Berlin – He already knows what Murat Celik is doing at the end of November. The post office worker goes to the Tempodrom in Berlin. There will be Cem Yilmaz, a stand-up comedian from Istanbul. “He tells funny stories from everyday life in Turkish, you know them, you can find them in them,” says Celik from Berlin.
He is one of many examples of what it is like to live between cultures: Born 1973 in Berlin, the son of the first generation of “guest workers”, Celik was sent back to Turkey as a child to be raised and ended up in Berlin again , where he made a career at Deutsche Post. The 48-year-old worked his way up from a temporary delivery person to become the head of all DHL parcel delivery companies in Berlin.
Celik is someone who has made a detour, like so many people since October 30, 1961, when Germany and Turkey signed a recruitment agreement. The Federal Republic needed workers who would only stay for a few years. Today, more than 2.8 million people with Turkish roots live in Germany, almost 200,000 of them in Berlin, which is six percent of the city.
“You helped build Germany, you enriched our country, economically, but above all humanly,” said Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmauer in August at a ceremony by the Turkish community in Germany. “Your children and grandchildren are continuing to build this Germany.”
Positive examples are often neglected in the debates
When many Turkish migration stories are told these days on the occasion of the 60th anniversary, it is often about separated families, prejudices, neglected integration and racism that continues to this day. As right as it may be to address all of this, the positive examples often fall by the wayside.
Examples like Murat Celik. On a cloudy October morning, he stands on a huge industrial site in Charlottenburg between the bright yellow parcel halls of his employer and discusses the daily routes with some of the 1,000 or more messengers for which Celik is responsible. Then the friendly little man goes into his remarkably modest office and pours himself a filter coffee.
It should only be for a short time
“I came to Germany in 1993 as a young student,” remembers Celik. “I was born here, but I didn’t grow up.” He returned to study architecture at the TU Berlin, worked on the side and by chance started at the post office. “It should only be for a short time, save a few weeks of money, then continue working or studying,” says Celik and laughs. It turned out to be almost 30 years.
Unplanned happiness, like an entire generation 60 years ago. In the 1950s and 1960s, the economy in West Germany was booming, the demand for labor increased in agriculture, industry, mining and road construction. Since there was a high birth rate and unemployment in other countries, poaching agreements were concluded with Italy, Spain, Greece and then, in 1961, Turkey.
One fifth of the guest workers were women
Murat Celik’s parents and in-laws were among the first of the more than 850,000 Turks (around a fifth were women) to respond to the German call. “My mother came in 1970, my father in 1971, and I was born in 1973,” he says. For his parents, who came from Anatolia, it was a challenge to leave the place where they were born for the first time and end up in an apartment on Wittenbergplatz with 20 people in the room without knowing the language of the country .
You have been recruited. “Someone told them: Come to Germany, they are looking,” says Celik. His mother ended up working as a cook in the hospital, his father hired out as a construction worker. His father-in-law, who had worked on a ship, became a welder. “But you just wanted to work and return after a year or two,” says Celik, it was by no means the case that only the Germans wanted to send the guest workers away again. “Many also wanted to go back themselves.”
Parents sent children back to Turkey
Then it turned out differently. Many built up families, a place in society, felt comfortable despite all the imponderables. Celik’s family worked their way up from a one-room apartment in Kreuzberg with a toilet in the hallway to three rooms in Schöneberg. Plus a house in Turkey, you could do something good for the family there. And felt stranger when visiting. “It makes a difference whether I go on vacation to Turkey or live there entirely,” says Celik. In addition, there was a military coup in Turkey that made many people refrain from returning. Murat Celik also went to school in Berlin for a few years.
In the beginning he had to go all the way back. “I was sent to Turkey a year or two after I was born,” he says. “I should go to school and learn the language.” He only came to Berlin for the holidays. A fate that many contemporaries share. Whereby Celik got around: He lived with changing relatives and acquaintances in Istanbul, Izmir, Adana and Mersin, a round trip through half of Turkey. “You get used to it,” he says looking back. “When I look back, it was good for me.” But he also knows many who suffered as a result.
In the past Fenerbahce, today Hertha or Union?
This cosmopolitanism helps him in his job today, says Celik, as he leads through a hall with endless conveyor belts that load parcels directly into waiting delivery vans where drivers are waiting.
“We work with people from 78 different nations, some of whom have little language skills,” says Celik. You have to ensure integration, through colleagues who speak the same language or in-house language courses. In principle, as was also practiced in the Federal Republic of Germany, where the Turkish community initially helped itself before there were learning opportunities.
Today, as a German citizen, Celik hardly feels any different from his neighbors in Berlin; his daughter is studying, his son is currently doing his Abitur. “Unfortunately, you don’t speak Turkish that well anymore,” he says. “You understand me, but sometimes I find myself speaking German at home.” Things change. Murat Celik, for example, is still a football fan of Fenerbahce Istanbul. And his son, does he keep it up with Hertha BSC or 1. FC Union? “He’s more enthusiastic about Paris St. Germain.”
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