A Turkish Dinner in Tübingen

By: Peter Armstrong

May 29, 2014

Germans are very conscious of their country’s past and tend to avoid making any statements that might be interpreted as prejudicial or self-aggrandizing in relation to other peoples. However, they do have a hard time supporting the vast influx of Turks into German cities and demonstrate some negative sentiments about immigration. There is a general feeling that Turks don’t want to assimilate and that they don’t want to become part of the German culture, as if they harbor negative feelings towards German society and integration into it.

This past weekend, however, I got to experience a bit of Turkish culture that exposed the falseness of such a standpoint. On Friday afternoon, after I had finished with all my classes, I met with Önder, my Turkish Tandem Partner, for our third regular exchange. As usual, we spent half the time talking in English and the other half in Turkish, so that we could both help each other to learn our respective mother tongues. After a pleasant two hours together, he invited me to his place for dinner, where I got to meet and share dinner with the six other Turkish guys with whom he lives. There were many things that I learned from being with them that evening, some of which I would like to share below.

I was amazed at how tight-knit and traditional their community is. Every night, they eat together, eating the food that one of them cooks for all. They don’t have a table big enough to eat together, and so they eat in a circle on the carpeted floor of their hallway. Throughout the evening they showed incredible hospitality toward me, their guest. Even after Önder had to leave to go play soccer, I was invited to stay and continue to chat. Their relationships with each other seemed to be determined by age hierarchy; when sitting down, the eldest (whom they refer to as "older brother") takes the first bite, and later in the evening I saw how he managed their communal fund for grocery shopping, planned a trip for the next morning, and gave orders on who did what tasks for the community. If I had been in Turkey, maybe this would not have been so strange, but in Tübingen, a small, typically German town, to experience such a different culture was quite shocking.

The most amazing thing about the whole experience, though, was how happy they all seemed to be with each other. They were not family, and yet they acted like it; Önder told me more than once how dinner with his apartment mates, where everyone sat down together to eat and talk, was the highlight of his every day. The others seemed equally happy, and no one was slow to help out with any of their various household tasks. In fact, it seemed as if the strict hierarchy was not a burden, but rather a great boon to them, as everyone knew exactly what he had to do and where he had to be in order to keep the community thriving.

The community, however, was not even just restricted to their apartment. They told me of a connection (another Turk) who had just given them a giant crate full of breads, pastries, and even some delicious baklava (which we ate later on), simply because he had it left over from his bakery that day. Meanwhile, they were planning an excursion for the next day for a group of 15 guys, many more than were living there in the apartment. I got the feeling that they were just one part of a large community of Turks living in Tübingen, all of whom knew each other and identified with each other, even if only on the basis of being Turks.

I left that evening with many questions. I couldn’t understand how the Turks, with so many social and political difficulties facing them in Germany, were able to create such a lively, friendly, and open community. It changed my entire German perspective of them as unfriendly, or somehow against integration in Germany. It seemed to me, rather, that the Turks had such a great community already, that they simply didn’t need it. They didn’t need to become part of German culture or society, because they’re already doing so well amongst themselves in their own network of Turk-filled apartments and households. They have everything they need; why should they worry about whether or not they’ve become part of German society?

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