Berlin, March 01: Germany and Turkey has crossed swords over the language spoken by the large Turkish minority in Germany as a debate over integration continued to rage in Europe’s most populous country.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan fanned the flames when he told members of Germany’s 2.5-million-strong Turkish minority that their children should learn Turkish ahead of learning German.
“Our children have to learn German, but first they must learn Turkish,” Erdogan said in a speech in the western city of Duesseldorf late Sunday.
Later yesterday, Chancellor Angela Merkel responded, saying Turks had to learn German in order to be able to contribute to society.
“The German language is so important in order to have an opportunity to participate in social life in Germany,” she said, as she opened a trade fair in Hanover, northern Germany, alongside Erdogan.
“We want our citizens with a Turkish background to make a contribution to society and to participate in its wealth,” added the chancellor to sustained applause.
Merkel’s comments followed a more robust response from Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle who insisted that “children who grow up in Germany have to learn German first of all.”
The secretary general of the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democrats went further, calling for the Turkish ambassador in Germany to be summoned for a dressing down.
“Erdogan’s speech has set back our integration efforts in Germany by years,” the Die Welt daily quoted Alexander Dobrindt as saying on its website.
Erdogan caused a similar storm in nearby Cologne in 2008 when he said that assimilation, which he defined as a person being “forced” to abandon their culture, was a “crime against humanity”.
Germany has been wracked by a debate on immigration since last August, when a member of the central bank sparked outrage by saying the country was being made “more stupid” by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants.
The banker, Thilo Sarrazin, resigned but his book “Germany Does Itself In” flew off the shelves to top best-seller lists, and polls showed considerable sympathy for some of his views.
-PTI