How Erdogan sways Turks in Germany to his cause

[Syt]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/erdogan-hurts-turkish-integration-in-germany-with-aggressive-policies-a-898116.html

Turkish Diaspora: Erdogan's Paternalism Proves Counter-Productive

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a self-styled patron of Turkish immigrants in Germany. But critics say that his aggressive diaspora policy is increasingly driving a wedge between immigrant families and mainstream society.

The young woman from Melle, a town in the northern German state of Lower Saxony, was received like a guest of state. A government representative and several photographers met Elif Yaman in Ankara. A limousine took the 19-year-old to a hotel, where she fell, weeping, into her mother's arms. It was all captured on live TV.

The Turkish journalists and politicians had been waiting for these images, and for what Yaman then said: "I think it would have been nicer to grow up in a Turkish family."
It was the sort of thing Bekir Bozdag loves to hear. Bozdag, 48, is Turkey's deputy prime minister and, even more important in the Yaman case, head of the Office for Turks Abroad.

Seven years ago, a German youth welfare office deprived Yaman's stressed single mother of custody for her daughter. The girl was sent to live with German foster parents and grew up in the German family. Her mother moved back to Turkey.

A few months ago Bozdag began to take an interest in the Yamans. His boss, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is running a Europe-wide campaign against the supposed forced conversion of Turkish Muslim foster children.

In fact, when Muslim parents lose custody of their children, German youth welfare offices try to place them with Muslim families. Only when this is not possible are children entrusted to parents of other faiths.

"You are my family"

Bozdag denounces this practice as "assimilation." "We are facing a great tragedy," he said last year, promising to do everything possible "to rescue our little ones."

But his position is only fueling immigrants' suspicions of German authorities. The Turkish media have been all too pleased to hone in on Bozdag's accusations. "So they're Nazis," the tabloid Takvim wrote. German youth welfare offices are "destroying families," Zaman, Turkey's largest daily newspaper, remarked.

The Turkish authorities hoped that the Yaman case would lend credence to these claims. When officials in Bozdag's office organized a reunion between the mother and the daughter, they staged the encounter like the return of a missing child, as if the Turkish government had heroically fixed something the heartless German authorities had broken.

In the dispute over foster families, Prime Minister Erdogan is placing himself in a role in which he likes to be perceived: as the patron of Turks worldwide. During a campaign appearance in Germany in 2011, he told his supporters: "I am here to represent your interests. You are my family, and you are my siblings."

The most recent campaign is typical of Erdogan's increasingly aggressive policy on the Turkish diaspora. While claiming to support the integration of Turkish immigrants and their children, his government is in fact achieving the opposite effect.

In 2010, Erdogan created the Office for Turks Abroad, an agency in Ankara staffed with about 300 employees, responsible for roughly four million Turks around the world. "We are wherever one of our countrymen is," Bozdag's office promises.

But in recent months the deputy premier has attracted more attention with his attacks against the German government. During a meeting with German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich in February, he criticized language courses for immigrants as a "human rights violation." When two Turkish immigrants died in a fire in Cologne, Bozdag derided the authorities' information policy as "ridiculous." In the dispute over access to the NSU trial for Turkish journalists, he questioned the judges' credibility and said: "From our perspective, this court is finished."

Self-Serving Goals

In this fashion, the Turkish government is using the fact that many immigrants have lost confidence in the German government, as a result of the Sarrazin debate and the NSU murders, to drive a wedge between immigrant families and mainstream society.

Politicians in Ankara have always tried to exert influence on Turks abroad, says Ali Dogan, general secretary of the Alevi Community of Germany, which does not align itself with the Turkish government. But no one, he says, behaves as shamelessly -- and yet strategically -- as Erdogan.
In 2005, the prime minister opened the headquarters of the Union of European-Turkish Democrats (UETD), a lobbying group of his conservative Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP). The organization aims to drum up votes for Erdogan among immigrants, as well as preparing the prime minister's speeches in Germany.

In a speech Deputy Prime Minister Bozdag gave at the dedication ceremony for the UETD office in Berlin, he said: "We intend to address their concerns and search for solutions day and night."

But that is only part of the truth. The Turkish government is primarily pursuing self-serving goals with its diaspora policy. It seeks to gain the support of immigrants abroad for the AKP and portray itself at home as a champion of Turkish interests.

At the beginning of the year, the Office for Turks Abroad created an advisory board consisting of representatives of immigrant organizations, academics and Islamic officials from around the world, especially from Germany. It includes the general secretary of the Islamist Milli Görü movement, which is under observation by Germany's domestic intelligence agency, and a senior official with the Islamist congregation of the imam Fethullah Gülen.

