ABSTRACT
Five Turkish women and children were murdered through arson on the night of 29 May 1993, in the city of Solingen. There were subsequent protests, largely by the Turkish community, all over Germany. A Turkish columnist from Hürriyet Daily wrote his impressions of the protesting Turkish youth in an article entitled ‘Tekbir, the flag and punks’ (Uluengin 1993). The behaviour and mood of these young people, according to the journalist, not only defied Turkish law because they were using the Turkish flag as a scarf or skirt, but it also defied the Islamic code of behaviour. They were saying tekbir (the religious formula ‘Allah-ü Ekber’ in Arabic, which means ‘Allah is great and omniscient’) without the due ritual ablutions. The author interpreted the hybridization of symbols and symbolic acts (for instance blue-haired young Turks with punk-style earrings, dancing to rock music and shouting nationalist slogans like ‘Turkey is the greatest’, a common slogan for soccer fans, or ‘Allah is great’, a slogan used mostly by religious fundamentalist Turks), as characteristic of ‘new Turks’ in Germany. He praised their cultural expression, which differentiates them from their contemporaries in Turkey, and indicates the multicultural and multivocal nature of society in Germany.
