The beginning

Like every story, the history of Turkish migration to Germany has a beginning and an end. 1963 marked the beginning as the first Turkish workers left their country for Germany, expecting to work hard, earn money, and then return home to build a good life. The end comes some forty years later, after the turn of the millennium, at a time when Europe is in the process of building a Union and Turkey is negotiating the terms of membership in that Union. This chapter retells that short history, which saw the establishment of Turkish populations in Germany, as well as in the larger geography of Europe, amid much heated debate on migration and culture and integration within and without Europe.

In the official version of migration history, Turkish migration to Europe begins in 1963, with the signing of bilateral agreements with Germany (and various European states), creating what are called the guestworker programmes. The official story is an exercise in statistics, registering who entered and left and keeping account of the difference: the net migration. Across Europe, the protagonist in this migration history is the categorical international migrant worker, primarily taking part in an institutionalised worker exchange. Labour migration occurred between countries at the industrialised centre of Europe (Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland) and the countries at Europe’s southern periphery (not only Turkey, but also Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Algeria and Morocco), with the movement of workers from the latter to the former, from periphery to the centre.