This study explores the relationship between migration and political 'development' and asks the question 'how are migration movements and the expatriate communities they create connected to the possibility of enhanced political voice or the preservation of illiberal politics in sending countries?'. The thesis of this work is that politics of origin may be better understood by their extensions into transnational public spheres, because civil society, as a discursive space, may be more liberally grounded in migrant-receiving countries than in sending societies.
German–Turkish relations, which have a long history and generally unrecognized depth, have rarely been examined as mutually formative processes. Isolated instances of influence have been examined in detail, but the historical and still ongoing processes of mutual interaction have rarely been seriously considered. The ruling assumption has been that Germany may have an impact on Turkey, but not the other way around. Religion, Identity and Politics examines this mutual interaction, specifically with regard to religious identities and institutions. It opposes the commonly held assumption that Europe is the abode of secularism and enlightenment, while the lands of Islam are the realm of backwardness and fundamentalism. Both historically and contemporarily, Germany has treated religion as a core aspect of communal and civilizational identity and framed its institutions accordingly; the book explores how there has been, and continues to be, a mutual exchange in this regard between Germany and both the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. The authors show that the definition of identity and regulation of communities have been explicitly based on religion until the early and since the late twentieth century; the period in between– the age of secular nationalism– which has always been treated as the norm, now appears more clearly as an exception. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, politics, history and religion.
Esra Akcan describes the introduction of modern architecture into Turkey after the Kemalist political elite took power in 1923 and invited German architects to redesign the new capital of Ankara.
Akturk discusses how the definition of being German, Soviet, Russian and Turkish radically changed at the turn of the twenty-first century. Germany's ethnic citizenship law, the Soviet Union's inscription of ethnic origins in personal identification documents and Turkey's prohibition on the public use of minority languages, all implemented during the early twentieth century, underpinned the definition of nationhood in these countries. Despite many challenges from political and societal actors, these policies did not change for many decades, until around the turn of the twenty-first century, when Russia removed ethnicity from the internal passport, Germany changed its citizenship law and Turkish public television began broadcasting in minority languages. Using a new typology of 'regimes of ethnicity' and a close study of primary documents and numerous interviews, Sener Akturk argues that the coincidence of three key factors – counterelites, new discourses and hegemonic majorities – explains successful change in state policies toward ethnicity.
Using unpublished official German and Zionist records and contemporary diaries, memoirs and other private sources, Friedman proves conclusively that, in spite of the opposition of her Turkish ally, the German government emerged as the foremost protector of the Zionist cause during World War I. A comprehensive and definitive work on a little known aspect of German-Turkish-Zionist relations.
“The author delivers in fine detail, supported by excellent appendices and notes, the role of officers and men in the defense of the Dardanelles.” —Michael McCarthy, Battlefield Guide The German contribution in a famous Turkish victory at Gallipoli has been overshadowed by the Mustafa Kemal legend. The commanding presence of German General Liman von Sanders in the operations is well known. But relatively little is known about the background of German military intervention in Ottoman affairs. Klaus Wolf fills this gap as a result of extensive research in the German records and the published literature. He examines the military assistance offered by the German Empire in the years preceding 1914 and the German involvement in ensuring that the Ottomans fought on the side of the Central Powers and that they made best use of the German military and naval missions. He highlights the fundamental reforms that were required after the battering the Turks received in various Balkan wars, particularly in the Turkish Army, and the challenges that faced the members of the German missions. When the allied invasion of Gallipoli was launched, German officers became a vital part of a robust Turkish defense—be it at sea or on land, at senior command level or commanding units of infantry and artillery. In due course German aviators were to be, in effect, founding fathers of the Turkish air arm; while junior ranks played an important part as, for example, machine gunners. This book is not only their missing memorial but a missing link in understanding the tragedy that was Gallipoli. “A great addition to any Gallipoli library.” —The Western Front Association
One of the foremost scholars on Turkish migration, the author offers in this work the summary of her experiences and research on Turkish migration since 1963. During these forty years her aim has been threefold: to explain the journeys made by thousands of Turkish men and women to foreign lands out of choice, necessity, or invitation; to shed light on the difficulties they faced; and to elaborate on how their lives were affected by the legal, political, social, and economic measures in the countries where they settled. The extensive research done both in Turkey and in Europe into the lives of individuals directly and indirectly affected by the migration phenomenon and the examination of these research results further enhances the value of this wide-ranging study as a definitive reference work.
Introduction -- CONFIGURATIONS OF STEREOTYPES AND IDENTITIES: NEW METHODOLOGIES. Daniela Berghahn: My big fat Turkish wedding: from culture clash to romcom -- David Gramling: The oblivion of influence: mythical realism in Feo Alada's When we leave -- Marco Abel: The minor cinema of Thomas Arslan: a prolegomenon -- MULTIPLE SCREENS AND PLATFORMS: FROM DOCUMENTARY AND TELEVISION TO INSTALLATION ART. Angelica Fenner: Roots and routes of the diasporic documentarian: a psychogeography of Fatih Akin's We forgot to go back -- Ingeborg Majer-O'Sickey: Gendered kicks: Buket Alakus's and Aysun Bademsoy's soccer films -- Nilgan Bayraktar: Location and mobility in Kutlu Ataman's site-specific video installation Kuba -- Brent Peterson: Turkish for beginners: teaching cosmopolitanism to Germans -- Brad Prager: "Only the wounded honor fights": Zili Alada's rage and the drama of the Turkish German perpetrator -- INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXTS: STARS, THEATERS, AND RECEPTION. Randall Halle: The German Turkish spectator and Turkish language film programming: Karli Kino, maximum distribution, and the interzone cinema -- Berna Gueneli: Mehmet Kurtulu and Birol Ünel: Sexualized masculinities, normalized ethnicities -- Karolin Machtans: The perception and marketing of Fatih Akin in the German press -- Ayìa Tunì Cox: Hyphenated identities: the reception of Turkish-German cinema in the Turkish daily press -- THE CINEMA OF FATIH AKIN: AUTHORSHIP, IDENTITY, AND BEYOND. Mine Eren: Cosmopolitan filmmaking: Fatih Akin's In July and Head-on -- Roger Hillman and Vivien Silvey: Remixing Hamburg: transnationalism in Fatih Akin's Soul kitchen -- Deniz Gukturk: World cinema goes digital: looking at Europe from the other shore.
