In Germany, self-organization among people of Turkish origin has a long history, one that has largely been determined by social, economic, and political developments in the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, and Turkey. As such, one could certainly speak of a lengthy history involving both Germanies and Turkey. But at the same time, it should not be forgotten — especially by Turkish leftists — that self-organization in Germany dates back to the period of World War I and thus began long before the German-Turkish recruitment agreement.
Murat Çakır directs the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s regional office in Hesse.
Moscow, Berlin, Leipzig
Before World War I, the Ottoman Empire had sent thousands of workers and students to Germany. Some of them witnessed the November Revolution that took place after the war, and many were even involved in the Berlin clashes of January 1919. They formed the “Turkish Club in Berlin” and founded the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party of Turkey (Türkiye İşçi ve Çiftçi Fırkası, TİÇF) and the Turkish Workers’ Association in early 1919. This group also produced the theoretical journal Kurtuluş (Liberation), which was printed in both German and Turkish (in Ottoman script). The periodical would later resume publication in Berlin in the 1960s.
Among the activists involved were leftists who would soon become leading members of various socialist, Communist, and Kemalist-nationalist organizations, including Ethem Nejat, who would rise to become General Secretary of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP). These “Turkish Spartacists”, particularly the TKP, which was founded in Baku in 1920, would go on to play a crucial role in the self-organization of migrants of Turkish origin during the years of Turkish labour migration after 1961.
This is why we speak of a “German-German-Turkish history”: the TKP has operated in exile ever since 15 members of its central committee, including Ethem Nejat, were murdered by Kemalist thugs in January 1921, shortly after the party was founded. The TKP leadership primarily operated out of Moscow, but before 1933, its foreign office was temporarily located in Berlin. It was not until later, probably as a result of events in 1957, that a TKP headquarters was established in Leipzig, which was in operation up to the political upheaval in East Germany in 1989 and 1990.
New arrivals had to figure out how to solve their specific everyday problems on their own. This included issues such as procuring food and finding leisure activities, but also language difficulties, dealing with the authorities, or workplace concerns.
From the 1960s on, this group primarily focused its attention on Turkish labour migration in West Germany. Declared as Cypriot refugees, the TKP cadre lived and worked in Leipzig — some even died there. For instance, the graves of Zeki Baştımar (party name Yakup Demir), Aram Pehlivanyan (Ahmet Saydam), and several other Communists can be found in the former “Socialist Grove of Honour” in Leipzig’s Südfriedhof. Here I must give a brief but important mention to Nelli Tügel’s excellent Master’s thesis, Das Land ihrer Träume?, where she describes in detail the Turkish Communists’ time in Leipzig. But that is another story altogether.
In the Dormitories and Beyond
The first signs of organization emerged just a few months after the recruitment agreement with Turkey was signed in 1961 and the first “Turkish guest workers” started arriving in Germany. The workers were housed in dormitories provided by the companies but offered no help in coping with the problems they faced at work, socially, and in their everyday lives. Due in part to language difficulties, they sought the company of fellow countrymen and kept to themselves. Initially, train stations and their adjacent squares served as meeting points for those seeking information and assistance.
Whereas the Turkish state — which was able to export some of its unemployment problems with its migrating workers and could hope for some additional foreign currency income — saw no reason to intervene, the West German state left the workers in the care of the companies, which also saw no need to take action. As a result, new arrivals had to figure out how to solve their specific everyday problems on their own. This included issues such as procuring food and finding leisure activities, but also language difficulties, dealing with the authorities, or workplace concerns. It was against this backdrop that the first associations emerged, which became meeting points for migrants of Turkish origin.
At the time, it was not unusual for migrants who back in Turkey would have had hardly anything to do with one another to seek each other out in the workplaces, and especially in the dormitories. In some company dormitories, where sometimes up to ten people had to share a room, there was hardly any other option; being essentially voiceless in a foreign country and without any outside help, the workers simply had to rely on one another — and they also shared common interests.
