Erkan Aykan didn’t need a second invitation to share his fame. He grew up in a Turkish family in Gelsenkirchen, an industrial city in the heart of Germany’s Ruhr Valley. Better known is Ilkay Gundogan, captain of the country’s football team. “I know his cousins,” he said proudly.
His brother Talha listened politely, perhaps a little tolerantly, waiting for Elkann to finish, then immediately attacked him. “He was in the same class as me at school,” Talha said of Gundogan. “I played football with him when we were kids.”
The speed with which the pair have begun to build Gundogan’s credentials demonstrates the pride they feel in forming a link with the Germany captain and the satisfaction of seeing him now leading their country at the European Championships.
But that loyalty only goes so far. They said both brothers expect Gundogan to perform well this month. But like millions of other Turkish-Germans, they want someone else to win. When asked who they would support at Euro 2024, they said in unison: “Only Turkey.” “We live here. We were born here. But our hearts are in Turkey.”
This shared pride – evident in the Turkish flags and Turkish jerseys seen on German streets and stadiums this month – reflects the sheer size of Germany’s population of Turks or people of Turkish descent. Germany’s Turkish community has a population of more than seven million, making it the largest minority group in Europe’s largest country.
Throughout, many Turkish-Germans considered the same questions of allegiance and identity as the Aykan brothers, and made the same decisions.
“When we qualified, I told my German friends that now they have two host countries,” said Hamit Altintop, a decorated player who is now the technical director of the Turkish Football Federation. “We’re co-hosts now.”
Germany’s Turkish community is a legacy of the country’s opening to migrant workers – or “gastarbeiter” — Help rebuild a country shattered after World War II.
Many workers stayed and formed families that are now into the second, third or fourth generation. Every major city in Germany, as well as many smaller cities, has at least one neighborhood with a distinctly Turkish feel, and children grow up in families not unlike those in Gelsenkirchen Altintop.
“The topic is Turkish, the food is Turkish, and the culture is Turkish,” he said, letting his mind wander back to his childhood. Now in Berlin, he said, there are many people whose “barber shop is Turkish, your supermarket is Turkish, your dinner is in a Turkish restaurant.”
So it’s no surprise that when Turkey finally makes its appearance at this summer’s European Championships, its first game has the feel of a home game: As well as reserving a stand for rival Georgian fans, Dortmund’s Wies Terfalon Stadium is also a home match.
Like Gelsenkirchen, Dortmund has a sizable Turkish community, big enough that the popular Turkish pastry company Bulent Borekcilik established a branch in the city. There are only two in Germany. Restaurant staff confirmed that people come from all over the Ruhr Valley to taste a place that feels like home but may have never been.
Before the game, thousands of fans wearing the country’s national colors – including the Aykan brothers – arrived at a meeting point a little more than a mile from the stadium to sing and sway to Turkish dances and folk standards, including a hymn An ode to the nation. The crowd paused to sing the Turkish national anthem before a long, slow and extremely loud march to the stadium.
However, despite the patriotic fervor, members of the crowd often spoke to each other not in Turkish but in German. As the crowd meandered through the city’s rain-swept streets, some drank Jägermeister, gin and canned stouts. In almost every way, the scene feels distinctly German.
“It’s not unusual for immigrants anywhere in the world to have two hearts in one chest,” said Aladin El-Mafaalani, professor of sociology of migration and education at TU Dortmund.
“One thing that connects different generations of Turkish immigrants is Turkish football: club football and, of course, the national team,” he said. “It’s part of your identity, your social connections. Most people of Turkish origin tend to support Turkey, but that doesn’t mean they are against Germany.
That view held true in an admittedly unscientific survey of the large crowds of spectators who gathered to watch Turkey play. “Germany is our home, but our hearts belong to Turkey,” said Salih Halil, who watched the game with 10 friends in their 20s from Koblenz.
Khalil is hedging his euro bets: He says he will support both Türkiye and Germany. But when pressed, he admitted that – like most Turkish-German fans – he would choose Türkiye. “Heart over head,” he said.
For those with more direct affiliations, this phenomenon can be a bit confusing. Zeynep Bakan, 25, who works at the German Football Museum in Dortmund, wears Germany gear, but only for professional reasons: she is from Istanbul.
“They go to German schools, they go to German clubs, they watch German football, they pay a lot of attention to things in Germany,” she said of Germans of Turkish descent. “In the end, they said they were Turkish.”
She underscored her point with one of the museum’s exhibits: Mesut Özil, a key member of Germany’s 2014 World Cup team, in 2018 with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Recep Tayyip Erdogan) photo.
The photo caused considerable controversy at the time – the backlash was so intense that Ozil quit the German national team as a result, saying he was tired of “being seen as German when we win and as German when we lose.” for immigrants”.
Gundogan has been ridiculed for months for taking a similar photo, but Ms. Bakan said she believed the photo itself encapsulated why so many second-, third- or fourth-generation Turks feel connected to their ancestral homeland Appeal. “They are the pictures,” she said.
Ms. Bakan recounted key details of Ozil’s career with ease, saying she felt he made a mistake by posing for a photo that effectively ruined his career in Germany. But for some, Ozil’s description of his treatment as a German in Turkey reflects their own feelings and explains why they support Turkey rather than their homeland.
But others feel a different pull. Five players on the Turkish team participating in this tournament were born in Germany. Like Gundogan, Turkey captain Hakan Calhanoglu grew up in Gelsenkirchen. (Several Turkish players were also born in the Netherlands and Austria, as were many Dortmund fans.)
Had things gone differently, all of them might have gone a different route, or represented a different country. For a player, this choice is a difficult, very personal decision that usually has to be made in adolescence.
Turkish Football Association official Altintop believes this is an easy decision. “I said, ‘Thank you, I’m Turkish,’ and that was it,” he said. But many others are grappling with this problem.
For fans, however, the fact that they are simultaneously Turkish and German, or Turkish and Dutch, or Turkish and Austrian, makes their football heroes easier to relate to.
“We can identify more with players who are similar to us,” said Okan Odabas, 27, from Freiburg, a city near the German-Swiss border. “All these young people who are playing for Turkey now were also born and raised in Germany.” In the Turkish team, they can see a team that represents them and has a mixed identity.
Professor Mafarani said the idea of pledging allegiance to two places – Germany and Turkey, Germany and anywhere else – had long been “considered a problem”. He said there was a perception that there would be a “conflict of interest”. However, those who live among them, those who have embraced their identities as Turks, Germans and Turkish-Germans, think otherwise.
“People think it’s either/or,” Professor Mafalani said. “Instead of both.”
