Did you hear the one about the Turks who’ve been in Germany for fifty years?
1961. Hundreds of thousands of invited Turks start making their way to Germany to work: the so-called ‘guest workers’. The bilateral agreement between Turkey and Germany changed German society. To the German government the Turkish migrants were nothing more than compensation for labour shortages in Germany. However, as author Max Frisch famously announced just four years on: ‘We called for workforce and people came’. Fifty years later more than 2.5 million people of Turkish origin live in Germany. It is only recently that the integration debate has stalled, that third generation Germans are insulted as foreigners and that public ‘islam-bashing’ is officially back thanks to German former European central bank chairman and best-selling author Thilo Sarrazin. Is it time for a U-turn on all things multi-cultural?
Sila Sahin, Turkish-German actress and first 'muslim playboy model'
In May 2011 the 25-year-old posed on the cover of German Playboy, becoming the 'first muslim’ to pose nude for a glossy magazine. Her 'act of liberation’, as the tabloids called it, sparked religious outrage and divided the Turkish community from Berlin to Istanbul. Yet was it just a marketing coup, or even a daring act of integration? Interview
discrimination, cinema, sex, culture, society, berlin, sex, brunch
Meeting 4 of 500, 000 'Almanci' German Turks who returned 'home' over last 30 years
After growing up in Germany these men have chosen to turn their backs on their native country to return to their homeland, Turkey. In Istanbul the 'Almanci' as they are called - with slightly negative connotations - are Hasan, Cengiz, Hazar and Cigdem. They tell us the story of their return to the banks of the Istanbul Strait
Older migrants of Europe: forgotten until when?
They came to work and in the end they stayed. Today the migrants of the 1960s are growing old in the cities of western Europe often in isolation and insecurity. Their discretion has turned them into an invisible generation. Portrait of retired immigrants whom everybody wants already buried
immigration, discrimination, maghreb, ageing society, society, berlin, paris, association
Islam and Europe: a five step waltz
The more widespread an idea, the more erroneous it is. Since the Middle Ages, each period imagines that the question of islam in Europe is a new phenomenon, too often forgetting history, which has not always been about the mode of conquest. A brief overview of a stormier past than one could have imagined
history, discrimination, islamophobia, catholicism, culture, society, islam
