Thio Sarrazin (above), the newly-appointed board member of the German Central Bank, told the following words to a magazine last week:
"Turks are conquering Germany…with a strong birth rate. I would be happy if it were a question of eastern European Jews whose intelligence is 15 percent greater than the German population. I do not want groups within the population that do not accept the duty of integration, and on top of that it costs a lot more money. A large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, the number of whom has grown owing to poor policies, have no productive function aside from selling fruit and vegetables. That is also true for part of the German underclass."
Even after the well-deserved reaction to these obviously racist (and factually incorrect) remarks, Sarrazin is neither fired or resigned as of today. He is still in the corps of public servants in Germany.
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I generally don't post anything to give more detailed answers to reader comments here, but Hans and DelmonteMan, two non-Turkish followers of this blog, have encouraged me to do so.
Both of these friends have a tendency to equate widespread Western European racism/xenophobia with minor examples in Turkey. "They are the National Front of Turkey," had said DelmonteMan about MHP, which has nothing to do with racism of any kind, even though I don't like their right-wing populism.
It's up to the readers of this blog to make a brief research on the history of Turkey and see themselves that racism is a foreign subject for the Turkish culture. Turkey, too, probably has some idiots like Sarrazin, but they are so few that we never see them around and they can never climb the ladder up to the highest levels of the society. In Germany, France and their peripheries, unfortunately the situation is not the same.
To highlight it, Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has condemned Sarrazin today with the following words:
"I believe that Sarrazin has honored Göring, Goebbels and Hitler with his words and thoughts. He is on the same line of thought with these people. His statement is ugly, provocative and anti-Muslim. The terminology that he uses, including the word 'underclass', was belonged to the Nazis during the Second World War. The far-rightist NPD will surely start using these words for their cause. And it is sad to see that Sarrazin's words are appreciated by many intellectuals."
For DelmonteMan, this should be Reductio ad Hitlerum, so it is completely nonsense, forget it. And Hans would probably say that he had heard even worse racist words from the Turkish authorities without giving one convincing example.
Still, Sarrazin's words are there and they are not the biggest tragedy. The biggest tragedy lies in the heart of the German society. What is even more alarming than these words is the popular trends. The website of Bild has conducted a poll and found out that more than 70 percent of its visitors support Sarrazin. Turks consisted of three percent of Germany's population.
In these circumstances, I just try to understand the alienation and even the fear of Turks in Germany, especially after last year when almost 100 Turkish houses were targeted by arsonists. Whether DelmonteMan and Hans approve it or not, their fear is justified because the current conditions are very much like the ones in Germany of early 1930s. At that time, the German economy was as bad as today and Jews, the Turks of the time, were chosen as the scapegoat.
Today, Angela Merkel, who has recently won another general election, started to form her government with a new coalition partner, the centre-rightist FDP. And their first point of agreement is interesting: "The German Constitution will be amended to include a new article that will state that the official language of Germany is German."
It is worrying in Germany especially now, as the government funds for the Turkish-language theaters and radio stations are canceled, a school which forbid their students to speak Turkish (their mother tongues) even during recess is AWARDED by the government and human rights activists claim that the integration policy of Berlin is actually a forced-assimilation in the most evil form.
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At the same time, Merkel keeps defending that Turkey should be given by the EU a privileged partnership and not a full-membership.
Considering how she has boosted the racist emotions in the country, maybe she should start another debate now:
"Can Germany remain as a member of EU or should it be given a privileged partnership instead, possibly with the French government, her xenophobic comrade?"
Joking apart, Turkey really seems more EU-fit nowadays. At least, Ankara doesn't try to shut up its citizens who prefer to speak their mother tongues. There are government-funded Kurdish televisions, radios, etc. Even REMOVING the Constitutional article about the official language, which is currently Turkish, is being debated.
But does anyone in the EU really care about this comparison?
I was in Brussels last week to participate in a journalism program by the European Commission. On September 29th, there was a round-table meeting with Mr Wenceslas de Lobkowicz (above), the Adviser of Civil Society for the Directorate-General of the European Commission.
After his presentation, I told Lobkowicz that Turks perceive that double-standards are being applied by the EU for Ankara's membership.
Latest instance was Bulgaria's accession process. The EU is still monitoring Bulgaria even though it is already a member. And Brussels doesn't hide the reality: Bulgaria was accepted as a member without fulfilling the criteria.
"What do you think about such double-standards and their effects on the civil society in candidate countries," I asked Lobkowicz.
After Lobkowicz claimed that "there are no double-standards or whatsoever in the EU," a Croatian colleague took the floor. He asked something like the following question:
"I agree with my Turkish friend. There is definitely a double-standard in the EU. For instance, when a neo-Nazi party in Croatia gets a few hundred more votes, the Commission starts warning that it is a serious obstacle for Croatia's EU bid. But when even a worse pattern is seen is Germany and Austria, which have been the main sources of Nazism, nobody complains about it in the EU. Don't you see any problem here
