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  Turkish-German Professionals: Young, Qualified and Unwanted

Turkish-German Professionals Young, Qualified and Unwanted

By Michael Sontheimer

Part 2: Tired of Hearing 'Go Back to Where You Come From'

In addition to Turkey, the destinations of choice for emigrants include the Persian Gulf and English-speaking countries. "The British are more tolerant," says a Turkish-German management consultant from the southwestern city of Mannheim. He recounts what his former supervisor in a large German company allegedly once said to him: "You can have three German passports, but as far as I'm concerned you'll always be a Turk."

"You can be as educated as you want, but you will always feel marginalized and never accepted," says Eda Gökçen Yücel, a 28-year-old from the northern port city of Bremen, who is about to receive a degree in medical technology and already has several job offers from Turkish companies.

A business school graduate from Düsseldorf was recently on a job-hunting trip to New York. "After one week," he says, "I felt like an American." In Germany, on the other hand, he has never felt quite at home, not even after 26 years. And despite completing his degree with flying colors, it took him significantly longer to find work in Germany than it took his German fellow students, even when they had graduated with significantly lower grades.

Valuing Biculturalism

There is one experience that all Turkish-German university graduates claim to have in common: At some point, a German has suggested to them -- in a more or less unfriendly tone -- that they should "go back to where they came from."

It's a question to which Dilsad Budak, 27, who came to Germany from Istanbul when she was only one-and-a-half years old, likes to reply cheekily: "Oh no, I think I'd rather bring all my relatives from Turkey here to Germany, and then have 10 kids to boot."

Last year Budak, a junior lawyer living in Düsseldorf, spent four months working at a law firm in Istanbul. When it was over, she immediately received several attractive job offers. "In Turkey," Budak says, "biculturalism is valued."

Early next year, after completing the German bar examination, Budak expects to move to Istanbul. Although she feels like a foreigner there, she still feels "wanted." In Germany, on the other hand, although the legal system might consider her a German, she still feels "not particularly wanted."

Happy To Be 'Back'

"I have no intention of leaving Istanbul."

The same sentence could just as easily have come from Cihan Batman, 40, who has worked for Vodafone in Istanbul for the past year and a half. Batman was born in Stuttgart and has a German passport and a degree in business administration. He considers himself a European Turk and enjoys life in Turkey's largest city. He occasionally attends the meetings of a group of Turkish-Germans who have immigrated to Istanbul. The group, about 50 strong, meets once a month in a café owned by a Turkish-German émigré from the western German city of Bochum.

The young people in the group have discovered that there are a few things they do miss in Istanbul. German bratwursts, for one. And then, of course, there is German football and Germany's national league, the Bundesliga.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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