Recently, the Turkish Prime Minister has suggested establishing fully-Turkish language teaching secondary (high) schools in Germany. The article is an interview conducted between Deutsche-Welle and Ulrich Raiser, a member of Network Migration in Europe, an EU partly-financed think tank. Mr. Raiser thinks that the main goal of having Turkish schools is to better integrate Turkish culture into German culture, not so much as having Turks integrate into Germany. He realizes the fact that most Turkish students drop out of school because of their lack of grasp of the German language, and how these schools could exacerbate the problem.
Yet, what is interesting in the article is confoundedness of the Turkish PM’s goal. He should be able to recognize that by making these Turkish language schools, only the country of Turkey is benefiting. Turkey gets out of this a better diplomatic relationship with Germany, as the school and education represents a major olive branch towards the two cultures coming together. However, why does the PM not see how it will negatively affect Turkish-Germans before it benefits them in “integration,” as Turkish schools will deviate from German language learning and teach a different set of cultures. I’m also surprised how he doesn’t realize because Turkey is so different from Germany (unlike France, US, Britain), it is much harder to integrate, and if there are Turkish schools, it might create an even larger division between the two cultures. Thus, with so many cons piling up against PM’s request, I wonder if he has more substantial reasons other than promoting understanding to be backing it up.
