What kind of integration do the Germans want for the Turks living there?
What will be your ideal of integration?.
Could the Turks even become German, in all the sense of the word, like for example, a second generation Irish or German could become an "American", "Canadian" or "Brazilian"?
To answer your last question first:
No, I don't think so! It is a cliché I have to bring up, but I think there is some truth in it: The nations USA, Canada and Brazil are partly
based on immigration, built up by people who migrated there and therefore also smooth the way for immigrants to come. It is in the mentality of the citizens. Of course those countries, due to some economic or social reasons, have their prejudices, too, and try to limit or widen immigration on certain targets of people who want to enter the country. But in Germany it is something different:
It is a sad thing to say, and when I mention it infront of other Germans they usually agree ashamed to it, but still after over 60 years the nation is mostly based on "Blut und Boden", means, this country is for German blood line only. It happens subconsciously and without intended awareness. If it comes to Turks, if you speak fluently German, were born here, even your grandparents were born here, have German citizenship, studied at a German university, you will remain the Turk! Doesn't mean they are not tolerated to live here as long as the Germans don't feel disturbed.
Other way round, immigrants who come to a country like Germany come for different reasons than for example to USA. If someone migrates to the USA, he wants to become American. If someone migrates to Canada, he wants to become Canadian. If someone migrates to Brazil, he wants to become Brazilian. But hardly someone wants to become German when migrating to Germany, the main reason is economics!
Things are
slowly changing, and both the views of Germans as well as immigrants are becoming somewhat different. But there is still a long way to go.
Strangely, Germans and non-Turkish immigrants never really had a problem in the last decades with this attitude, simply because there was no reason to argue about. Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavians and other South and Eastern Europeans (ay, there is it again, thought I never wanted to use the terms South and East again :embarassed
lived peacefully apart together. These immigrants spoke their homeland languages at home, cooked their homeland meals, held their homeland parties, but, they did their work very well, paid taxes, simply did no trouble... And after some while intermarriages became more and more common and today you can't tell the difference anymore between a German and third-generation Italian in Germany.
Things changed when the Turks arrived. I don't think so much that it was mainly Islam which played the major role, but see, those people didn't come from Istanbul or Ankara. They came from remote places of East-Anatolia, bringing customs and social structures very different from all previous immigrants. These families were heavily based on patriarchal structures, customs differed widely from other Europeans, with different values, and much less education than other Europeans brought. Even here, as long as the "guest-workers" (means they were supposed to leave soon again) did the dirty work Germans didn't want to do, this was no problem. But as more and more family members moved to Germany, social problems became more obvious: families were huge and only a few did feed the family through jobs (job means here for Germans: work that provides taxes!), although through living here social services could be entitled. And I can tell you from my experience, even besides that, working motivation is a little different from other Europeans... Of course not all East Anatolians are like that, it might also be the minority, but there is a fair number, or what I can call a huge minority of them! Moreover, of course from wellfare alone you can't make a living on the long run either, which is a problem for the kids who want to wear cool clothes of brand names and the latest technology. Which subsequently leads to the "criminal foreigner"...
Funny thing is that I can't even blame those Turkish immigrants. They are just living in the way they always lived, acting in the range of the basic conditions of law and society, confronted with their own problems within these conditions, too. Germans and also our politicians never really made any effort to understand their culture, make a comparison between theirs and ours, and see how to find an agreement and thus motivational input for integration. As I already mentioned at the beginning, things are
very slowly changing by the usage of Turkish methods, incentives and restrictions, to practically
push Turks into education and jobs that support our social system and not just making use of it (my most realistic ideal of integration btw). Some very small successes could already been observed.
And now comes the part that upsets me. Each time such a small success could be made, we have a group of Turks who argue they have violently deprived of their culture and been forced to live a life they didn't want to. These are small trouble makers, but I hate it, and it happens often enough, that some Turkish media supports their aims, and especially it upsets me when some Mr. Erdogan, who actually knows about this problem very well, is only interested in the votes and feelings of the people of his country (and the people of Turkish nationality here can vote for him in elections!), ignoring the trouble abroad, only interested in his very own benefit. And it is the same he does when he deals with EU or Arab policy. Yes, he is a very good strategist...