Ladies and gentlemen,

 

Thank you for the invitation, it is a pleasure to be here and my leading question to point out is if it is right that our world come more and more of a village than we have to ask ourselves how can we build up our common lives in a better way then we did in the past. And that means activities from many sides between societies and within societies coming up with topic of our session today I would like to introduce it in the following way; Relation, in one hand has taken place in form of emigration of national millennia mostly connected in the past with the conquest of a new native country and the reasons for these migration ways one could say we are and our many folds be it economic, social, cultural or religious factors or oppression or suppression, sometimes of course several of them together and for me in my view any time there has been or there have been more or less intensive cultural exchanges. Today many countries not only the Western European countries have created extensive legal regulations to prevent so called unwanted migrants. Basic ideas, basic sanctions for that are for example only the most important in my view subjective criteria for foreign infiltration fear. People have fear against new people who would like they assume disturb the social environment and that can be led through racial or predigest or stereo types.

Second of these basic ideas they assume or it is real in restricted intake capacity at high population density that could be in some regions of our world an important factor.

Third, the threatening financial overloads of the social system of a given society.

Fourth, an assumed or real danger for local labor force and again sometimes mixture of all of them. These ideas or argumentations are often taken with regard to the own native population and must therefore be described as excluding strategies. On the one hand such presentations and argumentations are necessary political actions to ensure the support of the native population of course on the other hand it is less then reasonable even for European countries mobility and migration have become important features of modern European societies and furthermore European countries need immigrants also in the feature Germany as well as others. Not only but especially because of expected labor shortages through several developments as they were described through different authors. Because I have only a short time for my introduction, I will shorten it in a way that it makes sense so let me continue and therefore because we need immigrants in the future Germany and other European societies will and must hear different world views, cultural traditions, languages, religions, beliefs and as well as notions of human being. And Europe has long been composed of multicultural societies but although many societies only slowly become aware of this fact. Immigrants from outside of European Union have established themselves and they’ve added new perspective to society life. In Germany we say we wanted labor force only in past but we got human being and we have to create our common life with those human beings. Nevertheless the balance between the increasing diversities within European societies has not been accomplished successfully yet in my view. So as far as I see the question of mutual adoptation understood interactive process of natives and immigrants and not monocultural approach isn’t solved in Europe as well as in other countries around the world also in US I could add, it is an unsolved problem between immigrants and natives.

Without doubt there are many different ways to construct or better to reconstruct our own life in a strange social, cultural, economic and physical environment in ways which could be chosen depending on previous experience, previous conditions of the country of origin as well as on circumstances of new situations. On the other hand there are many ways for the native population to react on foreigners and again it depends on their individual experiences, beliefs and goals as well as on their actual economic and social conditions. And this makes development of efficient adaptation strategies much complex for each society. The spectrum, one of the possibilities that one could adapt is to integrate or to be integrated but the spectrum that one understands by integration is diversified in politics and in science too. As an agreement of most concepts can be regarded integration means the culture or religion of immigrants does not stand in contradiction to participation of equal rights and social resources and processes. And I think this is an important statement not in contradiction it has its right in itself but there should not be a contradiction between the culture of the majority and the culture of immigrant. However and I could continue in this way integration should not be grated with assimilation although this is a perspective which seems most desirable for many societies experience of all immigration countries show that original cultures being maintained and cared over long time. Even German culture in the US was carried over a long time. To expect a complete assimilation therefore is probably an illusion, which harms political actions and practical integration. In Germany this illusion is going on fortunately the question of practical integration steps moves finally into the center for public discussion and the question of today are what does it require to reach this goal or to take care of this goal, what is feasible and how can we do the next steps to make progress. Besides serious debate about effective perspectives of integration there is a discussion about parallel societies in our country. Mainly used as a label to demonstrate deficits or a status of this integration which ethnic defined immigrants have. The question whether parallel societies are really existent, and -as the case may be- which are the conditions for their development as well as which are the right activities to react against such confines has to be answered. Nobody in western societies can accept an unsolicited retreat of a special ethnic section of the population, because such a process will produce disadvantages for the complete society.

Coming to Turkey people within the EU: About 4 million Turkish people are living within the EU countries and Turkey as main group of foreigners within the EU. By the way so far in my knowledge of Turkish history Turkey has long tradition in managing very different ethnic and religious groups within a common territory. During the Ottoman phase Ottoman periods and during the republic phase period too and if I compare all the Islamic oriented countries around the world it seems to me that Turkey is the only state of really 60 states which are Islamic oriented with democratic structure and bureaucracy and procedures and regulations and that makes two neighbors of many of the European countries so called Western culture. You know about the application for membership of Republic of Turkey for membership of the EU and you know of course that Germany there are supporters of it and non supporters of it. I am a supporter of it not only because I have to make this speech to you but because I am convinced about the possibilities and the potentials of a future membership of Turkey as European neighbor. But let me mention only some of the arguments of the non-supporters, they say Turkey has to make too many inhabitants and they could disturb the stable architecture of the EU. I think we have to think about it but not so seriously because the enlargement of the EU, which has happened in the last year and this year, brought up our population, which is remarkable too. Another argument is that Turkish borders are problematic to control, yes but there are other borders, which are comparably difficult to control. And the last one, which is a very serious for many discussions in Germany, the culture is too different to reach a common life with Turkey within the EU and that means religious orientation is too different to combine it with Islamic religion. I have to point out that in EU more than 15 million Muslims are living and therefore Islam must be accepted as one of the important part of European culture, not only in the past but in the present and then in the future and Muslims and Christians both have them have to learn to understand respective traditions of each other and in my evaluation this process has already begun but it will need time to reach a desired level and needs a lot of common steps. Because the understanding of Islam is still underdeveloped in western countries and it has to be improved the same, might be for the understanding of Christian religion for example in Turkey. But it seems to me in Germany the situation in the meanwhile little bit better compared with other countries.