Initially, even the procurement of groceries posed challenges for the newcomers. Fruit, vegetables, herbs, and above all beef and lamb had to be bought somehow. While some visibly enjoyed the abundant offerings at the supermarkets and the liberal attitudes of West German society, devout Muslims had to find ways to obtain halal meat. Those who spoke some German came together and collectively sought out sheep farmers in rural areas. If their ventures were successful, they could buy sheep or lambs and slaughter them on site. Although religious slaughtering was technically prohibited, the business was so amicable for the breeders and farmers that they turned a blind eye.
New sources of income opened up for those who had established such (business) contacts. Some of the halal meat from the slaughtered animals was sold in the dormitories — usually at double the price. Other residents also engaged in small business transactions, such as planting cabbage, tomatoes, parsley, etc., in large flowerpots and selling any surplus. In just a few years, small businesses grew into larger ones: the author is acquainted with a worker from Malatya, for instance, who was employed at Thyssen-Henschel in Kassel, lived in the Henschel dormitory, and after a few years opened a Turkish grocery store with his savings, together with a German business partner. In 1968, it was the first and only grocery store in Kassel that sold halal meat and Turkish groceries.
While female workers of Turkish origin who had made the journey to West Germany on their own, and who made up around a quarter of Turkish employees until 1973, were happy to stay in the dormitories, and spent a lot of time there, the men looked for ways to escape the confines of the dormitory rooms. The demand for furnished rooms outside the dormitories grew so rapidly within a few years that, along with cheap hotels and restaurants, private individuals also began renting rooms to Turkish “guest workers”.
At Work
The “guest workers”, or Gastarbeiter, were mainly brought into the country to perform simple jobs. And since the number of “available jobs that required low levels of vocational training” remained relatively high until 1970, little effort was made to offer qualification options to recruited “guest workers”. Over time, a tendency also emerged within companies to preferentially hire “guest workers” of the same nationality to perform these simple tasks. This was done in part by encouraging workers to recruit acquaintances and relatives in their home regions. As a result, an increasing number of people of Turkish origin were working in the same companies. At the Ford plants in Cologne, for example, there were times when around 40 percent of employees came from Turkey. The Ruhr area, with its coal mining and steel industry — sectors with a high demand for unskilled labour — became a primary destination for Turkish immigrants. In this context, it is fair to say that processes of chain migration started very early in the Ruhr area.
The fact that the everyday racism in West German society only became palpable during the crises of the 1970s and that workers were increasingly bringing their families over led to Germany being perceived as a second home.
Given these developments, it was recognized early on that “foreign labour” needed to be politically and socially managed. And so, in May 1962, the German Federal Ministry of the Interior commissioned the Workers’ Welfare Association (Arbeiterwohlfahrt, AWO) to provide social counselling and support for “guest workers” of Turkish origin. With the hiring of counsellors of Turkish origin, this gradually evolved into the Türk Danış, the “Turkish Counselling Centres of the AWO”.
The Clubhouses
Yet, despite the efforts of the AWO, which was sometimes perceived as being very paternalistic by those being “cared for”, it was the clubhouses, the cemiyets, which remained the first ports of call for those seeking help. The cemiyets were also places for networking. People with common interests gathered here, such as those who wanted to play football and later founded football clubs, as well as individuals with various business interests.
Thus, export-import shops selling all kinds of goods from Turkey, Turkish grocery stores, and travel agencies that chartered flights to Turkey all sprang up near the cemiyets. For a while, the travel agencies also offered international money transfer services: workers of Turkish origin who wanted to send money to their relatives would come to these travel agencies and hand money over to the owners, who then transferred the money to the recipients in Turkey through middlemen (of course, after deducting an eyewatering “commission”). Money transfers continued to be organized via travel agencies until the late 1970s.
In the cemiyets and other clubs, German courses were offered with the help of the AWO and other institutions. Young students or workers who were proficient in German became interpreters and offered their services in the clubs. The AWO mostly recruited its “Turkish advisors” from this group.
The cemiyets and networks formed there also encouraged membership in trade unions, which soon led to numerous workers of Turkish origin being elected as representatives or as works council members in companies. In the 1970s, trade unions, especially IG Metall, established their “foreigner committees” in many places.
