Germans Are Germans and Turks Are Turks, and Never the Twain Shall Meet

The video below is the second excerpt (the first one is here) of a German TV report about an overwhelmingly Turkish neighborhood in Mannheim.

This installment highlights the fact that members of a visible minority who retain at least some of their cultural practices are treated differently from the natives. However, they also treat the natives differently themselves, which illustrates one of the major problems with Multiculturalism.

Many thanks to MissPiggy for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

00:00   I think Germans might feel like outsiders here. —Germans are foreigners here.
00:05   Just joking. We are happy to have fellow citizens who are German.
00:10   Of course. They’re barely seen around here, though. No idea why. —Is this coexistence between
00:14   Germans and Turks? —There aren’t any Germans here. —There are a few, sure.
00:18   It became a ghetto here. The older men and women who owned buildings
00:22   sold them to the Turks, probably because they offer more
00:26   than a German. So when a Turk buys a building
00:30   he won’t let any Germans move in. —So now it is clear, we’ve scored an own goal.
00:36   If Turks predominantly live here, that would mean the classes
00:40   in schools or kindergartens are probably 90% Turkish.
00:43   How are they supposed to learn to speak German properly?
00:46   At least here in this quarter you can get by without knowing any German.
00:50   In the supermarket, at the doctor, nearly everyone speaks some or only Turkish.
00:55   Many, like this woman here, have German friends. However, some tell me
00:59   that in the last few years it has become more difficult.
01:02   Have relations between Germans and Turks changed? —Actually,
01:06   they were always satisfactory. It’s the politics that
01:09   makes everything worse, I think. For some reason Germany is preoccupied
01:13   with Erdogan. I have no idea why. Erdogan isn’t
01:17   concerned about German politics, but German politics is concerned
01:21   about Erdogan. —Every day there’s talk about Erdogan.
01:25   German children don’t even know the name of their own president,
01:29   but they know about Erdogan. It is even on the children’s show
01:32   called KIKA. So it makes sense that there’s an attitude of… —Defiance?
01:36   Defiance in the sense that you just want to say:
01:41   “Hey, I’m Turkish, now more than ever.” —Yes, exactly. I have Turkish roots,
01:45   and I can’t deny that. So if a German comes to me
01:48   and says something against Turkey, all I can say is sorry.
01:52   It is my country, and somehow he’s my president.
01:56   I was invited to Waiblingen by a family that has been living in Germany for decades.
02:02   They are all very satisfied living here and are well-integrated.
02:06   However, the son, Ibrahim Aydin, an insurance agent, is annoyed
02:10   more often in recent times. Although he is normally apolitical, he finds himself being constantly
02:13   expected to take a position regarding Erdogan. —Sometimes even colleagues at work
02:17   just ask me, “What do you think of him?”. What should I think of him?
02:22   Every day, hearing the same question, at some point it gets annoying,
02:26   of course. Especially when there is pressure to
02:29   take some position, in a sense getting me to take sides. If you’re for him, then you’re against us.
02:32   If you’re against him, then you’re for us. —And then you land in some categorized drawer,
02:37   he says. His mother has prepared a table of food for us.
02:42   Hospitality is important to them. This family is happy to live in Germany,
02:45   and it shows. However, Ibrahim Aydin, also tells us
02:48   whether it is applying for work or in the office he feels
02:51   he has a disadvantage simply because of his name and
02:54   because he is Turkish. All the headlines in the news strengthen the prejudice.
03:00   You read in a newspaper, “Hasan A.” did this or that.
03:04   People associate this name with Turks even though it is an Arab name.
03:08   My God, that’s no Turk. We are completely different.
03:12   The only thing we could possibly have in common with Arabs
03:15   is maybe a religion. —So you’re saying Germans lump you all together? —Definitely.
03:18   Do you think this has something to do
03:21   with Erdogan? —Let’s just say, he’s like a fire accelerant
03:25   in the whole situation. —In general, the mood is not bad.
03:30   However, those who are unsatisfied have a clear message:
03:33   “Basically, you don’t even want us to be integrated. You only
03:36   accept us when we become 100% German. We are Turks and won’t give up our identity so easily.
 

25 thoughts on “Germans Are Germans and Turks Are Turks, and Never the Twain Shall Meet

  1. So, Turks are bothered by Germans asking their opinion of Erdogan?

    Who cares.

    When I was the Public and Media Relations man for my local rugby team we had a new player just arrived from Turkey.

    In my first conversation with him I asked him directly what he thought of Erdogan.

    I wanted and needed to know if he was a devout moslem supporter of the dictator. As a team of non-muslim, peaceful men we had every right to know if this new guy was here to create a moslem foothold in the club and create future problems for us.

    It turned out he was a non-practicing moslem, a nursing student and was part of the rebellion against Erdogan and had fled the country during the mass arrests of rebels. He was not offended by my probing and understood completely our concerns.

