78 · Gökçe Yurdakul and Y. Michal Bodemann
German Jews versus German Turks
The Jews
Since the introduction of a new citizenship law (Staatsangehörigkeitsge-
setz), the German state has partially discarded the idea of ius sanguinis
(law based on ancestral origin) and has started naturalizing the migrant
population. According to the citizenship law, immigrant children born
in Germany after the year 2000 will be granted German citizenship and
their parents’ native citizenship. In order to be granted permanent Ger-
man citizenship, however, a child born in Germany has to give up the
citizenship of his/her parents’ native country between the ages of sixteen
and twenty-three.^15 According to December 2002 estimates, 7.34 million
migrants live in Germany, and Turks represent the largest group with
1.998 million. According to 2003 estimates, there were 565,766 Turks with
German citizenship in Germany, approximately one-fourth of the whole
Turkish immigrant population.^16
Obtaining German citizenship is not as complicated for many Jews.
German law facilitates the acquisition of citizenship for former German
citizens (and their descendants)—Jews mostly, who were persecuted
during the Nazi period—irrespective of which other citizenships they
may hold.^17 Moreover, on account of the Holocaust, special conditions
have been set up to encourage Jewish immigration to Germany. These
new Jewish immigrants are eligible to apply for expedited citizenship.
It is estimated that there are 5,000 Jews in Germany who are of German
origin.^18
Germany, the argument went, is the last country in which Jews would
want to live.^19 Over the past decades, Germany has been turned into
a land of memorials to the Holocaust. Among these, the Memorial for
the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin occupies a site the size of two
football fields across from the Brandenburg Gate and is surely one of the
most valuable pieces of real estate in Germany, both symbolically and
materially. Another site of memory, the Jewish Museum in Berlin, was
opened to the public in 2001. The building, designed by Jewish architect
Daniel Libeskind, is attached to what was to become the Berlin Museum,
with almost organic passages, thereby symbolically implying that Jew-
ish history is embedded in the history of Berlin.^20 The small population
of Jews in Germany notwithstanding, the Jewish past exists primarily as