Hülya İmak Öztürk – October 7, 2023
A German citizen of Indian origin who was born in Germany walked his dog in the camp daily and allowed the children in the camp to pet the dog. During one of these walks, the mother of one of the children, who wanted to pet the dog, turned to the citizen in traditional Indian clothing and said: “We are refugees. The man replied with tears in his eyes: “The whole world is on the run.”
At that moment, Arab, Kurdish, African, Turkish, Persian, Turkish and Kurdish children surrounded the dog, petting it in their own languages and screaming with joy. Children of different languages and skin colors spoke a language that adults cannot reach: the language of humanity...
As I watched this heartwarming scene, I noticed the names of the streets in the town where the camp is located. Each street is named after a famous German composer or thinker. Johann Sebastian Bach, Nietzsche, Beethoven. I'm looking for a woman as a thinker or composer. But none! It's probably not like you would name a street after Clara Zetkin...
I think of the German Bertolt Brecht, whom I have known since my early youth and whose poems I have read. Brecht, who had to flee his country with his family the day after the Reichstag fire in Nazi Germany, reminded me of his poem, whose message applies from 1933, when he was a refugee, to 2023, when we became refugees:
"I always thought the name they gave us was wrong: emigrants. That means emigrants. But we didn't emigrate, choosing another country of our own free will. We didn't wander into a country to stay there, perhaps forever, but we fled. We are displaced people, exiles. And the land that welcomed us should not be a home, an exile.”1
Whether the name is refugee, migrant or asylum seeker. The path is the same, the hope is the same, the joy and pain are the same, the journey is the same...
Every camp that houses hundreds of people who have left their countries for military, political, economic or other reasons contains hundreds of dramatic stories. They left their countries illegally in the hope of a new life, crossed the borders of several countries with great difficulty and reached Europe. Although this journey is linked to the hope of a life, they have reached these camps with their lives literally hanging by a thread.
Above all, they talk about the discrimination and racism they were exposed to in the countries that reached first. An Afghan family who learned that I was from Turkey said: “My hair turned white in Istanbul, they didn't spit in our faces when we walked on the street, but they insulted us worse. They didn’t pay us any wages as illegal workers, and my children and I often went hungry.” This family had felt the breath of death as they fled by ship to Europe. But the first thing they talked about and what they were most worried about was the racism they faced from Muslims like themselves. They had received neither food nor water during the six-day voyage. Their children's bodies were marked by thirst. Before they even reached shore, the ship was sunk by traffickers and they were at risk of drowning because they couldn't swim.
When I asked them why they risked such great danger, they said, “We were in danger there every day.”
A refugee woman connected to the community as an educator pointed out the people speaking different languages during the meal and said: “I saw how similar everyone here is. I realized how much we have in common." "Yes," I confirm with the satisfaction that she has recognized this, "we are sad about the same negative things and happy about the same positive things, aren't we?" I add.
Europe, whose democracy is trapped within the border fences
In the camps you get to know the peoples of the world. Each of them has been attacked by soldiers and police at the borders where European democracy ends and has been repeatedly pushed back. Their first disappointment in Europe, which they risked their lives to reach by river, sea or land, through barbed wire and on cold streets, is the conditions in the camps.
Europe, which no longer wants "unskilled workers", does not make its decisions in accordance with the UN definition of refugees, which defines a refugee as a person who "... because of a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, affiliation of a particular social group or because of his political opinion, is outside the country of which he is a national and is unable or, because of these fears, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”1
Europe determines the selection of refugees based on criteria such as age, education, gender, health, race, etc. For this reason, it calls on the UN to limit the definition of the term “refugee”. As a result of this attitude, the asylum courts can refuse an applicant asylum or make him wait a very long time for a decision, even though he has been sentenced to a very serious prison sentence in the country from which he fled and has proven with documents that he did not have one there has life safety. The methods of questioning by the courts also vary depending on the reason for asylum. Political asylum seekers from Turkey in particular are interrogated in a way that is reminiscent of the interrogations in the Turkish courts. If you are a Kurd or a socialist, you will also be confronted with decision-makers of Turkish origin. During interrogations they are confronted with questions such as: they were not killed, they were not imprisoned, were they tortured, where is their written report, etc. Questions arise that question their oppositional stance, such as: B. “Why are they being targeted, why her and not someone else?”
