Ergün Isik is writing on a chalk board in a little classroom in Berlin's southern district of Neukölln. It's a Friday evening in May and sunlight is streaming in through the window. His students have cups of tea and large yellow Turkish-German dictionaries on their desks.
Isik, who studied sociology at Humboldt University in Berlin, opened the language school in 2011 to meet an increased demand from Germans wanting to learn Turkish. "When I first came to Germany I couldn't even find a partner to do a language exchange with," says Isik, laughing. "But in the last five years there's been a real rise in demand. Business is booming."
The integration of the Turkish migrant population, which stems from the "guest workers" that Germany began recruiting in the 1950s, has long been a hot topic in German public discussion. Today some 2.5 million people in Germany have Turkish roots, but Turkish migrants have been accused of being unwilling to fit into German culture, failing to learn the language and remaining isolated in their own communities. The reverse side of the relationship -- whether Germans make an effort to better understand the migrant population -- has been largely ignored. But now, some 60 years after the arrival of the first guest workers, Germans are showing a new interest in Turkish language and culture. » | Kate Katharina Ferguson in Berlin | Thursday, May 31, 2012