On its website, however, the Office for Turks Abroad also lists as a member of the advisory council the political scientist Ahmet Ünalan. As an advisor to the education ministry in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Ünalan is responsible for the structuring of instruction in Islam. Ünalan criticizes the polemics of Deputy Prime Minister Bozdag and says that he has since asked to be removed from the list of advisory council members.

The office's official role is to assist the government in providing better support to Turkish citizens abroad. However, Murat Cakir of the left-leaning Rosa Luxemburg Foundation believes that the advisory council members are meant to act as lobbyists for the Turkish government, to promote, for example, a portrayal of the Kurdish conflict or the Armenian genocide in keeping with the party line.

In his controversial speech in Cologne in 2008, Erdogan characterized assimilation as a crime against humanity. At the same time, he openly called upon his fellow Turks abroad to champion the interests of Turkey. "You can apply pressure to bring about parliamentary resolutions in your respective countries. Why shouldn't we engage in lobbying activities to protect our interests?"

Representatives of the Turkish government regularly ask members of the German parliament of Turkish origin, like the Green Party's integration policy spokesman Memet Kilic, to attend AKP events in Turkey. Kilic has declined such invitations so far, determined not to be part of a strategy that exploits immigrants for Erdogan's "neo-Ottoman" agenda.

A Sense of Belonging

Germany now has between 1.1 and 1.3 million Turks who are entitled to vote in Turkey. This makes the country the fourth-largest Turkish electoral district, after Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. However, until now, overseas Turks have been required to travel to Turkey to vote at an airport there. There is no absentee voting. Next year, Erdogan plans to have ballot boxes set up in the Turkish embassy and in Turkish consulates in Germany.

In the 2011 parliamentary election, 61 percent of overseas Turks voted for the AKP, which is a significantly higher percentage than in Turkey itself, where the party garnered 50 percent of the vote. Erdogan is very popular among Turkish immigrants in Germany. He gives them self-confidence and a sense of belonging, which they frequently lack in Germany.

His deputy Bozdag would like to see the right to vote expanded to include former Turkish passport-holders, that is, German citizens of Turkish origin.

Armin Laschet of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), erstwhile integration minister in North Rhine-Westphalia, has called the proposal "harmful to integration policy," partly because he believes it suggests that the Turkish government is in a position to improve living conditions for Turks in Germany.

In Germany, people from immigrant backgrounds still have poorer chances of finding apprenticeship positions and jobs than the children of German parents. Many immigrants feel that German politicians don't take their concerns seriously. This is where the Turkish government comes in, with Erdogan portraying himself as a sort of ersatz chancellor for Turkish immigrants and their children. At the same time, he alienates German society with campaigns like the recent push against Christian foster families.

During his visit to Ankara in February, Interior Minister Friedrich tried in vain to appease the Turkish government. The self-confident prime minister is also undaunted by appeals from Europe. The best way to thwart Erdogan, says Green Party politician Kilic, is through a successful integration policy, one that discourages immigrants from seeking support from Ankara in the first place.

TLDR: because immigration of Turks in Germany is not working out too well (not helped by Erdogan who refers to requests for assimilation or mandatory language courses as human rights violations), Erdogan and his Conservative-Islamic party exert a lot of influence over Turks in Germany to play up his image as Leader of All Turks and to bolster morale (and vote results) at home.

[Syt]

Can't comment much on Germany, but Austrian integration finds that Turkish girls who grow up here are much better integrated, language, education and job wise than their male counterparts.

[Phillip V]

Can't comment much on Germany, but Austrian integration finds that Turkish girls who grow up here are much better integrated, language, education and job wise than their male counterparts.

Example pictures of Turkish-Austrian girls?

[Malthus]

Didn't it used to be difficult for Turks living in Germany to get citizenship there? What's the situation now?

[Syt]

Didn't it used to be difficult for Turks living in Germany to get citizenship there? What's the situation now?

