Turks in the New Germany

Abstract

The Turkish community in Germany is fractured along ethnic, class, religious, and generational lines, although the practice of reciprocity provides stability and continuity in ethnic identification. Turks are also categorized by German discourses, which shifted after reunification, incorporating Turks into an anxiety‐laden east‐west problematic. Turkish responses to antiforeigner violence reflect ethnicity both as category and as practice: withdrawal behind communal boundaries or creation of a transnational creole ethnic self around the practice of reciprocity.