Turkey v. Croatia, the (impending) Germany v. Turkey match (and immigration)

Some might point to others' games as the most boring of the Euro 2008 tournament, but come on...even the gem of Greece-Russia entertained us with players falling down for no reason whatsoever and a camerawoman (?!) who kept giving us close-ups of the players' more tantalizing body parts. Turkey and Croatia's quarterfinal match-up provided no such entertainment, however. The play was boring, the players were boring -- I was literally fighting to keep my eyes open at one point -- and when regulation time ended nil-nil, my friends and I all bemoaned the thirty minutes of overtime that we would be powerless to keep ourselves from watching. It had gotten to the point that whether or not we'd come into the game with a favorite, we were rooting for anyone, ANYONE, to score a goal and end the misery. When Croatia finally did score in the final five minutes of play, we all cheered, happy to see the game finally finished. Or so we thought. Here comes Turkey -- finally playing something that looked more like football than anything we'd seen during the game -- and suddenly it was 1-1 and down to penalty kicks.

Turkey took the game and advanced onto the semifinal match with Germany, which is the real story considering the strong rivalry there. Again, a little history...

Back in the 1960's, Germany needed workers to do the kinds of jobs that Germans weren't willing to do. They started up a guest worker, or "gastarbeiter", program that allowed Turks to immigrate legally and find work. The legacy of this policy decision is that Berlin is now home to the second-largest group of Turks outside of Turkey and that döner kebab and lahmacun stands can be found all over Germany. Put simply, Turks took advantage of the legal means to enter the country and have become an important part of its modern culture. Germany benefited from the cheap, skilled labor, and the Turkish benefited from the availability of jobs. Or at least that's one take on it. There are others who would argue that Turks have invaded Germany and taken over. As I mentioned in my previous post, certain racism might be dying with an older generation here in Germany, but the antagonism that many Germans feel toward Turks is pronounced. There's a tacit rivalry that doesn't ever really seem to break out into full-scale violence but is nevertheless felt in the distance many in the German and Turkish communities keep from each other.

Of course this is, as all things, more complicated than anything black and white. There are many Turks who have come to Germany, learned the language, had their families and made their lives here. There are others who, despite doing all of this, remain loyal to Turkey over Germany. Unfortunately, those who are anti-Turk seem to lump these two distinct groups -- and the countless number of people whose conflicted loyalties place them somewhere along the continuum between these two poles -- into the same group. Of course, prejudice felt by Turks also sometimes leads to stronger feelings of attachment to the Turkish community when people feel unaccepted by mainstream German society, so that there are issues on both sides that lead to the feelings felt by each. This should all sound pretty familiar to those of you living in the Southwestern United States. The issues here are almost identical to the ones that we face with Mexican immigrants at home, though the prevalence of illegal immigration is much lower in Germany.

I want to be very clear, that not everyone in Germany feels this way; just as in the States, you have people on both sides of the immigrant issue. However, also as in the States, the people protesting the most loudly are the ones who are most easily heard. So it is with a certain level of trepidation that I anticipate Wednesday's match against Turkey. After being so excited for Germany during this entire tournament, it's going to be quite difficult for me to root against Turkey when I know that they're the underdogs in more ways than one. Friends have expressed similar concerns, and people all over Germany -- in the media and in conversation -- have been speculating about a Germany-Turkey match up, implying the importance of such a contest in a country full of Turkish immigrants and Germans of Turkish descent.

tags: euro2008  germany  turkey  immigration  football  soccer