“Burası Köln Radyosu”
Migrants of Turkish origin enjoyed listening to radio broadcasts in Turkish both in the clubrooms and in private. Back then, export businesses sold cheap medium-wave radios that could pick up radio broadcasts from Turkey as well as other countries. From November 1964, radios in the clubs and households of “guest workers” of Turkish origin would be switched on every day at 18:00 when WDR’s Köln Radyosu (Cologne Radio) began. It was the first nationwide transmission in Turkish to be broadcast by a West German radio station. The programme, which usually opens with the words Burası Köln Radyosu (“This is Cologne Radio”), is still produced by WDR to this day.
In the early years, information from various radio broadcasts, daily visits to the cemiyets (or “backyard mosques”), social support from Türk Danış, and solidarity as members of trade unions provided the migrants of Turkish origin with a sense of “security in a foreign land”. The fact that the everyday racism in West German society only became palpable during the crises of the 1970s and that workers were increasingly bringing their families over led to Almanya (Germany) being perceived as a second home. Additionally, the German government’s recruitment ban enacted on 23 November 1973 played a major role in the sudden increase in workers becoming permanently settled. It became apparent that the clubs not only served as meeting points but also acted as catalysts for this trend towards settlement and facilitated integration.
The First Workers’ Associations
Founded at the end of 1961, the Association of Turkish Workers in Cologne and the Surrounding Area was the very first Turkish association in West Germany, and its founding members were mostly employed in the Ford factories. Among the co-founders was Salih Güldiken, who later became a Ford employee representative, and Yılmaz Karahasan, the first and so far only migrant of Turkish origin to be elected to IG Metall’s federal executive board. Within a short space of time, similar clubs or associations emerged in the larger West German cities, serving as meeting places for people of Turkish origin. The example set in Cologne was followed: for example, the politically left-leaning Turkish Peoples’ House (Frankfurt Türk Halkevi) was founded in 1965 in Frankfurt am Main.
Although the left-wing self-organizations were mostly focused on issues in the homeland, they were also aware of the local problems facing migrants in Germany.
The first clubs brought together migrants of Turkish origin who held different worldviews. This inevitably led to political conflicts among members and within club boards. While a significant portion of members used the clubhouses as meeting places where they could escape the unfamiliar world outside, meet fellow Turks, spend their free time, seek assistance for issues related to housing and problems at work, and even get an affordable haircut, these environments also increasingly began to give rise to politically active groups.
Despite news from home being scarce, the political developments and social struggles in Turkey still had a significant impact on the workers’ associations. Over time, Turkish and Kurdish students also joined the associations, seeking the company of those who were active trade union members. Although the fears and the sense of “otherness” of the early years were not over, they gave way to social and cultural concerns and the search for solutions. At the same time, there was a growing need for prayer rooms and spiritual guidance for religious migrants. Thus, the community began to separate into different groups.
The Politicization of Self-Organization
Both the political developments in Turkey and the growing unionization of migrants of Turkish origin resulted in the formation of left-wing self-organizations (politically right-wing organizations were only formed later). On 29 August 1966, twenty members of the Cologne Workers’ Association founded the left-wing Culture Club of Turkish Youth (Türk Gençleri Kültür Klubü, TGKK). By using the term “Turkish Youth”, which symbolized the new republican society, the founding members aimed to emphasize the significance of the “anti-imperialist liberation struggle in Anatolia”. A year later, the club had already attracted 50 Turkish and Kurdish students.
Contacts and interactions with the German Trade Union Confederation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB) and its member unions intensified. In February 1967, the TGKK welcomed the founding of the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions (Devrimci İşçi Sendikaları Konfederasyonu, DİSK) with a solidarity event that received much attention, and the club participated in its first May Day rally organized by the DGB. Subsequently, similar left-wing self-organizations emerged in various other West German cities.
The Turkish and German governments monitored this development like hawks. The Turkish state tried to assert its influence within the Turkish community via the country’s consulates. But the workers’ and youth movements of Turkey’s ’68 generation, the social struggles there, and the unionization in West Germany increasingly led to the left-leaning politicization of people of Turkish origin. The left-wing self-organizations became increasingly involved in trade union and workplace disputes as well as strikes in West Germany, joined Easter marches and May Day demonstrations, and organized cultural and political events. At the same time, these clubs offered a wide range of educational opportunities, ranging from language courses and seminars on labour and residency rights to political topics.