    We have legitimate concerns with arabs and all moslems and they will have to grow a backbone if they can’t handle our questioning. If this is the worst form of harassment they experience in our countries, then they are very, very fortunate. I have no patience for moslem tears.

    • As individuals most of them are decent people. I have spent quite a lot of time in my wife’s country, a former soviet central asian republic, and I never experienced any trouble even though I was obviously a foreigner.

      The danger of importing more than a token few into any country is that they tend to form enclaves and ghettos; the more foreign and incompatible their language and customs, the greater the tendency to self segregate. And it doesn’t take many bad individuals to self-police those who are genuinely interested in integrating and embracing their new country. A few terrorist attacks or just ghettoization with the resulting crime and no-go zones, and all foreigners get a bad name and the divide between them and their hosts grows deeper. This becomes a negative feedback loop.

      I think that the mass importation of incompatible cultures is done deliberately, and the side effects are welcomed by those elites behind the mass importations. It lowers trust and divides communities and allows the creation of a surveillance and police state along with the welfare for votes system. Some places are lucky enough to have a strong charismatic leader such as Salvini, who fights back effectively, but this is the exception and not the rule. And always, the elites are in the background continuing their plotting while weaving their webs.

    • Both LeCanadien and Moon is a Harsh Mistress have very good points. A very few of any culture, including Muslims, can create a kind of diverse mix that is not at all a bad flavor. But, where you import masses of people, where the number is determined by political whim rather than by a view to the good of the host country, things can tip, you get autonomous zones, and can go badly.

      I agree that if an immigrant really wants to assimilate, they can endure a few rough points for the good of their host society. If they get huffy over a little questioning, I question their commitment to fully integrating.

  2. This apparently nice and polite man plays the same old music of muslims.They just can’t help it. Problems applying for a job? What about reading and writing skills, what about employers knowing about the glas egos of muslim men when crtiticism is on the agenda, or a female superior?
    A friends wife of turkish origin complains she is not promoted because of her origins, when in fact she is executive with the major air carrier and makes more money than a university professor without being that qualified.

    And papers writing ” Hasan B. did this or that”…… how come that muslims are so grotesquely overrepresented in the carceral population?

  3. “Basically, you don’t even want us to be integrated. You only accept us when we become 100% German. We are Turks and won’t give up our identity so easily.” on one hand I can understand them, on the other if they word it like that they can scram to their homeland. And that’s the difference between migrants nowadays and in the old times. Almost every Irish, Italian, Polish, Czech, German, Dutch, and what have you immigrant to the US came for economic reasons, but they still intergrated. And they weren’t given anything. They had to live in terrible conditions and work ridiculous hours in hardcore conditions, but even the lowest peasant had the chance to work his way up. But only if they integrated. That meants learning the language well and figuring out how Americans tick. And then nobody cared if they celebrated Christmas with slightly different customs or if they ate different foods. Nobody came in and demanded pirogy or spaghetti are served at schools. Even though they had their quarters, everybody was bilingual and parents made sure their children spoke English really well, so that nobody can guess their parents are foreigners. I mean I don’t even have to explain this, the difference is clear as day, isn’t it?
    Maybe the biggest difference is former immigrants (whether to America or inside Europe) not having the luxury to visit home every year or even more times every year. I would guess it’s that way that the offspring naturally become part of the host population, rather than developing a parallel society.
    And quite frankly the difference between a Swede and an Italian is immense, but because of the common cultural roots it all but disappears when compared to the difference between a German and a Turk, especially a young Turk.

    • Good points. It’s also the internet and satellite tv that keeps them from integrating. Overall it seems they’d be happier in their own countries.

      • Good point.

        I notice in my neighbourhood that the homes of Mid-East people, both moslem and non-moslem, have 4 or 5 satellite dishes.

        My wife (a ‘community nurse’, a nurse who visits people in their homes) says that the moslems she visits constantly watch Mid-East TV programs. She says that every single show, whether it be a cooking show or a soap-opera, include regular references to such favourite themes such as the ‘evil’ Jews and ‘evil’ nazi US president.

  4. Several studies in Sweden showed that no more Swedes will move to a neighborhood when there MENA immigrants have reached 5% to 8%; this is the mechanism by which ghettos emerge there (and which lets me hope for the future).

    IMO the question of “integration” boils down to: on which side would you fight in case of a (hypothetical) armed conflict? Perhaps its peculiar to Northerners that the oath weighs heavier than blood.

    • “this is the mechanism by which ghettos emerge there (and which lets me hope for the future).”

      Why does this give you hope?

