1
The Invitation

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1 “Don’t be late!” Giacomo Maturi, Hallo Mustafa!: Günter Türk Arkadaşý ile konuşuyor, (Heidelberger: Dr Curt Haefer Verlag, 1966), 9.

“Don’t be late!” admonishes an illustration from a 1964 instructional booklet, Hallo Mustafa! And a heartfelt Welcome to Germany!, designed for guest workers headed to West Germany (see figure 1). In the image, the anthropomorphized clock face uses raised eyebrows and a frown to convey dismay and concern – with one finger wagging in warning and the other showing the way. The wagging finger illustrates the stereotype that Germans find Mediterranean men lacking punctuality. Beneath the clock, workers carrying briefcases run full tilt, with one man actually pushing another, in the direction indicated. The palpable nervous energy and urgency reflect the early 1960s guest worker arrangement between West Germany and Turkey quite well. The illustration also signals anxiety and desperation – West Germany’s intense need to expand the program while competing with other European countries for a shrinking labour pool coupled with workers’ own impatience and eagerness to seize an opportunity.

Marketing involves manipulation, a drive to connect with a person’s desires and impulses, and this image is no different. It casts the early years of the labour arrangement in a distinct light – one of frantic desires. West Germany invited workers with various messages – conveyed by the media, by German representatives in Turkey, and in application and orientation materials – all of which impacted Turkish workers’ initial relationships with West Germans and interpretations of their new role as guest workers. West Germany, the modernizing Turkish Republic, and individual applicants approached the program with their own ideas about how to make the situation work for them, regardless of the messages around them. Examining the invitation addresses elusive questions of why an immigrant decides to leave and what West Germany had in mind when inviting these guests. Far from just recruitment based on a treaty, German officials oscillated their positive and negative views of and messages to workers, playing on the word “invitation” itself. As workers’ initial excitement and positive attitudes soured, their cynicism about the strict application procedures increased, long before they ever arrived in West Germany.

This chapter traces two intersecting phenomena: how West Germany and the Turkish Republic negotiated the bilateral labour agreements and, at the same time, how rank-and-file German officials and individual Turkish applicants negotiated the application process and new relationships through smaller interactions over an extended period of time. The larger institutional structures and the daily, one-on-one interactions combined to make post-war guest worker migration unique. Despite the careful planning and strict rules of the West German BA, the individual level often functioned quite differently and in surprising ways for applicants. After a brief historical overview of the guest worker program’s origins, this chapter illuminates the plans, frustrations, and interactions of the applicants who navigated the German Liaison Office in Turkey for months or even a year before departure. Before the application process began, though, West Germany and the Turkish Republic had to come to terms with both the historical and contemporary forces that drove the guest worker program’s evolution.

Recruiting the First Generation

In 1964, BA director, Anton Sabel, celebrated the departure of the ten-thousandth worker from Turkey just three years after the official program had started. Sabel travelled to Istanbul to express gratitude for Turkish workers in person, saying: “We are thankful for all the relief to Germany that the Turkish workers’ departure allows. We are trying to shorten the waiting period.”1 Sabel also wanted to assure the newly departing Turkish workers, as well as the greater Turkish public, that workers in West Germany were leading comfortable and prosperous lives, even enjoying the same rights as West German workers. As an added bonus, Sabel mentioned West Germany’s post-war Frauenüberschuss, or “surplus of women,”² noting that a German girlfriend was a real possibility and ignoring female applicants in the process.³ One Turkish newspaper even quoted Sabel as saying, “Many foreign workers are marrying German girls.”⁴ Relationships, especially marriage, with German women suggested settling down in West Germany, an idea that was quite at odds with a supposedly temporary labour program.

