Entries Tagged 'Turkish immigrants' ↓

The 8:45 AM EST slot on “Morning Edition” is the only radio I listen to regularly–it fits in the 3 minute window between dropping my wife off at work and parking across campus in the parking ramp–but it regularly has great features that I’ve written about before.
On Friday the segment was on Ahmet Ertegun, founder […]

A few hours before I flew to Turkey I was in the office at my neighborhood DITIB mosque talking to the son of the religious attache.  I had run into Metin (not his real name) a couple times before, but this was our first chance to sit down and have a conversation by ourselves.
There were […]

Yesterday I had a long chat with a Turkish migrant about how he had been discriminated against by Germans over the 33 years he’s been living in Berlin.  For all this talk about Turks and Germans living in parallel worlds, it was a disheartening reminder that worlds do collide and sometimes it’s not very pretty.
Osman […]

“Immigrants must learn German!” is a rallying cry heard throughout Germany these days.  But what kind of policies are in place to bring this about?  The imam I spoke with on Wednesday told me he tried to take a German course in Berlin but was denied the opportunity.  The rules were being followed, but to […]

In my last post I asked whether there were any data confirming the common view that Turkish Muslims in Germany have become more conservative over the last few years.  The answer appears to be yes.
The Foundation Center for Studies on Turkey published a trio of mini-reports in English last April that offer findings from a […]

I’m offering a $10 iTunes gift certificate to the first person who can point me toward quantitative data showing that Muslim immigrants in Germany have become more religiously conservative over the last 5-10 years. [UPDATE…Sorry, less than 24 hours later I found something on my own; see comments below…]
Sound good?  Read on.
I’ve had several conversations […]

Today I was finally able to speak directly with Ridvan Cakir, the president of DITIB.  His office is in Cologne, which has complicated things, but more importantly he was in Turkey for the past couple weeks.  Although he’s back on the job, he told me over the phone that many DITIB employees in Cologne, […]