      • People don’t mix. The MENA immigrants are totally dependet on the host population economically. Sweden is mostly sparsely populated. Nature and climate favour the natives. And Sweden is well armed:

        https://www.fokus.se/2010/11/sverige-ett-bevapnat-land/
        (Did not find quickly a newer source now; it’s from 2010)

        »Totalt finns det närmare två miljoner registrerade vapen innanför landets gränser fördelade på 628 000 vapenägare, vilket placerar Sverige bland de mest vapentäta länderna i världen. «

        “In total, there are almost 2 million registered guns within the countries borders, distributed over 628000 owners, which makes Sweden one of the contries in the world with the highest density of weapons.”

        Much of these are “älgstutsare” (moose carbines): 30-06, 308Win, 7 and 8 millimeter Mauser etc.

        BTW: 1) Sweden now seems to get another 4 years of red-green government — with help of the liberal democrats. 2) I am German.

        • I want to share your optimism but I am nervous about the reports that many weapons, including explosives, are smuggled into the moslem ghettos. Some of the mosques appear to be a part of this system.

          It appears both sides are arming themselves.

          I wish we had the ability to know the number and type of weapons within each moslem community.

  5. This film is presstitute globalist-multiculti propaganda of SWF, Südwestfunk, the branch of German State TV that is regionally responsible for SW Germany. Why? Just look at the lying by omission. Whereby the facts I list below were all reported in the mainstream German media.

    The entire history of Erdogan’s interference in German politics incl. rallies by the ten thousand of his underling Turkish voters, all waving Turkish flags at e.g. Oberhausen is omitted. Note that of the ca. half of all German Turks who voted in the Turkish elections, 60% voted for Erdogan. Hence German Turks are more Islamist on average than Turks in Turkey.

    The subversion AKA monitoring of Turkish dissidents incl. Kurds in Germany by Erdogan’s intelligence service is omitted.

    The recent court case in Koblenz in which the Turkish State attempted to influence a German court ruling by means of phone calls from Erdogan underlings is omitted.

    The role of DITIB, the local arm of the Turkish Ministry of Religion in Germany, is omitted.

    The overarching point, that Turkey has a border with Russia, that it thus hosted US Titan missiles aimed at Russia already in 1960 and that Germany is a US vassal that took in Turkish workers en masse under US pressure to take the strain off its Ankara underling government in the early 60s is omitted.

    Instead, we get ignorant, resentful comments by low-level Turks that are not commented upon on or given historical context. And doesn’t the ageing German blonde female TV presstitute love being in the Turkish family’s room as invitee: how multiculti and warmhearted.

    This travesty is the utter reverse of German State TV reporting on Russia: there, the program consists of 90% warmongering russophobia by means of editorialising. No statement by any Russian is free of hostile German comment in the off.

  6. Last week, I finished reading Tuba Sarica’s book, “Ihr Scheinheiligen!” [You Hypocrites!], an account by the daughter of original guest workers that came to Germany in the 1970s. As the title suggests, the complaints by younger Turkish Germans are thoroughly hypocritical. Germany and Germans have bent over backwards to help them integrate, and have been tolerant to a fault.

    The reason young Turkish Germans are not integrating is because they do not want to. The do not want to relinquish the power of their tribal society. They are afraid of submitting to another, an alien western society where power springs from every individual – male and *female* – and their democratic will.

    Instead of trying to understand Germany and adapt to it, many young Turkish Germans, cut off from their homeland, instead create, withdraw to and defend a protective bubble of idealized, superior Turkishness, an exaggerated Turkishness that was largely foreign, before Erdogan, even in Turkey.

    If what Frau Sarica writes is typical – and I have seen or heard little to suggest otherwise – it is understandable that Germans are curious about Erdogan, and that their young Erdogan supporting neighbors might push back against what they perceive as German prejudice.

    • “The do not want to relinquish the power of their tribal society”

      I think this is the #1 reason moslem men of any Western country do not want to integrate.

      • and very often – which is sort of tragic- they are even shunned when in their home countries.
        I know witnesses from Turkey and Morocco:
        especially younger immigrants boast with their 12 year-old BMWs, their nonexistant achievements ( anything over 4 years of school is close to academia for them), do not show respect to the ” peasants” that did not make it( shows their latent disrespect of hard work) .

  7. In Irshad Manji’s book, ‘The Trouble with Islam Today’, she states that one of the main problems with moslem integration is their tribal mindset.

    She grew up in a Canadian moslem community in a middle-class white Canadian community. As she states, Westerners are completely ignorant of the depth of moslem tribalism which exists in Western countries. It is very deep and powerful and exerts an immense amount of pressure on each moslem, even on those who are not practicing moslem. It acts as a sort of mafia to keep each member in line but also to protect each member from the pressure to integrate. Tribalism for them is a sort of refuge from what they see as Western decadence and depravity which seeks to destroy the basic elements of islamic community: marriage, defined gender roles and family cohesion and unity. Certainly now more than ever, there is some truth to this assessment of modern Western culture. This fact makes moslem tribalism and the power each man receives from it, all the more attractive to the average moslem man and for many woman also. Thus, to combat this polarising tribalism, we would also have to somehow reduce the over reaching power of our excessively liberal culture. Unfortunately, we are discovering this to be a difficult job and one in which we receive little support from the moslem community. Certainly, they themselves combat our liberalism in their own manner, mainly through isolationism of their communities, and so such efforts are not really in partnership with us.

