrants remains at almost 20 percent, demonstrating that foreigners
continue to be subject to unemployment twice as often as Germans.”
31
The problem of unemployment is exacerbated by discrimination against
immigrant children in the education system. Second- and third-genera-
tion German citizens of Turkish background and Turkish immigrant chil-
dren complain that they are not given equal opportunity in the educa-
tion system.
32
“While only 8 percent of German young people and adults
remain without vocational training, the rate of unskilled Turkish young
people is five times higher, at about 40 percent.”
33
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