Citizenship and its Challenges
A citizenship reform law passed in 2000 officially marked the transition from the principle of ius sanguinis to that of ius soli. This new law allowed children born to Turkish parents who settled in the country decades ago to finally be recognized as German citizens. The reform also set the criteria for naturalization, granting immigrants who fulfill the requirements the right to become citizens. The new citizenship law came as a recognition of Germany’s status as an immigrant country. It represented the first legal effort to abandon an outdated ethnic conception of national identity for a more inclusive one. Fourteen years after the reform, however, citizenship and naturalization remain controversial issues in Germany, especially in light of the country’s strong stance against dual citizenship.
a professor at the University of Bremen, explained that most children born to Turkish parents decide to keep their German nationality and forfeit their Turkish one. Karakasoglu added, however, that adult Turks who have the right to naturalize are often hesitant to relinquish their Turkish citizenship, believing that “if they give up their Turkish citizenship they will lose their cultural and emotional roots to Turkey.”
According to Ruud Koopmans, research director at the Berlin Social Science Center, Turks who decide not to naturalize engage in self-exclusion. “The barrier is in their own heads,” he said in an interview with the HPR. Koopmans pointed to the “underutilized potential of voters” that the Turkish minority represents: “Millions of people who have lived here for decades and who were born here and fulfill all the criteria to obtain German citizenship could be voters in the next elections. They could have much more influence than they currently have.”
On the other hand, Karakasoglu told the HPR that since 2007, Germany has allowed European Union citizens to keep their former citizenship in addition to their German one. Considering Turkey’s efforts to become a member of the European Union, this measure can be seen as discriminating specifically against the Turkish minority. Moreover, Ulrich Kober, director of the Center of Excellence for Democracy and Integration at the Bertelsmann Foundation, highlighted to the HPR that while Germany does consider dual citizenship requests on a case-bycase basis, American citizens obtain this privilege much more often than Turkish citizens do. Because the decision to grant dual citizenship to non-EU nationals is a legal exception, it lends itself to arbitrariness. In this sense, then, the current citizenship law is indeed discriminatory.
Germanness and Social Inclusion
The legal transition in the requirements for German nationality has not always mirrored changes in the mindset of the German people. As Koopmans noted, “In the hearts and minds of the people, the heritage of an ethnic conception of national identity has not completely disappeared.” Baha Gungor, a Turkish-born German journalist, said that despite his citizenship status he is still socially perceived as a Turk. Gungor told the HPR that to be considered German he would have to change his religion and his family name. “I will never be a real German,” he concluded. According to Kober, it will take time for “the mental patterns” of the German people to adapt to a more inclusive idea of nationality.
Karakasoglu said that the old ethnic conception of national identity is inconceivable for younger generations, who have grown up in a multicultural and multilingual environment. The older generations, however, still often associate “Germanness” with a shared ancestry and even a specific phenotype, or physical appearance. Karakasoglu added that people from western Germany are more likely than people from eastern Germany to share a vision of an inclusive nation, with this differentiation resulting from the ethnic composition of the two regions. The east has historically been much more homogeneous than the west, making it harder for eastern Germans to accept a multicultural Germany.
Full inclusion of the Turkish community is further complicated by Germany’s strong identification with its past. Werner Schiffauer, a professor at Europa Universitat Viadrina, explained to the HPR that Germanness is largely founded upon a shared sense of collective responsibility that emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War. Because Turks only began immigrating to Germany in the 1960s, they have been excluded from the collective memory that has defined Germans’ self-perception. As a result, Schiffauer argues, the Turkish minority is often not seen as fully belonging to the national community. It is likely, however, that this shared feeling of collective responsibility characterizes the older generations to a much greater extent than the younger generations. Therefore, the perception of the Turkish community as alien may be a generational phenomenon destined to wane.
Islam and State Recognition
Turkish immigrants brought not only a new culture but also a foreign religion with them to Germany. Because of its internal structure and perceived political implications, Islam complicates the integration of the Turkish community. In Germany, churches must seek state recognition in order to obtain privileges such as providing religious education in schools, organizing social services, and levying taxes on the population. Therefore, the establishment of a religious organization largely depends upon state sanction. Christianity in its various denominations has enjoyed state recognition since modern Germany’s founding. However, in the last several decades, the influx of immigrants from outside Europe has posed the challenge of incorporating new religions, particularly Islam, into the state.
Unlike Christian communities, Islamic communities are not organized in a formal, hierarchical manner. Because Islamic leadership is not as institutionalized as Christian leadership, Kober argued, it is more challenging for the state to broker a deal with this new religion. According to him, there is no Muslim organization in Germany that can claim to speak for the entire Islamic community, which undermines the possibility of being officially recognized by the state. Koopmans affirmed that the presence of multiple Muslim groups in Germany puts the state in a difficult position. Still, the establishment of the German Islam Conference in 2006 represented an important effort on the part of the state to integrate Islamic organizations into German public life. “It’s very important that Islam is no longer perceived as a foreign religion,” Kober asserted.
The effect of recognition on the social integration of the Turkish minority, however, is uncertain. Pointing to the high occupational status that Iranian Muslims in Germany enjoy, Kober argued that integration is more a matter of education and socioeconomic conditions than of religious recognition. However, it is undeniable that Christians fare socioeconomically and educationally better than Muslims in many respects, and that the majority of ethnic Germans have negative feelings towards Islam.
According to Karakasoglu, as policymakers discuss the next steps Germany needs to take in the direction of a more inclusive citizenship law, there needs to be a shift from minority politics to a politics that targets ethnic Germans and non-Germans alike. Only by reassessing what it means to be German can the nation incorporate, both legally and socially, its diverse group of new immigrants.
