Turkey will hold parliamentary and presidential elections on June 24 – roughly one and a half years ahead of schedule. Turkish citizens living abroad can already vote at Turkish consulates prior to that date. In Germany, home of the world’s largest diaspora of Turkish origin, roughly 1.4 million Turkish citizens are eligible to cast their…
Germany is, as is well known, home to a large community with Turkish roots, numbering roughly 3 million. Many of them have lived in the country for generations, and roughly half now hold German citizenship – even if the widespread parlance of ‘second-, third-, and fourth-generation immigrants’ stubbornly continues to emphasise their quintessential Otherness. In…
Former DİTİB secretary general, Bekir Alboğa, has announced his intention to run for a seat in Turkey’s parliament in the upcoming June 2018 elections. Alboğa, who had led DİTİB as Secretary General from 2012 to 2017, is seeking a place on the AKP ballot, the party of Turkish President Erdoğan. The case is particularly salient,…
Germany is a nation crazy for football. As the country gears up for this year’s world cup in Russia, the national team’s coach, Joachim Löw, announced his preliminary squad on May 15, signalling the onset of the countdown to the tournament. Two footballers posing with President Erdoğan Yet the squad presentation was overshadowed by politics: On…
For years, German public debates have asked whether ‘Islam’ has a rightful place in the country and whether it can be considered part of its identity. Yet the reasons given by those that see the religion as alien to Germany have fluctuated over time. Shifting discourses of Islam’s ‘incompatibility’ First of all, as the years…