The general ules according to Wiki:

Naturalisation by entitlement

An individual who fulfils all of the following criteria has an entitlement to naturalise as a German citizen:[4]

- he/she has been ordinarily resident in Germany for at least 8 years (this period can be reduced - see below)
- he/she has legal capacity or a legal representative
- confirms his/her present and past commitment to the free democratic constitutional system enshrined in the German Basic Law (or that he is presently committed to such principles and has departed from former support of ideas contrary to such principles)
- he/she is a European Union or Swiss citizen in possession of the appropriate residence permit which permits the free movement of persons, or he/she is a non-EU/Swiss citizen who has been - granted a permanent right of residence
- he/she is able to support himself/herself without recourse to benefits
- he/she has not been sentenced for an unlawful act and is not subject to any court order imposing a measure of reform and prevention
- he/she possesses an adequate knowledge of German
- possesses knowledge of the legal system, the society and living conditions in the Federal Republic of Germany
- An individual who does not have legal capacity is entitled to naturalise as a German citizen merely through ordinary residence in Germany for at least 8 years - he/she does not have to fulfil the other criteria (e.g. adequate command of the German language and ability to be self-supporting without recourse to benefits).
- Applicants for naturalisation are normally expected to prove they have renounced their existing nationality, or will lose this automatically upon naturalisation. An exception applies to those unable to give up their nationality easily (such as refugees). A further exception applies to citizens of Switzerland and the European Union member states.
- An individual who is entitled to naturalise as a German citizen can also apply for his/her spouse and minor children to be naturalised at the same time (his/her spouse and minor children need not - have ordinarily resided in Germany for at least 8 years).

Exceptions to the normal residence requirements include:
- persons who have completed an integration course may have the residence requirement reduced to 7 years
- If a person shows that he/she is especially well integrated and has a higher level of command of the German language than the basic requirement for the German citizenship (i.e., higher than B1) may have the residence requirement reduced to 6 years
- The spouse of a German citizen may be naturalised after 3 years of continual residency in Germany. The marriage must have persisted for at least 2 years.
- refugees and stateless persons may be able to apply after 6 years of continual residency
- former German citizens

For kids born after 1st Jan 2000: if both parents are foreigners and one parent has been lawfully in Germany for at least 8 years, the kid is German. In many cases that means dual citizenship, so between the ages 18 and 23 they have to declare which one they will stick with.

Bear in mind, too, that most Turkish immigrants come from rural, conservative areas of Turkey.

[Grallon]

TLDR: because immigration of Turks in Germany is not working out too well (not helped by Erdogan who refers to requests for assimilation or mandatory language courses as human rights violations), Erdogan and his Conservative-Islamic party exert a lot of influence over Turks in Germany to play up his image as Leader of All Turks and to bolster morale (and vote results) at home.

How to build a 5th column in a nutshell - under the complacent/impotent sight of the German authorities. 



G.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

someone should tell Erdogan te shut the fuck up about it.

[Duque de Bragança]

Can't comment much on Germany, but Austrian integration finds that Turkish girls who grow up here are much better integrated, language, education and job wise than their male counterparts.

This is in line with what happens in France as well muslim girls be them from North Africa or Turkey. At worst (going full islamo), they'll be niqab'ed and will rarely step outside of home except for claiming some welfare. No crime/terrorism.

As for Erdogan courting the expat vote, well in principle, it's only fair actually when it's from a Near Eastern islamist government towards a troublesome community, one can see the potential trouble.

As in:

His deputy Bozdag would like to see the right to vote expanded to include former Turkish passport-holders, that is, German citizens of Turkish origin.

Non-citizens having voting rights? I guess they would keep their Turkish IDs and declare themselves as Germans in Germany and Turks at the consulate.

[Valmy]

How to build a 5th column in a nutshell - under the complacent/impotent sight of the German authorities. 

Pretty sure he is just trying to get people to vote for his party.

[frunk]

Pretty sure he is just trying to get people to vote for his party.

Pretty sure Grallon thinks Turkey is planning to take over Germany.

[AnchorClanker]

Pretty sure he is just trying to get people to vote for his party.

Pretty sure Grallon thinks Turkey is planning to take over Germany.

Start worrying when Mehmet Goltzuglu takes command of Bundeswehr forces.

[viper37]

TLDR: because immigration of Turks in Germany is not working out too well (not helped by Erdogan who refers to requests for assimilation or mandatory language courses as human rights violations)

Yeah, English Canadians are like that too, when it comes to Quebec.

[Viking]

Pretty sure he is just trying to get people to vote for his party.

Pretty sure Grallon thinks Turkey is planning to take over Germany.

Start worrying when Mehmet Goltzuglu takes command of Bundeswehr forces.

It will be too late then, you know those germans and their "ai wass djuust follofink awrdoors" attitude to chain of command.

[Zanza]

Our deputy defense minister is French. 

The armed forces are actively trying to recruit migrants.

[Ed Anger]

Our deputy defense minister is French. 

The armed forces are actively trying to recruit migrants.

Germany is ruined.