Understanding divisions and fostering dialogue among Berlin’s Turkish speaking communities

ongoing

After 60 years of migration in countless waves, Germany’s Turkish-speaking communities are complex and diverse. Routinely lumped together by policymakers, media and the public as “Turks”, they in fact encompass a multitude of ethnicities, religions, classes and political groupings. Though they live side-by-side, they often have little contact and frequently harbour disparaging, even hostile feelings towards each other. ARAMIZDA (meaning “between/among us” in Turkish), draws on methods and theories from a range of disciplines to produce novel, high-quality research on divisions within Berlin’s Turkish-speaking communities. It explores the role civil society organisations play in easing and exacerbating those divides. Previous work on Europe’s large Turkish-speaking diasporas (including Kurds) has been mostly concerned with these groups’ links to Turkey or their integration with host populations. No detailed study has focused explicitly on how they interact with each other. At a time when European policymakers are grappling with the paradox of growing spaces for minority communities but shrinking opportunities for social dialogue, the project will use a mix of social science methods (including ethnographic fieldwork, diaries and interviews) to collect rich data to understand divisions within Turkish-speaking communities. It will foster collaboration with research participants by inviting them to play a role in determining data collection methods and taking an active role in a key non-academic offshoot of the project. This final aspect will take the form of workshop, run in partnership with an anti-polarisation charity, aimed at piloting ways of encouraging diverse groups to engage in dialogue. The findings — which will be widely dispersed through academic and non-academic channels — will be used to advance theories on diversity and inclusion, increase understanding among policymakers and the public, and test practical ways to build more united and resilient societies.