Let me add some remarks to German not only in the EU Turkish people are the largest group but also in Germany as you know about 3 million people with Turkish background or with Turkish nationality are living in Germany mainly as a consequence of contract workers in the beginning in the 50’s and again we wanted to have a labor force, we got human beings, family was created and young people coming to Germany and now we have to deal with the problems of how could we live together and which are the right ways on both sides and how could we bargain or negotiate about it, how could we find out about productive process. In my evaluation status of integration of our Turkish citizens in Germany positive and I am optimistic about the further process.

In my mind there are main areas we have to mention for further steps creating
-   an acceptance of diversity as a cultural enrichment to our German society of different indifferent ways of course,
-   second, to improve our educational situation in each part of our educational system that means within the kindergarten and in school the vocational training and in higher education system.
-   Third, there is difficulty to introduce young people especially foreign young people into our German labor market. We have to do a lot of things to improve this situation and to avoid young people without working possibilities.
-   Forth one is we have to create on the side of all immigrants and understanding of our constitutional standards, our laws and our basic society values.
-   The last case of the honor killing was followed by intensive public discussion, if I am informed right also in Turkey fortunately.
-   And last there has to be created an appropriate social public, social behavior on the side of immigrants as well as on the side of German members of our society because sometimes you can experience jokes I could say when a Turkish woman or man within a communication with a German man or a woman is announced with broken German and they react in precisely learned German language you could be astonished about it and it is a cynistic partly situation and so both sides have to learn to accept each other and to improve their social behavior.

We have practical examples of successful integration. I don’t know if you know that from the 25.000 entrepreneurs 25% of them and we should improve that to improve the picture of women and this ethnic cultural surrounding. The next point is we have regional offices I could translate as for Foreign Young People, the goal of this regional offices is to build up a triangle between teachers, parents and children to improve he situation in the educational sector as well as vocational sectors and the labor market. And the third one and the last one as I am the president of the art foundation of NRW which is the largest state in Federal Republic of Germany but at the same time I am the president of international university Bremen and this is real cultural experiment about 1.000 students coming from 85 nations including Germany living on campus together confronted with the task to crease a common social, intercultural, international and create common wealthiness an compensate their different opinions, meanings and goals. It is an exciting adventure to be part of that and to be able to manage it to be successful in a German surrounding and we could create more of these islands within higher education and in the labor market or in cultural environments we will be successful in the common understanding and that is what I hope because it is necessary precondition to come to multiculturalism. Thank you very much for your attention.



Questions – Answers

Question: Sayın Schaumann namus cinayetlerinden bahsetti. Sonuçta tüm demokrasilerde olduğu gibi, bizim ülkemizde de cinayet adli bir suçtur. Namus cinayetlerinin özellikle Almanya’da Türk toplumu üzerinde derin ve bir kısmı haksız kritiklere sebep olduğunu düşünüyorum. Sonuçta, bu bir cinayettir ve hukuk sisteminde suçtur. Bunun Türk toplumu üzerinde ve geneli üzerinde bu kadar acımasızca kritik edilmesini doğru buluyor musunuz?

Question: Öncelikle böyle bir organizasyon düzenlendiği için teşekkür ederim. Benim sorum biraz genel olacak. 2010 yılı için İstanbul kültür başkenti seçildi. Bundan sonrası için eğer dünya genelinde kültürel platform oluşturulduğunda ve dünyayı kapsayan ortak bir fikir platformu oluşursa Türkiye buna öncülük edebilir mi veya öncülük edilecek bir kuruluş veya bir ülke varsa bu hangi ülke olabilir? İkinci sorum, dünya günden güne küçüldüğü için bir başkente ihtiyaç varsa ve ileriki yıllarda veya ileriki yüzyıllarda kültürel anlamda İstanbul buna başkentlik edebilir mi?

Dr. Fritz Schaumann: First of all I would like to answer and to clear out a misunderstanding, when I criticize the honor murder I was far away from criticizing Turkey. The opposite is as well. I insisted on the acceptance of constitutional basic rights and duties of all citizens in Germany and I was glad about the critics, which were public and in Turkey too about this case. So please be aware that I would not mix it in a way that is wrong in my opinion. The second point, besides cosmopolitan and multicultural politics I am convinced that each person needs a cultural anchor a definition of identity and what is difficult for each person or for each group in my view and will be is to compromise these basic beliefs, goals, cultural trades and open mind orientation.