Sabel did not touch on West German employers’ demand for Turkish female workers, which were ever increasing. However, similar enticements of a fun and exciting life in West Germany for Turkish women would have been considered scandalous in Turkey’s traditional society. Abadan-Unat noted that first-generation guest workers left a Turkish society that had a strong sense of tradition, religion, and family life, firmly engrained with distinct gender roles.5 Sabel’s comments, as well as the preceding state-level negotiations, gendered the guest worker program male in a troubling way that differed greatly from the realities of the program. Indeed, archival records and official documents rarely consider the ways in which male and female guest workers did and did not have different experiences along gender lines. However, Turkish women also went to Western Europe in sizeable numbers, and some were openly excited about it as interviews such as Elif’s make clear.

Sabel’s words of enticement were markedly different from both the state-level negotiations and the general wariness West Germany had previously expressed about Turkish workers; in fact, they were quite invitational. What mattered most, though, is that for many Turkish recruits, Sabel and his message represented the public face of West Germany – one offering welcome, encouragement, and solicitation. Elif’s and many others’ recollections of enthusiasm and dreams for a better life in West Germany make sense in the context of Sabel’s public sentiments. For those who had been considering working in West Germany, or who had been wait-listed, Sabel’s news was encouraging – it was the reassurance that workers needed to sustain them through the tedious, bureaucratic, and expensive application process, one offering few guarantees. Yet the positive press was hardly needed: at the time of Sabel’s visit in 1964, more than 150,000 Turkish workers were already waiting to leave for West Germany.⁶ In the period between 1961 and 1973, the Liaison Office in Turkey processed on average more than 50,000 workers per year.⁷ However, the story of foreign workers in West Germany cannot be told with numbers alone. The official history of the treaties and contracts signed are only part of the story: there were also words of welcome as well as big dreams and plans. The initial moments of contact, exchange, and negotiation between German officials and Turkish applicants provide the context needed to understand how Turkish guest workers interpreted their German counterparts.

Post-war economic miracles were not just the history of West Germany or of the Marshall Plan but also that of many migrants who sought new futures in Western Europe after 1945.8 Indeed, it was the individuals moving across the constructed borders of “East” and “West,” as much as state-level officials, who engaged in post-war “modernizing” projects of their own.⁹ Across Western Europe, significant demographic changes occurred in the post-war era as individuals turned to immigration and emigration as a way to secure better financial futures. In June 1946, Italians left for work in Belgium. In Britain, immigrants arrived from the Caribbean and staffed the country’s trains, buses, and municipal services. The Dutch government encouraged workers from Spain, Yugoslavia, Italy, Turkey, Morocco, and Suriname to take jobs in the Netherlands’ textile, mining, and shipbuilding industries. The physical border crossing of Turkish workers into Western Europe was a tangible symbol of the movement of Turkey’s labour force and economy in the direction Turkish modernizers had hoped – they were literally moving to the “West.”

West European nations welcomed these immigrants enthusiastically in the early years. “Up until now, [foreign workers] have been in an experimental phase that has led to positive experiences on both sides. But how should it continue?” asked the noted Italian immigration scholar, Giacomo Maturi, in the early 1960s.¹⁰ He continued: “It was a bit surprising when the millionth worker was greeted in 1964. This act was the start of the question on the part of all interested parties, if an extended influx of workers was desired, and if so, what could be done for them.”¹¹ In short, his focus was on how to accommodate the large influx much more so than how to stem the tide.

