New German Passport
From Migrant-Workers to Citizens

By

Saskia Mukurarinda	Carsten Wilms	Jacqueline Zenhaeusern

Germany breaks with its tradition and grants double citizenship for foreigners
born in Germany

Mustafa Özdemir (67 years old), Turkish citizen, unrolls his carpet and recites his morning prayer. Surrounded by the morning silence and the sunrise in Berlin, Germany. Certainly Mustafa Özdemir would never forget the five stipulated praying times a day.

Quite often his son Hussein (45 years old) tried to convince him even to cut off the morning prayer at sunrise. "I restrict my children not to play loud music at late night, but my father is holding his morning prayer loudly every morning", says Hussein Özdemir. Mustafa Özdemir is holding tight to his traditions, much more since his wife Hatice died three years ago. She was buried in Trabzon, a small city at the Turkish Black Sea coast.

Mustafa Özdemir came to Germany in 1962 by the bilateral contract between Germany and Turkey.

After signing the German-Italian contract of 1955 to transfer workers to Germany other bilateral contracts followed with Greece (1960), Turkey (1961), Morocco (1963), Portugal (1964), Tunisia (1965) and the former Yugoslavia (1968).

As one of thousands other migrant-workers Mustafa Özdemir started to work in a metal-processing company in Berlin. During the first five years his wife and two children stayed in Turkey. Five years of working should bring the money for a better future in Turkey for the whole family.

After five years staying in a men’s hostel his company offered him the opportunity to rent a small company owned apartment with two rooms. "It was luxury", he says. He decided to bring his family to Germany to spend more years of hard work. To build a house in his home-town and then to return as soon as possible, was his strongest wish.

Five years ago Mustafa Özdemir retired after 32 years working for the same company because of health problems. "My wife wanted to return immediately after my retirement. She loved the idea to go back since she came". Unfortunately Hatice Özdemir died three years ago, before the return to Turkey was made. Mr. Özdemir hesitated to stay alone in Turkey in the house built from his saved money all over the years. As a matter of fact the house seemed him to huge for only one person. After long discussions he agreed to stay in Berlin in his son’s flat.

His situation fits particularly to many other migrant-workers who came in the 1960’s to Germany. The option of returning is fading more and more. The old country is far away and the relations to children and grandchildren in Germany are tight. At the end of the year 1997 more than half of the foreign citizens have lived here for more than eight years, every third person for more than 20 years. Nowadays 7.4 million people with foreign citizenship (about 9% of population) live in Germany. The largest group are Turkish citizens (2.4 million people) who mostly migrated because of working reasons and decided to stay after several years.

Mustafa Özdemir decided to stay, but to preserve his faith and traditions which helped him to stay all the years in Germany and to keep his Turkish identity and religious belief. "Without faith, no life", says Mustafa Özdemir, while preparing his next prayer.
Mustafa Özdemir's son Hussein owns a greengrocer’s shop in Berlin. "From the little money my father could save, we were able to open up a small store", says the shop-owner. Like many Turks he stayed the first few years with his mother in Turkey while his father worked and stayed in Germany and sent money home. He first traveled to Germany in the 1970's when his father decided to stay permanently.

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"Germans and Turks alike buy in my shop but of course all my private friends are Turks. Still I think that the two peoples live in parallel societies and don't know much about each other." The Turks in the quarter meet every Friday in the Mosque for which the big Turkish cultural community has rented a big apartment in a house nearby. "I could become German if I wanted to. But the German authorities still require me to give the Turkish passport away which I will never do. I would be a traitor of my home country. All the Turks abroad feel very much attached to Turkey and maybe one day when I am a pensioner I want to go back to Trabzon. After the federal elections in September 1998, we put great hopes and expectations into the new German government of Social-Democrats (SPD) and Greens who promised to facilitate integration. Yet so far we have been very disappointed".

