Turks in Germany. A Turkish heimat

Why Turks in Germany are eager to see Turkey in the European Union

IF, AS expected, this week's European Union summit agrees to start EU accession talks with Turkey, German parliamentarians may be treated to a strange sight: Lale Akgun, one of only two Turkish-born members of the Bundestag, has pledged to dance with wild abandon. This decision matters as much to the 2.6m Turks living in Germany, the largest Turkish minority inside the EU, as to their 70m-odd countrymen at home. If Europe says yes, “there will be a collective sigh of relief”, says Ms Akgun, a Social Democrat, “because it means that we have finally been accepted.”

Although most Turkish immigrants have found a place in society, many still live a life apart. Unemployment among German Turks is around 20%, twice the national average. Children of Turkish immigrants are more likely to fail in school. The second generation shows more pessimism and self-doubt than native Germans. A growing number of German Turks are withdrawing into “parallel societies”: communities with their own shops, media and entertainment, and few links to German society.

Yet one can see this glass as half-full. Most Turks in Germany came from rural Anatolia; they were challenged not just to meld into a Christian culture, but into an industrial one. And Germans did not exactly welcome them. When the first Turks arrived in the early 1960s, they were Gastarbeiter, or guest workers, expected to return home. Only recently has a new immigration law with measures to ease integration taken effect - accepting, for the first time, that Germany is an immigration country.

There are also signs of improvement. The number of married couples in which one partner is Turkish has more than doubled since 1996, to 112,000 last year. Some 57,000 Turkish-owned firms in Germany now generate €26 billion ($35 billion) in revenues, and employ more than 300,000 people, according to the Centre for Turkish Studies (ZfT), a research institute. The image of Turks is meanwhile changing. Germans have traditionally seen them as tired and dirty workers or as jostling women wearing headscarves. But a new award-winning film, “Head On”, has shown Germans that Turks can be complex and even sexy. Slowly but surely, Turkish-born Germans are moving up the political ladder - one has just been elected a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) board.

Yet Turks in Germany still feel edgy. The CDU's vocal hostility to full EU membership for Turkey has been taken by many German Turks as proof that they are not really wanted, says Faruk Sen, the ZfT's director. Yet once talks get under way, German Turks also bear a responsibility: to show more willingness to integrate and to distance themselves from radical Islam. A recent 25,000-strong anti-fundamentalism rally in Cologne was a good first step.

Why Turks living in Germany are keen to see Turkey in the European Union.