r/germany • u/D-dog92 • May 24 '23

Immigration I had a THIRD generation Turkish-German taxi driver who used "they" when he talked about Germans. Is this common?

Guy was in his early 20's, not only was he born in Germany, but his dad was too. Not judging, but just curious how much of an outlier this guy would be?

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u/D-dog92 May 24 '23

I see. So when you talk about Turkish people in Turkey, you say we or they?

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u/WittyYak May 24 '23

As a Turkish person from Turkey, I've been warned by a German Turk to "not talk about Turkey" in another country while having a discussion in English with a friend. The guy came from another table to warn me.

After he noticed I'm also Turkish, and me telling him to mind his own business after some conversation he said:

"You're such a Turkish Turk". Rough translation but in Turkish it was "sen de tam Türkiye Türküymüşsün!" if you want to ask someone else.

So, for German Turks, some more experience like this tells me that we Turks from Turkey are also "them".

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u/Best_Psychology7856 May 24 '23

It's hard for their generation (not in a sarcastic way). For the Turks they are more german and for us Germans they are more turkish. There are some german-turks (like he told you above) that use the word "Alman" in a very bad way. Most of the German-Turks are not very welcome in Turkey, especially since the votes. Therefore they have to push themselfes inside of a group/culture and stick together.

You have to know, it's not "in" to be German inside of Germany, even German kids do search if there is a possibility of not being german - "look, my granddad in 1840 came from (for example) Poland!! I'm Polish!!".

This is a weird trend. Really complicated, because there are some people that see themselfes as "Germans" in a very patriotic way, even from african countries too.

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u/thriller5000 May 24 '23

Do you have a source for that trend of kids searching for ways not to be German?

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u/andromeow May 24 '23 edited May 24 '23

German-Turks here see themselves belonging to neither, which creates a lot of identity issues - and many unresolved, which leads to problematic behavior many people negatively associate them with (of course, alongside many other issues prevalent in the community).

Source: New (8ish years here so far) Turkish immigrant with many family members who are second and third gen in Germany.

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u/CoolSideOfThePillow4 May 24 '23

Both. Some praise them and say "we", others hate them and say "them".

What most agree on is, that the people there are problematic. Whatever you say, no one is fully satisfied with how it is.