ABSTRACT
On 31 December 2001, there were 1,947,000 Turkish nationals resident in Germany, including an estimated 500,000 Kurds. 1 This number has been relatively steady at between 1,900,000 and 2,100,000 persons for most of the 1990s. However, it has decreased slightly from its peak in 1998, which has been mainly due to higher naturalizations and a long-term reduction of Turkish net immigration from over 40,000 in 1992 to just over 6,000 in 1999. In 2001, Turks formed 26.6 per cent of the non-national population of Germany, and even though this represented a reduction from 33 per cent in 1989, they still constituted by far the single largest non-national group in Germany. Indeed, Germany’s Turks represent around 16 per cent of all Third Country Nationals (TCNs) living in the 15 member states of the European Union (EU). 2 Germany’s policy towards the residence and integration of its Turkish population is therefore particularly germane for understanding the dimensions and effects of immigration from Mediterranean countries to the European Union (EU). But Germany’s policy is also unique for the domestic framework within which it was formulated: for decades, government edicts failed to acknowledge the permanence of its immigration, as reflected in the now infamous leitmotif that Germany was ‘not a country of immigration’. 3 Even though Germany has had the largest non-national population in the EU for around 20 years now, numbering 7,318,000 in 2001 (8.9 per cent of the total population), this fallacy has pervaded all areas of policy. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the interests of any individual non-national resident in Germany in obtaining a more permanent residence permit were systematically subjugated to the national interest of a self-proclaimed non-immigration country. In the 1980s, this self-perception meant that Germany could legitimately set comparatively high standards for anyone wishing to obtain its citizenship.