Although the left-wing self-organizations were mostly focused on issues in the homeland, they were also aware of the local problems facing migrants in Germany. Club members visited the dormitories, provided counselling and translation services, and helped with problems facing renters. To benefit from these counselling services, even conservative and religious people of Turkish origin gradually began joining these clubs.
The clubs also motivated their members to unionize. Turkish leftists had internalized this idea to the extent that they even brought along union membership applications on private visits. Not only did they distribute leaflets, but they also published association bulletins. The TGKK’s Arbeiterpost (İşçi Postası, Workers’ Mail), for instance, contained general information about association activities, legal and social issues, news from Turkey, and political articles. A lengthy article by Yılmaz Karahasan in the December 1968 issue of Arbeiterpost, for instance, discussed “economic democracy”.
The Role of the TKP
The vast majority of members in these left-wing self-organizations were not affiliated with any Turkish political party. This changed abruptly when the cadres of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) became active in these associations at the end of 1968. At its 1962 conference, which took place in Leipzig in early April 1962, the party had decided among other things to “organize Turkish guest workers in Europe”. The Central Committee of the TKP subsequently established an office to coordinate organizational activities, primarily in West Berlin and West Germany. Within a few years, the TKP activists had recruited several new members of Turkish origin, who then began building up their illegal party structures in West Germany and Western Europe.
While the nationalist, neo-fascist, and Islamist organizations were openly supported by the German and Turkish governments, the left-wing associations of people of Turkish origin were defamed as ‘sources of danger to the Federal Republic’s free democratic order’.
The number of associations influenced by TKP members rapidly increased during this period. As similar associations had also been established in other European cities, there soon came the need for to forge links. Thus, the international European Federation of Turkish Socialists (Avrupa Türk Toplumcular Federasyonu, ATTF) was founded in Cologne at the end of October 1968. The founding members included the Community of Turkish Socialists in Berlin, the Socialist Union in Braunschweig, the Union of Turkish Workers in Dachau, the Turkish Cultural Union in Munich, the Union of Social Aid in Stuttgart, the Cultural Club of Turkish Youth in Cologne, the London Brothers and Sisters Association, Union of Turkish Socialists in Paris, and the Turkish Union in Stockholm. The central organ of the ATTF was the Arbeiterpost. The founding declaration clearly showed the TKP’s influence: “We want to contribute to organizing and raising the class consciousness of Turkish workers abroad, to explain to them the necessity of uniting the exploited classes against the exploiting class, to participate in the class struggle until the working class’s socialist power is established, and to show solidarity with progressive forces in the light of scientific socialism.”
The Turkish state responded to this development by ramping up its attempts to influence various “guest worker clubs” and “backyard mosques”. Especially in the late 1960s and early 1970s, nationalist and religious-Islamist self-organizations as well as clubs with close ties to the government were established. These clubs, associations, and organizations were mostly founded with support from the German and Turkish state authorities, who viewed the leftist groups with disapproval. The first Islamic Cultural Centres were founded as early as 1967. One such example is the Islamic Cultural Centre established in Cologne in 1973, which evolved into the Association of Islamic Cultural Centres (Verband der Islamischen Kulturzentren e.V.) in 1980 and is closely associated with the teachings of the Islamist (and member of the Naqshbandi Order) Süleyman Hilmi Tunahan. The number of Quran courses and nationalist-Islamist activities also sharply increased, which were used to discredit organizing efforts by trade unions and leftists.
The Neo-Fascist MHP in Germany
One particularly interesting example of “German-Turkish collaboration” is the organizational activities of the neo-fascist Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP), also known to the German public as the “Grey Wolves”. The MHP, which held its first “small party congress” in West Germany in 1969 and set up its European Council in the country, made its activities legal on 9 April 1973 when it registered with the town of Kempten. The MHP’s foreign arm remained active in Germany until 28 July 1976, and its presence was tolerated by the West German authorities. Its dissolution only occurred by order of the Turkish Constitutional Court, which threatened to ban the party.
