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The most serious problems arose with the Turks. They form the largest permanent immigrant group. In contrast to the original guest worker situation, they are now completely geared towards permanent settlement. Their number has grown steadily to the current 1.5 million and continues to rise. This already corresponds to the population of 15 large cities with 100,000 inhabitants each.
While Turks make up only a third of the total number of foreigners, more than half of the foreign children under 6 years of age are Turkish. The further growth of the Turkish ethnic group in the Federal Republic is firmly programmed.
Turkish family fathers have their families join them. Singles start one. Under the heading of family reunification, the young girl who married a Turk living in Germany on a vacation trip to his home country also moves to Germany. The reverse case also occurs. Given the numerical strength of the younger cohorts, this alone sets in motion a considerable further wave of immigration. Most of all, these are young women who will soon bear children.
This relocation of the Turkish population growth to the Federal Republic is, with all due respect, nonsense that is dangerous to the public. In most cases there is little prospect that the well-intentioned integration efforts of the Federal Republic will ever lead to these Turks becoming Germans. Rather, it must be expected that the chances of integration will continue to decrease with the increasing mass of ever larger numbers of the Turkish population. The more Turks live here, the less chance there is of real "naturalization".
The already clearly recognizable concentration in the Turkish living areas will continue. There, the Turkish families find a social environment that does not force them to make any particular efforts to integrate, and, on the contrary, probably discourages and inhibits them in this regard.
Private contacts with German families only exist in rare cases. Turkish or Kurdish is still spoken in Turkish families, even if some of them can speak German with us. The children are raised in Turkish, which means Islamic.
The situation of a large number of the more than 500,000 Turkish women in the Federal Republic is tragic and often hopeless. Most of them only speak Turkish or Kurdish. Very many cannot even read and write their own language. They are lost in a world inaccessible to them, bound by the traditions and limitations of local custom. Often all contacts are forbidden.
Wherever they slowly emancipate themselves and become independent, conflicts arise that not only cause marriages but also life's destinies to fail. The way out into integration, the chance to become a German citizen of Turkish nationality, is also barred for them.
Thus a strong ethnic minority, on the whole not very capable of assimilation, is growing up. The usual integration policy is already a farce in many Turkish districts. In many cases, a separate school system for the Turkish children will be the only appropriate solution, not least in the interest of the German children and teachers, who are often heavily burdened by the current common ground.
Nevertheless, the goal of integration policy must not be abandoned. For the millions who cannot be persuaded to return to their country of origin with money and good words, the perspective of full integration, even if it may extend beyond the framework of a generation, is the only appropriate one. But all of this becomes irrelevant and nonsensical if the increase in numbers and the inevitable spatial concentration continue as before.
The danger that all integration efforts will become completely illusory and that a kind of Turkish-Islamic sub-proletariat will develop at the same time is obvious. How strong the political polarization has already progressed and how uninhibitedly violent radical disputes develop in public becomes clearer from year to year.
It is good that, under the pressure of developments, an intense public discussion of the problems associated with Turkish immigration now seems to be getting underway. It must lead to a policy that sharply restricts further influx, including family members, and combines the prohibitions with strong material incentives for people to return home.
At the same time, there is also a need for strictly restrictive immigration legislation vis-à-vis members of other peoples. We should learn from the Turkish problem how important it is to take preventive action.
Turkey expects a population increase of 24 million people in the next 20 years alone. It cannot be accepted that a substantial part of it is taken up in the Federal Republic. Turkey has to solve its population and social problems in its own country. The Federal Republic of Germany has already tried to help it in the past with great material expenditure. But population export is not a solution that we can get involved with.
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