    • You’re speaking of Muslim integration as if it’s a sociological phenomenon, which it might be if the number of Muslims were a very small fraction of the community.

      But, as this is a fact that Manji ignores, particularly at the present when she doesn’t deal with Islam at all, we have an actual imperative from Islamic doctrine to expand, dominate, replace and prevail. This is manifest in organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Washabi Saudi Arabian aristocracy, al-qaeda and hundreds or thousands of Islamic organizations burrowing their way, very consciously and deliberately, into our political and community structures.

      Robert Spencer’s book, “The History of Jihad” is a good account of the very long history of Muslim aggression, murder and expansion through the imperative of their religious outlook.

      In line with your observations, there is no doubt that the present structure of society and family in the West is unstable, and will have to change. This would be true even if we weren’t under attack by the opportunistic virus of Islam. But, under Islam, all progress and investigation ceases. What doesn’t follow the traditional teachings is not done.

      I have to point out that for anyone in Congress or the government to even be known to subscribe to a publication like GoV or hundreds of others, risks not only criticism from the press, which is OK, but an actual vote of censure by the Congress for maintaining incorrect ideas.

      • I’ll be honest that I don’t completely understand every point you are making.

        I guess what I was highlighting is the genuine sense of security and identity that the average man and woman seeks. Many moslems, even many non-practising, seem to find these things in their tribalism and that it is perhaps clung to partly as a desire to not be entrapped by Western liberalism. Sure, many are threatened into it and remain within in out of fear, but there is also a kernel of genuine desire for what they may believe to be the better social structure of islam versus Western liberlism.

      • I do believe you’re correct to say that many moslems operate with the over-arching sense of islamic imperative to invade, dominate and isolate themselves.

        I just wonder how much the average moslem is driven by the other foreces I mention. I think it is a large part of the equation for the average moslem parent. The young single men I imagine are driven more by the militaristic domination ideologies of islam.

        • Well, you’re correct. I reread my original post and it wasn’t very clear.

          As far as Muslims liking the well-defined roles in Islam, I have no doubt that is attractive to them. I like to say that I like Muslims very much…in Muslim countries. Their solution is not our solution. I follow Stefan Molyneux, who makes the point constantly that males and females are different, with different physiology and different cognitive structures. He definitely supports making the traditional male female role a real option for married couples. But, that does not include wrapping up the female and requiring that she is accompanied by a male relative if she goes out of the home.

  8. I think the reason sometimes we question them about Erdogan is the simple fact that he represents about the only thing most Westerners know about Turkey.

    We are simply trying to be friendly and engage in ‘small talk’.

    Such is a good and admirable part of our own culture.

    • Yeah, kind of hard to start a conversation with “So, what do you think of that Armenian genocide”…

      • Not hard at all for a muslim: ” never took place. It is zionist propaganda.They left by their own will, let alone the fact that there never were any Armenians in Turkey.Turkey didn’t even exist then.So how can you ask that?”

        • I enjoy speaking with young Armenians who are children of Armenian immigrants.

          Most know something about the genocide.

          I like to give them a sense of greater pride by reminding them that Armenians are famous for their excellent craftsmanship and that Armenia was the first nation to declare itself Christian.

          I will never forget the day when I went into an Armenian tailor shop to have cuffs shortened on a coat. I was 25 years old.

          The man, who was perhaps as old as my father, saw the poor condition of my shoes (I was quite poor at the time).

          He literally knelt down in front of me on the dirty floor, took out a pair of scissors, and trimmed all the loose threads from my shoes.

          When I offered to pay for this, he refused to accept it.

          • I read a book* by a French cultural anthropologist who’d studied the fate of immigrant groups who’d been subjected to genocide. IIRC, it was her doctoral dissertation and her thesis, at least partially, was that you could correlate immigrant groups/occupations of survivors. She pointed out that Armenian women went into beauty salon work at a higher percentage than would have been indicated by population. She suggested that care of the head was one way of treating the trauma of so many beheadings. She also found that nail salons seemed to be the purview of South Korean women…many of their grandparents, North Korean Catholics, had bamboo slivers shoved under their fingernails before they escaped to the South.

            Now that epigenetics is becoming more widely known, I hope someone follows up on her studies. But economic migrants don’t bear the same burden as those persecuted for who they were or what they believed.

            ———
            *sad to say, that tome is long since lost…

Comments are closed.