Despite their official dissolution, the neo-fascists remained active and were able to found the Federation of Turkish Democratic Idealist Associations in Europe (Turk Federation for short) on 17–18 June 1978 in Schwarzenborn near Bad Hersfeld with the support of CDU politician Hans-Eckhardt Kannapin. The then Interior Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Heinz Schwarz, served as the CDU contact for MHP leader Alparslan Türkeş. As a Turkish expert in the German intelligence service, Dr Kannapin helped Türkeş’s European representative, Enver Altaylı (who himself claims to have been a long-serving member of the Turkish intelligence agency), the chairman of the Turk Federation, Lokman Kundakçı, and his successor Musa Serdar Çelebi to obtain residence and work permits in West Germany by ostensibly employing them at his “Turkey institute”.
The Turk Federation also maintained close ties to German right-wing extremist and neo-fascist organizations. The leader of Germany’s National Democratic Party (NPD), Adolf von Thadden, invited MHP leader Türkeş to visit Germany as early as 1970. Even organizations that have since been banned like the FAP (Free German Workers’ Party), the Action Front of National Socialists, and the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann also maintained good relations with Turkish neo-fascists. By the same token, Türkeş himself called on his followers to intensify cooperation with the NPD, writing on 28 July 1978: “In order to achieve the goals we have set, it is necessary to make better use of the existing cooperation between the NPD and our party, utilizing the experiences and methods of the NPD in accordance with orders from our party headquarters.” Türkeş was also held in high regard by the CDU and its sister party CSU. Bavarian Prime Minister Franz-Josef Strauß met him on 1 May 1978, and Bavarian Interior Minister Gerold Tandler publicly supported the MHP in November 1980.
The Turkish neo-fascists were not the only ones being courted by German organizations; support was being offered to other nationalist and Islamist organizations as well. For instance, CDU Bundestag member Hans Stercken served as the federal chairman of the right-wing Deutsch-Türkischen Freundschaftsvereins e.V. (Hürriyetçi Türk-Alman Dostluk Cemiyeti, German-Turkish Friendship Association, shortened to Hür-Türk in German). While the nationalist, neo-fascist, and Islamist organizations were openly supported by the German and Turkish governments — thereby enabling them to organize more or less unhindered and carry out acts of violence, such as the murder of the Berlin trade unionist Celalettin Kesim — the left-wing associations of people of Turkish origin were defamed as “sources of danger to the Federal Republic’s free democratic order”. Instead of recognizing and supporting their extraordinary efforts towards integration, which they accomplished without any state funding, they were (and continue to be) monitored by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
The Collapse of Left-Wing Self-Organization
As more left-wing groups were formed in various West German cities, they began to drift apart in terms of ideology and structure. In the early years, various socialist parties and organizations from Turkey were still represented among the associations’ ATTF sympathizers. By the mid-1970s, however, the dominance of TKP supporters on the association boards led to the marginalization of the TKP-critical left, prompting them to establish their own associations.
At the same time, the growing polarization of the Left in Turkey resulted in leftists of Turkish origin also starting to drift apart in Germany and Europe. In late 1976, sympathizers of the TKP/ML (also known as Partizan) founded the Federation of Workers from Turkey (ATIF), which was a founding member of the Confederation of Workers from Turkey in Europe (ATIK) in 1986. The TKP cadres in the Federal Republic of Germany also viewed the restructuring of the workers’ associations as necessary; thus the Federation of Workers’ Associations from Turkey in the Federal Republic of Germany (FİDEF) was launched at a congress in late February 1977. Initially, the FİDEF member associations — consisting of former ATTF members and other “workers’ associations” — included TKP supporters as well as many Alevi, Kurdish, independent leftists, and social-democratic-leaning individuals. But TKP cadres gained a majority in both the FİDEF federal board and the association boards, which quickly led to social-democratic-leaning members leaving and founding the Federation of Populist Revolutionary Associations (HDF) in Berlin at the end of October 1977, which was later renamed Federation of Social Democratic Associations since it explicitly saw itself as an organization aligned with the German SPD and the Turkish CHP.
