"It’s a Repetition With a Difference"

On Tuesday, we came to our meeting with Dr. Barış Ülker. He's a social anthropologist and currently a researcher at the Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technical University of Berlin. At first he introduced himself and his academic studies.

One of his projects was about "ethnic entrepreneurship” in Berlin since the late 1980s, relying on the experiences of immigrants from Turkey. He approached migration from two different perspectives : migration from Turkey to Germany and Germany to Turkey.

He had prepared a presentation for us about the history of migration in Berlin in terms of urban space, to be able to understand what is happening right now. His claim was that Germany didn't learned anything from his history.

Industralisation and Urban Planning

At the beginning of his presentation, he started with the industrialisation in Germany. With the industrialization in the middle of 19th century, the railways had developed and so that Berlin were able to receive more migrants. He said that we can define urbanisation with this simple equation: “urbanisation= industrialisation x migration.”

He also underlined the importance of the urban planing during the history of migration. The first urban plan of Berlin was in 1862 by James Hobrecht who was working on the settlements called 'rental barracks’. Hobrecht didn't want to push all the working class to the outside, instead he wanted to place them on the street level where middle classes were living. In other words, he was planning that the working class was going to look up the culture patterns of bourgeoisie and they were going to educate themselves. Mr Ülker added that it was a pedagogical interesting idea.

German Citizenship

Mr. Ülker also expressed that the first citizenship law for the immigrants was in 1930, that means in Germany, for the first time they defined who the migrants and the citizens are. Surprisingly, this law was valid until 2000. In that year they changed it to a soil-based (settlement area-based) system.

However, the new system is not easy either. Even with the reforms about the taking German citizenship progress, the progress still have very hard and serious conditions for the people. For instance, the people who want to get the German passport, have to speak perfectly German, educated in Germany without any interruption more than 8 years and also had a parents who lived in Germany for so many years. At this point, Mr. Ülker said “These are the German policy, it is not an integration.”

Fall Of The Berlin Wall

Then, we started to talk about the construction of the Wall. The first thing Mr. Ülker said was that the construction wasn’t planned. But it changed the history of Berlin and migrants once again. It was the migrants living next to the Wall, mostly Turkish. It was serving as a buffer zone. For example, if the Soviet tanks decide to enter and invade West Berlin, they will kill the migrants first.

With the falling of the wall, the problems started for the German Government. First, the government had to deal with the question of how would they define the German nation identity. Germans were separated for 40 years and the government had to create ‘Germanness” once again. Second, when the wall fall down, the migrants started to come to central areas of Berlin. So, the government had to “discipline” all these people because they were unemployeed, involved in crime all the time and now they were in the central areas with all of their children.

Kreuzberg

In 1970’s, in West Berlin, especially in those migrant neighbourhoods, there was incredible reconstructions because most of the rental barracks were in bad conditions. They demolished but they didn’t make any big building project, social housing until 1987. So during 22 years, since 1955 when the migrants first came, there wasn’t any investment in terms of housing.

At this point, Mr. Ülker mentioned about the notion of gentrification. Gentrification in Berlin started in Kreuzberg in 1987, made the clock-wise movement and came back to Kreuzberg. Also, lots of people started to come and live in Kreuzberg like anarchists, Lgbti communities, artist and so on. So Kreuzberg started to become the model of left-wing organisations.

Although, in 2010s, lots of urban development projects showed up in Berlin. These projects were not naifs according to Mr. Ülker; they were trying to create the German national identity. For example the parliament building would be combining the two side of the river as a symbolic idea to unite East and West Germany but it doesn’t. So, everyone can see this kind of projects in all of the Berlin and they are all for the symbolic creation of the national identity.

Besides, one of the interesting thing about the migrants ,in 2012, they put a protest movement in Kreuzberg about racism and urban displacement. built a protest house called “kotti“, translated from Turkish word “gecekondu”. This was not legal, but lots of people and intellectuals support them..

Same Rhetoric During History

During his presentation, Mr. Ülker constantly underlined that in German history, same rhetoric happened and happened al the time. Likewise throwing foreigners out of the central have been a common occasion, first with Polish, after Jewish and then with Turks. Now in these days we can see two side of this situation; for instance, in the refugees hotel, refugees are staying just right in the middle of the city but for the tranquility of the neighborhood’s other residents they don’t really have an interaction with the neighborhood. Besides he said that that the refugee camps are more likely outside of the city because of the security problems, just like the old times migrants. So, German approach is just a repetition.

Using Correct Concepts

Mr. Ülker emphasised that problems starts in the language, etymology of words, and this causes categorisation of people. For instance, the word “welcome” builds a hierarchy and indicates who is the host and who is the guest. In addition, he was strongly criticised the terms such as “multiculturalism”, “integration”, “diversity”. To do a fair policy, these words shouldn't being used in daily life because according to him, there is no integration and diversity is just a “tool” which is used by German government in economic or political issues.

Mediatic Vision

Mr. Ülker supported his presentation with several examples from different magazines and political posters. For instance, he always mentioned Der Spiegel which considered as a left-winger publication by Germans. Indeed, in several cover of Der Spiegel we saw the images and texts which were representing a bad stereotypes about Turkish migrants, hate speeches or provocative contents.

Comparing Perspectives

At the beginning, in 2012, every country was supposedly take 20.000 people. In 2015, after the deal with Turkey, Germany and France pushed Turkey to accept 200.000 people and it turned in a big fight. At this point, Mr. Ülker indicated that European countries were doing a new pact with Turkey, it seemed that the first one wasn't enough.

When it comes to germans approach to migrants, it was seen that -until Syrian came- they were complaining about Turkish. At this point, he told about an interesting situation : Also Turks complain about Syrians too.

Mr. Ülker mentioned wealthy countries like France and Germany are willing to accept more because they are better organized in terms of budget, urban infrastructure but in East and central Europe, there is a big resistance against refugees.

Nevertheless, Turkish Germans are seemed like a diaspora for Germans, and Erdoğan was the only one who tells “They are my citizen”. It’s an important fact for today and also for Turkish Germans because no one ever said “I’m going to take care of you, you’re not lost” to Turkish migrants in a long term. It made a big shock for Germans too because they were seeing Turkish-Germans like a problem. It was a radical thing to see it. For near 50 years Germans didn’t integrate Turkish migrants very well and a man came up with an appeal “they are not a problem, they are my people”.

To conclude, according to Mr. Ülker, if Germany wants a healthy interaction between refugees and Germans, they should be more open to refugee’s culture.