Young Turks

"After three days, fish and guests start to smell." – American saying

"It was a mistake for us to bring guest workers from foreign cultures into the country." - Helmut Schmidt, ex-chancellor of Germany

"We came as guest workers and 40 years later we are still guest workers. But it will change, the third generation will be German." - Recep Tuerkoglu, head of the Islamic Turkish Association

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I live under the same roof as a German-American teenager. For years, he has told me that Turkish teenagers have threatened and attacked him. Hearing this made my palms sweat. Not out of fear for him. But out of fear of what he might become.

After years of refusing to believe him, I now do. What I don’t understand is why. I hoped to find the answer in a book called “Ich bin eigentlich nicht aggressiv” (I’m not really aggressive) by Ahmet Toprak, a German social worker of Turkish descent.

This is a kind of book report about the book.

Toprak describes how 12 young men, all 3rd-generation Turkish immigrants, are socialized. Here are some tidbits:

• Many parents (2nd-generation immigrants) don’t know the difference between the various schools. For example, if their son goes to a Hauptschule (think “vo-tech”), they assume he can still become a doctor. (p. 31, p. 58)
• The kids often can’t speak German or Turkish properly. For example, until the mid-90s, Turkish kids in Bavaria had classes in Turkish so that they could be resocialized in Turkey. In other words, they were never supposed to be integrated in Germany. But can a German school prepare them for life in Turkey? (p. 58)
• Most of the kids don’t have their own rooms. One said, “My brothers and sisters do their homework at the kitchen table. And if company comes, they just don’t do any homework at all.” (p.36)
• These kids - born in Germany, raised in Germany and educated in Germany - have three-month visas. They can’t extend them because they keep committing petty crimes. But nor can they get a job with a three-month visa. (p. 40)
• They don’t have a realistic perception of Turkey. They idealize Turkey because they associate Germany with discrimination and negative experiences. They assimilate Turkey into their personality, so anyone who attacks Turkey attacks them directly. And because they’ve never lived there, they don’t have the reserve to brush off stupid insults. (p. 41)
• Intriguingly, religion is given an extremely superficial treatment in this book. In the margin, I wrote, “What is he hiding?” (p. 44)
• Honor is extremely important: “You have to be ready to go to jail for honor. You shouldn’t be ashamed of that. That’s what it’s like in Turkey. If you protect your honor, they reduce your sentence. … That’s what my Grampa said. My father said the same thing!” (p. 61)
• Honor (Ehre) consists of three different components:
  1) şeref (prestige): being seen as a good person because you do good works. (p. 45)
  2) namus (honor): honor as perceived by the outside world. There is a clear boundary between public and private. When someone oversteps the boundary, say, by insulting your mother, it is your job as a man to defend your mother ruthlessly and determinedly. A man’s namus depends on his wife’s behavior. If she doesn’t remain chaste, it’s because he’s not man enough to keep her chaste. (p. 46)
  3) saygι (respect): respect for older people, etc. (p. 47)
• Men have to respond to any challenge decisively, not pusillanimously. (p. 49)
• Masculinity is equally important. Men are not allowed to cry or appear weak. If a young man appears weak, he loses status within the family and “is no longer consulted in any decisions concerning the family.” (p. 149)
• Friendship is extremely important. No matter what your friend does, you have to stand up for him. In one case, this led to a brawl involving 35 to 50 kids in the Munich pedestrian zone in 1998. The rumble stemmed from a bet on a foosball game between a Turkish teenager and an Albanian one. The loser, who was supposed to buy the other player a beer, welched on the bet. So they decided to duke it out. Problem is, they all called their friends, who called their friends, who then called their friends. But most of them didn’t know why the fight happened: “No, I didn’t know what the reason was. I heard he needed help. I didn’t ask. … Well, what should I have said? They’ll laugh at you otherwise. You have to help your friends, no matter what.” (p. 62)
  In the fight, one boy was killed. Several were gravely injured.

Links (in German):
About a young Turkish prostitute in Germany
Young Turks as victims and perpetrators of violence
Article by Ahmet Toprak with much of the information in the book
Where Ahmet Toprak works