ERDOGAN’S PATERNALISM PROVES COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE
Spiegel Online International, Germany
May 7, 2013 Tuesday 1:23 PM GMT+1
by : Maximilian Popp
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 Goru movement, which is under observation by Germany’s
domestic intelligence agency, and a senior official with the Islamist
congregation of the imam Fethullah Gulen.
On its website, however, the Office for Turks Abroad also lists as
a member of the advisory council the political scientist Ahmet Unalan.
As an advisor to the education ministry in the western German state of
North Rhine-Westphalia, Unalan is responsible for the structuring of
instruction in Islam. Unalan 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.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/erdogan-hurts-turkish-integration-in-germany-with-aggressive-policies-a-898116.html