Being Jewish in the New Germany

Chapter 5: Jews and Turks: Discourses of the "Other"

“I look at everyone in the face, she says, and wonder if he could also be a murderer.”1 Ominous words from a German or Polish Jew in postwar Germany or from a Russian Jew in Germany after 1989? In fact, this reference is not a Jewish voice, but rather the outcry of a Turkish resident of Berlin after Solingen . This small town was one of the sites of deadly violence in 1991–1992 against foreigners (primarily Turks and asylum seekers). Places like Hoyerswerda and Rostock in the former East Germany and Mölln and Solingen in the West gain national notoriety. The names of these towns are now emblazoned in the minds of Turks and sympathetic Germans as icons of prejudice , intolerance, and even persecution. While they invite comparisons to places like Auschwitz, which objectively bare no resemblance, these events also seem to have become a bridge between Turks and Jews in Germany. What do such comparisons mean in Germany for identity and for the ways in which people who are seen to be different from the Germans, such as Turks and Jews, are regarded? While both Turks and Jews are minorities in Germany, their histories and current status in a country known for its reluctance to accept foreigners and immigrants are very different, even though until 1993 Germany had one of the most liberal asylum laws in Europe. While 2.3 million Turks, 28 percent of the 7.3 million foreigners, live in Germany, there are only about 100,000 Jews registered with the Community. Even counting the hundreds or even thousands of unaffiliated residents, Jews constitute a much smaller group than the Turks and make up only a minuscule percentage of Germany’s total population of 86 5 J e w s a n d Tu r k s D I S C O U R S E S O F T H E “ O T H E R ” 83 million. Clearly, the Jews have a long history in the area that is modernday Germany, more than two thousand years as the Jewish Museum in Berlin reminds us. The Holocaust grants Jews a higher status (what some would call “symbolic capital”) and governmental financial support that Turks simply do not enjoy. The Jews are also part of an extensive world Jewish community, largely in the United States and Israel, which has an interest in the German-Jewish Diaspora. The Turks have none of these global benefits. In fact, German-Turkish relations only became a flashpoint in the early 1960s when in 1961, Germany concluded an agreement with Turkey to invite what was termed “Gastarbeiter” (guest workers) whose labor was needed to bolster Germany’s economic miracle. While separate agreements were made with Italy (1955), Spain and Greece (1960), Morocco (1963), Portugal (1964), Tunisia (1965), and what was then Yugoslavia (1969), Turkey provided the largest numbers and “the Turk” became the iconic foreigner who represented “the other.” In 1973, the import of human capital was stopped, but one year later a new law allowed wives and children under eighteen to join their working husbands and fathers. Consequently , according to migration scholar Klaus Bade, the foreign, and primarily Turkish population grew “from 1960, the year before the building of the Wall, to 1990 the year of German reunification from 686,100 to 5,241, 801. At the end of 1992 around 6.5 million (at the end of 1993 there were approximately 6.8 million) of which 4 million (62 percent) came from the countries who provided guest workers. The proportion of foreigners (Ausländer) in the West climbed from 1.2 percent in 1960 to 8.2 percent in 1990.”2 Ever larger in numbers and more obvious (and perceived as threatening) in daily life due to their appearance, dress, and speech, Turks became a nagging sign of foreignness and had to bear the brunt of racism and xenophobia, especially in the 1980s and early 1990s. Stories abound of Turks being refused housing, jobs, or just being treated as second-class citizens. Drawing on their limited experience with a Turkish immigrant population that came from more backward rural Anatolia rather than sophisticated urban Istanbul, many Germans had a skewed impression of these Turks and viewed them as ignorant, uneducated, and criminally inclined. In response, the majority of Turks formed their own isolated ghettos; the best known of these is in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin. While not officially forced into these areas, as is...