Assimilation, Turkish Style

By Brenda Walker on February 11, 2008 at 9:08pm

On Sunday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the current Prime Minister of Turkey, was visiting his outsourced brethren in Germany, much as Presidente Felipe Calderon checks up on his expat Mexicans residing here in the USA.

Turkey currently gets $7.5 billion in remittances annually, so the Turkish PM doesn't want his boys forgetting about the dear homeland. Turks' cultural adjustment to a new country could be bad for his cash flow of free money. Ergo Erdogan's anti-assimilation remarks:

A crowd of 16,000 expatriate Turks cheered Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a vast indoor auditorium in Germany on Sunday as he told them to resist assimilation into the West.

The political rally by Germany's biggest ethnic minority upset German politicians, who objected to a major public event on German soil being advertised on posters in Turkish only.

Erdogan indirectly addressed those concerns, saying it was right for Turkish immigrants to learn German and other languages so they could integrate, but wrong to abandon their Turkish heritage and assimilate.

"Assimilation is a crime against humanity," he told the crowd. Many Turks had travelled from France, Belgium and the Netherlands to hear his hour-long address in the shiny venue, the Koelnarena.

Turkey is the nation of 71 million Muslims that wants to be accepted into the European Union.