It becomes clear that the EU's attitude towards the AKP government, which is constantly being blackmailed with the refugee card, is reflected in the selection of refugees. The AKP has raised the threshold for violence and oppression in Turkey to such an extent that Europe sees this violence and unlawful prison sentences as normal and even “just”. Germany in particular does not want to accept Kurds and socialists from Turkey and even defines them as “terrorists” who are dangerous based on decisions by AKP courts based on plots. Kurds who were wounded in Rojava in the attacks by the ISIS gangs, which caused bombs to explode in almost all European countries, and who still have shrapnel fragments in their bodies, have been kept in camps for a long time without adequate treatment and hygiene.
Refugees who don't even have a second set of clothes in the camp, who have had to leave all their belongings behind on the arduous journeys they have made, have to wait for clothes, even though there is a room full of all kinds of donated clothes. Actually, we know what mindset is responsible for not getting these clothes. Another refugee woman said her young child was not allowed to go to the toilet during a four-hour bus ride.
While witnessing all this, I was reminded of the statement of the German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, who, contrary to popular opinion, said:
"I look at the afterlife of National Socialism in of democracy as potentially more threatening than the afterlife of fascist tendencies versus the democracy."2
It is inherent to liberal democracy, it comes to mind. The footsteps of fascism are heard over the refugees, who are discriminated against and treated differently because of their race, the color of their skin and even the level of military and economic cooperation with the governments of the countries from which they come. Adorno held the general view that fascism has not yet been completely defeated, that it can be found in everyday manifestations of both social structure and personal behavior, and that it must always be fought against.
During the war in Ukraine, Russian shopkeepers hiding their Russianness and the treatment of Ukrainian refugees as a "privileged race" confirm Adorno's thesis that fascism has positioned itself in a sophisticated stealth in the liberal democracy, social structure and bureaucracy and that today's neo-fascism arises from the "allergic points" of society rather than from classical nationalism. Today, this allergic point is the refugees.
Racism against refugees is leading to the rise of racist parties in Turkey and Europe.
As in Turkey, fake news about refugees is produced daily on social media in Germany: “They are rapists, thieves, they live on our taxes, etc.” in order to generate approval in society. And this is also shared by “our” migrant community, who used to be migrants and refugees themselves. “The foreigners came and ruined everything here”, or due to an erosion of the mind “everyone should live in their own country, what are they doing here”….
Let us ask those who cannot see how far the racism expressed in general social conditions and daily personal behavior will go, and the dangerous rise of racist parties that have taken Europe by storm and are leading the way in the polls Standing at the forefront: Who, along with the local despotic rulers, turned the Middle East into a war zone? What do those who play the three monkeys on the Kurdish question, who ignore the Kurdish politicians killed in their capitals, who recognize that the Kurdish question is now an international problem and who do not take part in its solution, have to say to the Kurdish refugees? ?
No refugee left their home country voluntarily. As long as a system of war, plunder and exploitation exists, anyone can one day become a refugee.
Bertolt Brecht says in the last lines of his poem:
We sit there restlessly, as close as possible to the borders, waiting for the day of return, observing every little change beyond the border, eagerly questioning every newcomer, forgetting nothing and giving up nothing...
But none of us will stay here. The last word has not yet been spoken.3
1 Bertolt Brecht: On the term emigrants (1937), https://we-refugees-archive.org/archive/bertolt-brecht-ueber-die-bezeichnung-emigranten-1937/
1 Article 1a of the Geneva Refugee Convention; https://www.unhcr.org/dach/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2017/03/GFK_Pocket_2015_RZ_final_ansicht.pdf
2 “What does it mean: coming to terms with the past?”, Theodor W. Adorno, 1959
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