For Turks in Germany, ‘home’ is a complicated concept

Cenk Auth is a Berlin hairstylist with Turkish flair and a German passport.

Born in Germany to Turkish German parents, Mr. Auth is part of a Turkish diaspora spread across Europe that keenly feels the tug of two places. When he’s not running Berlin’s upscale Haarwerk salon, he’s listening to Turkish music and watching Turkish television to stay connected to Turkey.

Yet Mr. Auth also feels uniquely German. “From a national perspective, I see myself as being a Turk living in Germany, but I don’t see Turkey as my homeland because I didn’t grow up there. I don’t think I could live in Turkey – I’m too accustomed to life and integrated in Germany.”

Politically, Turks in Germany are so important back “home” that Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has campaigned in Germany, setting up offices to maintain a physical footprint. While campaigning in Germany a decade ago, Mr. Erdoğan advised this group to “integrate yourselves into German society but don’t assimilate.” Indeed, surveys show Turks abroad are remarkably connected to Turkey politically and culturally.

Turkish Germans in particular are caught between two lands, with many casting votes in one country but residing in another. Only about a quarter million of the more than 3 million Turks in Germany hold German citizenship, according to 2016 numbers from the Federal Statistical Office of Germany. That may be set to change, as the current government has promised to end Germany’s ban on dual citizenship – and along with it, a difficult choice of loyalty forced upon generations of Turks in Germany.

But most Turks also say they feel German society is discriminatory against them.

Will a citizen’s stake in both the second- and third-largest countries in Europe change their experience of the duality of cultures and their concept of “home”?

“It is somewhat of a push/pull phenomenon. On the one hand, they’ve been ‘otherized’ by European society, and I think Germany is the outstanding example,” says Alan Makovsky, a former adviser on Middle Eastern affairs and a senior fellow for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress. “But on the other hand, they retain a strong Turkish identity. They moved away physically, but thanks to technology and other factors, they’ve never really had to move away psychologically or mentally.”

Markus Schreiber/AP

Turkish citizens living in Germany line up in front of a polling station at the Turkish consulate to cast their vote for Turkish the parliament and president election in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, April 27, 2023. Millions of Turkish citizens living abroad have began voting in national elections that will decide whether President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can govern Turkey for another term. Among the biggest contingent of overseas voters are 1.5 million Turks in Germany, who can cast their votes in presidential and parliamentary elections at 16 polling sites across the country until May 9.

A tricky melding of cultures

Mr. Auth’s mother, Ayse Auth, is a hairstylist to celebrities. She became a star herself, with her suave good looks, a shock of dyed blond hair, and a keen media savvy.

But Ms. Auth’s childhood wasn’t such a shining example of Turkish success. Though she was born in Germany, her parents sent her and her twin sister to Turkey to be raised by their grandmother. Growing up, she straddled an internal conflict presented by her authoritarian Turkish grandmother, a father who tried to marry her off in the Turkish tradition, and a faraway Germany that to her teenage eyes presented freedom and opportunity.

She was able to wend her way back to Germany, eventually shed a marriage of convenience, and strike out on her own as an adult in Germany, in a story that played out across media as an example of dual identity. Today, Ms. Auth and her twin sister own and operate successful high-end lifestyle salons across Frankfurt, Munich, and Berlin.

Her son now effortlessly embraces both cultures, which wasn’t as easy for his mother decades ago. With his Muslim mother and a Catholic German stepfather, Mr. Auth was raised to be open to other cultures and religions. That’s not necessarily something promoted by Mr. Erdoğan and his ruling AKP party in Turkey.

The AKP’s “election campaign in Germany is being massively, aggressively conducted and with different voting ads than in Turkey,” says Mr. Auth, referring to the fact that the Turkish population in Germany skews even more conservative than the right-wing AKP in Turkey. “It’s really tough as a migrant to get citizenship here, and it seems it will become even harder in the future. But everybody should vote in the country where they live and participate there rather than elsewhere.”

In Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections this month, Turks in Germany showed a record turnout at the polls of more than 50% of eligible voters.

Yet while Mr. Auth acknowledges the delicacy that holding dual citizenship might pose for male Turks who would then be subject to military service, other German Turks might be happy to have access to one of most powerful passports in the world. Most Turks in Germany are there on long-term or permanent residencies, and the diaspora is less likely to hold citizenship compared with their counterparts in France, Holland, and Austria.

And the data shows that citizenship hastens integration, while a ban on citizenship can be “alienating, especially as much of the Western world accepts dual citizenship,” says Mr. Makovsky, the former adviser.

Finding a balance

That sense of alienation plays out in surveys of Turkish communities in Germany; more than 65% have reported feeling discriminated against. A 2019 Federal Employment Agency report found that nearly half of unemployed people in Germany hail from ethnic minority communities, despite comprising only a quarter of the population. Turkish diasporas across Europe show little interest in the politics of their “host” country, with more than three-quarters supporting Turkish football and other sports teams over their Western European counterparts.

Photo courtesy of Cenk Auth

Cenk Auth is the Turkish German owner of the hair salon HaarWerk Berlin.

In Germany, the Turkish population skews more conservative than in other European communities, says Ayhan Kaya, a Turkish sociologist and professor of intercultural politics at Istanbul Bilgi University.

“They’re happy to vote for Erdoğan, [because he] has given them leverage to feel better in Germany or in Europe with their Islamic background, their conservative background, with their traditional values,” says Dr. Kaya. “Because Erdoğan is, according to them, a world leader who has the ability to say hush to the big European leaders. It psychologically empowers these working class-origin people with a ‘revenge-ist’ feeling.”

That kind of sway may make it harder for Turkish communities to integrate culturally and socially. Yet still, there are clear economic reasons for Turks to stay in Germany and other countries in Europe, says Dr. Kaya. Turkey’s economy provides fewer opportunities, and living in Germany benefits their sons and daughters who can access education and health care. “They’re trying to make the most of both sides of the river. It’s a rational choice for them, these transnational communities.”

Germany’s coalition government has promised to take up the ban on dual citizenship, potentially paving the way for millions of Turks to be more institutionally connected to the country in which they live. That would be an antidote to what Dr. Kaya pinpoints as a small group of young Muslims in Germany who are becoming more affiliated with their religious identity as a response growing Islamophobia propagated by far-right German political parties.

“They try to defend themselves as a reactionary measure,” he says. “If dual citizenship ban is [not lifted], I can tell you the Turkish-origin people living in Germany are going to become even more conservative, even more religious, even more connected to their homeland [of Turkey] because they will be pushed. They will feel they’re being pushed by the German state. They will lose their faith in the German state.

“So if you really want to win the hearts and minds of these people, you need to you need to give them carrots – political resources, such as citizenship – so that they will feel integrated and welcome,” Dr. Kaya adds.

Though parliament has recently been distracted by energy issues and the war in Ukraine, it’s an issue that will be watched closely. While European societies are notoriously grappling with the issue of ethnic communities feeling marginalized, remarks Mr. Makovsky, that divide is something that’s playing out all over the world.

“European societies aren’t based as much as [America’s] on this notion of protean, ever-evolving national culture. And of course, as we know, there are a lot of Americans who don’t like that either,” he says. “We’re still dealing with many issues of majority-minority cleavages.”