This dynamic process of leftist self-organization was an institutional reaction to the government’s refusal to recognize the needs of migrants of Turkish origin in the Federal Republic of Germany.
In February 1980, another party was founded in Turkey: the Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey (TDKP), whose sympathizers established the Federation of Democratic Workers’ Associations (DİDF) in December 1980, which still exists today and is now associated with the Turkish EMEP. Thus, after 1980, when Turkish armed forces carried out a third coup after toppling the government in 1960 and 1971, every left-wing political organization in Turkey was represented at the European level.[1]
In addition, disputes regarding the Kurdish question also led to the founding of new organizations: the Kurdish federation KOMKAR, which had close ties to the Socialist Party of Kurdistan (PSK), had already been founded by 1979. In 1984, supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) founded the Federation FEYKA Kurdistan, which, however, was dissolved due to the “ban on activities by the PKK and its subsidiary organizations” in Germany, which came into force on 26 November 1993, and was replaced in the same year by the Federation of Kurdish Associations in Germany (YEK-KOM).
The Future of Self-Organization
Despite various splits and groups drifting apart, this dynamic process of leftist self-organization was an institutional reaction to the government’s refusal to recognize the needs of migrants of Turkish origin in the Federal Republic of Germany. At the same time, it was a response to the Turkish government’s treatment of these migrants as merely a source of foreign currency. Despite their orientation towards their home country, the leftist organizations were forced — especially after the recruitment ban enacted in 1973 — to devote more attention to the problems and needs of people of Turkish origin and to seek concrete solutions. Despite receiving no government funding, they carried out significant social counselling and support work that still hold a special significance for the everyday lives of people of Turkish origin today.
The groups and organizations had to play a dual role: on the one hand, they were engaged with the cultural and social struggles in West Germany and addressed the needs and specific issues facing people of Turkish origin; on the other hand, they reacted to developments taking place in their home country and to the expectations of their respective “mother parties” there. This dual role was challenging and repeatedly led to problems and contradictions. Basing their ideologies and structures on the mother parties (and the homeland in general) tended to overshadow the political and social struggles in German society. Moreover, the self-organizations of people of Turkish origin, like other leftist migrant groups, resigned themselves all too easily to their ascribed role of being a “folkloristic” or “culinary” addition to the May Day rallies and settled for perfunctory mentions of international solidarity in their speeches.
However, they became particularly dependent on such international solidarity, especially after the 1980 military coup. The left-wing groups subsequently played a decisive role in publicly isolating and ostracizing the Turkish military junta in democratic European nations. And they played a significant part in ensuring that political refugees would receive accommodation and supplies in Europe.
For the political refugees who fled Turkey after the military coup, the left-wing networks were the first points of contact. The exodus of leftist cadres was largely organized by the leaders of the parties and the movements; the existence of organizational structures in Western European countries facilitated both their accommodation and engagement. In many places, the process of organization gained a new dynamic since these refugees had gained substantial experience of mobilizing and organizing during their time as unionists, journalists, association and party officials, as well as activists, which they brought to association and federation boards. However, the flipside of the coin is that polarization within the Left intensified and organizational activities in Germany were increasingly oriented towards Turkey.
Coupled with many other and largely self-inflicted problems, this situation led to left-wing organizations being caught in a downward spiral of marginalization from which they could no longer escape. Additionally, the realities of their new homeland, the increased naturalization of members, and the strengthening of ethnic and religious identities partly led to traditional self-organizations becoming few and far between. But this is by no means the end of the story. The history of self-organization will continue to be written, albeit in new forms, by generations who will build on these founding years. It will be interesting to see what form the path to migrant emancipation will take.
This article originally appeared in the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s edited volume, Der lange Marsch der Migration. Translated by Shane Anderson and Nivene Raafat for Gegensatz Translation Collective.
[1] These also include the Revolutionary Way (Devrimci Yol) movement, the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party, Front (DHKP-C), the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP), and the TK/ML Bolshevists (better known as Bolşevik Partizan), which was founded in February 1981 as a breakaway group of the TKP/ML.