The candied apple. Turkish images of Germany
Straube has recorded opinions about Germany of ca. 23 inhabitants of the city of Sereflikoçhisar, about 100 km southeast of Ankara, from where many people migrated to Germany during the last decades. The information is biographically organized: opinions, stereotypes, fantasies, projections etc. are narratively mediated - as translated statements of the interviewees. These statements are topically grouped together: 1) bridges between home and Germany, 2) narratives of the people of Sereflikoçhisar, 3) narratives of those who went back home, and of those who went back home for religious reasons, and finally 4) narrations of Germans living in Sereflikoçhisar. Straube first introduces the setting of the town, then effects of work migration between Turkey and Germany starting in the 1950s, and she has analyzed reports in the local Sereflikoçhisar press about emigrants, the alien country of Germany, problems of the Sereflikoçhisar district, and also, being true to the biographical approach, the person of the newspaper editor. The people interviewed come from all sections of society: traders, teachers, druggists, farmers, workers, drivers... The statements show opinions which are sometimes extreme and contradictory - people showing considerable difference in judging one situation, e.g.: some regard their home town/Turkey as the only right and best place to live, others see it as a place of deprivation.
Keywords: Turks on Germany, migration and identity, identity of Turks in Germany, alterity, self and other
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