Words of welcome also extended to government-published instructional booklets, though they came laden with normative messages. Hallo Mustafa! as well as other West German publications for guest workers – whether for recruitment, as guides to life in Germany, or meant to explain workplace rules and regulations – turned author’s opinions, attitudes, and preconceptions into a singular German view, just as they addressed all Turkish workers as a monolithic group. They also played no small role in setting up expectations on both sides. Figure 2 appeared in the Turkish language edition of Hallo Mustafa! after a paragraph that emphasized success dependent on good behaviour and patience: “I wish you much success with your plans especially the possibility to earn lots of money, but remember, it is not always smart to demand an egg when you can, through the same means, have the entire hen tomorrow. Don’t be impatient and in a rush … At work, one must reign in his temperament and feelings.”¹² The author pointedly concluded: “you Turks are hot-blooded.”¹³ The image and message are both optimistic and cautionary: unimaginable riches are easy to come by if only one can control one’s ethnically defined “temperament.” Instead of the egg, the worker could have the hen – a symbol for steady, reliable wealth accumulation. The smug grin, rolled-up shirt sleeves, and loosely flapping house slipper portray a sense of accomplishment not toil and provide no hints of the workplace inequalities that would come to the fore in the 1970s as discussed in the final chapter of this book. The men are not dressed as workmen, but rather in shirt sleeves presenting an image disconnected with the nature of the work most guest workers endured.

2 “Imagined riches.”

3 “Confusion over contracts.”

Source: Maturi, Hallo Mustafa!, 12, 17.

The manual is filled with cartoon illustrations lending it a playful tone and presenting guest workers as confused, smug, or homesick depending on the topic. The tone of the manual makes the situation seems less dire and certainly more casual than the intense application procedures and grueling train ride to West Germany most had to endure, as discussed in the next chapter. In an illustration about contracts and wages, a very serious issue, a cartoon presents a patronizing tone that portrays the foreigners as naive, slow, or even childlike. In the image a man with a gaping mouth scratches his head while his friend looks on in a crouched, almost fearful position. As we will see in chapter 3, extra fees tacked on in workers’ dormitories and, in chapter 5, Elif’s description of the various and perhaps purposefully confusing payment system of piecemeal work, these issues were no laughing matter and employers were not the kindly father figures presented in instructional materials. Unlike the image of the man with the piles of money in figure 2, the two men in figure 3 sport bushy eyebrows, mustaches, and, instead of neckties, are wearing the more traditional woolen vests more commonly worn in Turkey than Germany. The illustrator made certain telling choices in these portrayals of foreign workers.

Unlike the portrayals in Hallo Mustafa!, the first generation of Turkish guest workers was not a unified group; they came from different places, had different education and skill levels, had different family situations, and included women as well as men.¹⁴ Here, the “first generation” refers to those who were born in Turkey and came to West Germany as formal applicants of the bilateral guest worker program during the official years of the program, 1961–73. For the most part, this group of Turkish workers was travelling to West Germany for the first time, many with little knowledge of the German language, people, or customs, an aspect that set guest workers apart from former colonial subjects travelling to colonial metropoles. This first generation included both male and female guest workers, with the number of female applicants increasing over time. A 1975 BA report stated that the proportion of Turkish female workers abroad increased from nearly 8 per cent in 1961, and to 24.4 per cent of all Turkish workers by 1973.¹⁵

Though their percentage was relatively small, Turkish women’s migration was not negligible.16 West German employers recruited women guest workers heavily, as they set aside “women’s work” in the lower-paid “light wage categories” for foreign women, a move that helped German women return home to build nuclear families with male breadwinners. This 1960s exodus of Turkish women was unparalleled and unprecedented and produced major changes, including new-found economic independence for Turkish women, the replacement of extended family networks by nuclear families, and new marital strains and conflicts.¹⁷ It is important to note that these women were not spouses following their husbands to Germany but workers with contracts. In fact, most of the Turkish workers in the early 1960s travelled alone, without their spouses, children, or extended family, though several also ended up following spouses, family members, and acquaintances.