Before the elections, the present German chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) came up with the proposal to allow dual citizenship. Especially the Conservatives in the CDU and their Bavarian ally, the CSU, went berserk against that idea and mobilized millions of signatures against the plans in a campaign. The massive populistic propaganda showed its success and the Social-Democrats (SPD) lost their majority in Germany's second parliament chamber, the Bundesrat, where the federal states are represented. The government had to give in to a compromise which was worked out by the small Liberal Democratic Party (FDP).

According to Germany's new Law of Citizenship which will enter into force on January 1st, 2000 and replaces the old Reichs- und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz from 1913, foreigners who were born in Germany become automatically German citizenship if one of their parents has lived legally in Germany for at least eight years. This would affect an estimated number of 50.000 children per year. However, at the age of 23, he or she has to decide whether to keep the foreign or the German citizenship. Dual citizenship will to the disappointment of many foreigners not be accepted in general. However, this principle of so-called ius soli means a radical change of the German tradition which based exclusively on the still applying principle of ius sanguinis: German is a child who has a German mother or father. "Germany has to accept that the Turks who came in the 1960's were immigrants and not migrant workers even though they didn’t originally plan to stay in Germany. One of the big fears of the Conservatives still is, that all the Turks would vote for left-wing parties. That's rubbish. Me as well as many small Turkish entrepreneurs are in favour of Germany’s small Liberal Democratic Party (FDP) who do a policy for the small and medium-sized shop-owners", says Hussein Özdemir.

His wife Fatima comes into the room with new tea. The 43-year-old house-wife is from Diyarbakir in the Eastern part of Turkey and still covers her hair according to the Muslim tradition. She speaks only a few words German because she hardly ever has contact to Germans. Hussein Özdemir continues: "It would make integration easier if they granted us dual citizenship. We do not want to be treated as second class people with no right to vote in the elections even though we have lived here for more than twenty years and paid our taxes. But we want that the German society also acknowledge our Turkish identity which we cannot deny. It is not so much about the members of the second generation. It is primarily important for our children."

Until today, the second and third generation of the Turks is leaving, working and paying taxes in Germany. But they are still treated as migrant-workers. However in their mind, they feel like Germans.

Like Achmed (25 years old) and his sister Gül (23 years old). They were born in Berlin, went to public schools and made their education in Germany. Specially Achmed, who is working today for the "German railway" as a railway worker. He is earning his own money and has Turkish and as well German friends. He speaks German like a German. And he's also not very religious, just a not very active member of the local Mosque. So there is almost no difference between a real German and Achmed, except his religious background and of course his Turkish passport. That is the reason why he cannot participate in the local and national political society, he has no voting rights.

Similar his sister Gül: she is married to Erol, a Turkish man, who grown up in Germany as well in the third generation. She made an apprenticeship as a saleslady by Penny (a big supermarket) and she is working today in the parental greengrocer's shop. Her father did not force her to do a higher education. She grew up in a traditional Turkish way, that means the most attention was focused on the boys and not on the girls.

Both lived their whole life in Berlin, so they are living like Germans and dreaming in German. But for the Germans are Achmed and Gül still foreigners, Turks. The people identify them by nationality and not as individuals. The second and the third generation are often split between the German and the Turkish culture. This is not a bad sign but much more an enrichment for their personality and the society, it opens your mind and enforces the tolerance among different cultures in the daily life.

But we must respect that a first generation like the grandfather Mustafa is afraid of losing the Turkish cultural background. Other fears are: a too strong mixe-up of loyalties, cultures, religions and rights. These are the reasons why a state should give the responsibility for the decision-making to each individual himself. Like it is promoting in the future Law of Citizenship. For the people who are born in Germany and have foreign parents can choose in the age from 18-23 years one of the nationalities. The aim is to change the system of the state and not the population. It is also a step away from the German thinking in terms of nation-state. It is much more a step further towards a multicultural society. This gives every inhabitant the chance to participate on all political levels and can be a possibility to put democracy even more into action.