The first generation of Turkish guest workers was also distinct from populations of both ethnic Turks and Kurds who emigrated to West Germany and Western Europe in general after the 1980 military coup in Turkey. Up to three hundred thousand Turkish citizens came to Europe as either refugees or political asylum seekers in this period and made claims on the West German state that were quite different from those of the invited guest workers who preceded them.¹⁸ Despite the distinctions between the various groups of Turkish citizens who travelled to West Germany, as well as the distinctions among the various groups of guest workers, there was an interesting slippage among the constructed categories of “Turk” and “guest worker” – monikers that served as shortcuts in official discussions, in the media, and in the West German public consciousness.¹⁹

On the other hand, Turkish guest workers’ uniqueness was also debatable. Turkish workers had a lot in common with other migrants in post-war Western Europe, too. Recruitment agreements were typically similar among various nationalities, with similar information about wages, types of work, places of work, work hours, housing arrangements and expenses, and transportation.²⁰ They had the same medical exams, received the same instructional booklets, rode on the same trains, lived in the same dormitories, worked the same jobs, and eventually fought alongside other nationalities for better working conditions and wages. This unified experience might also explain the often-unqualified use of the term “guest worker.” It was also only rarely that cases of Turkish cultural or religious considerations came to the fore, such as considerations of a strict Muslim diet (one without pork). Much to workers’ dismay, in fact, their culturally specific ideas of modesty and homosocial spaces were not always considered, as evidenced by, for example, the medical exam.

Navigating Departure

Perhaps more than push-and-pull factors, individual choice, ambition, and opportunity are all inherent in any voluntary migration. One Turkish man, Murat, said he came to West Germany as an official guest worker because of poverty and unemployment at home: “This is the main reason that everybody comes here, but some people lie about it. They say they did this, they did that … It’s all a lie. The only reason to go to [West] Germany, to go abroad, is unemployment … A person with money in his pockets, doing well in his business, couldn’t stand the difficulties of a foreign land.”21 Indeed, deciding to leave home, and especially family, was not a decision taken lightly. One woman, recalling her parents’ departure, said: “I remember very well the day that my father left for Germany … People came to say goodbye … My mother and I were alone in Ankara … [When my mother joined him a year later] I was dropped off at my grandmother’s. It was the most painful day of my life … In Turkey, everybody told us, ‘Your mother and father are sweeping up money from the ground in Germany.’”²² In these cases – a man looking to find riches, another hoping to avoid hardship, and a family willing to endure separation in exchange for economic security – Turkish guest workers sought their own “economic miracles” by going to West Germany. This section takes a closer look at application materials for Turkish workers to assess what information applicants had as well as the German attitudes implied in the materials given – in short, how Germany invited its guests.

The German and Turkish employment agencies set up an elaborate, orderly application procedure for processing the large, steady stream of potential Turkish workers. Yet workers’ recollections, as well as memos from the employment offices, reveal several areas in which this application process broke down. Poor planning, miscommunication, and cultural insensitivity plagued those applying to the program. Nevertheless, Turkish applicants found ways to navigate a confusing and overly bureaucratic process, even bending rules if need be, offering evidence of the control that applicants were able to exert in a situation in which they just as easily could have been exploited.

Despite official attempts to standardize the application process, there was great variation and constant modification. For some workers, the process was tedious and lasted many years – years of appointments, long lines, repeated examinations, and frustration in general. At the same time, other workers skipped exams and were able to speed through the process. Published application guidelines described a bureaucratic, orderly process, yet according to interviews with former workers, these published guidelines were hardly representative and reveal a mismatch of intentions and agendas. The application procedure rarely resembled policy makers’ detailed plans and published instructions. It is not that the West German officials provided a “right” way of doing things, and that the Turkish applicants tried to get around it, but rather that all involved found ways to negotiate the process on their own terms where possible.

Working in Germany began in Turkey and entailed multiple steps. The first step was to contact one of the German Liaison Offices, which were located at first only in the capital of Ankara and in Istanbul and later also at a location on the Aegean coast, Izmir, and in a Black Sea coastal town, Zonguldak, as well. Applying in person was a requirement, necessitating a long, expensive trip for many, especially for those living east or south of Ankara in a country spanning 302,535 square miles. The Liaison Offices exclusively controlled recruitment, taking over from earlier, less formal agreements and developed instead an extensive, standardized screening and placement procedure.23 The Liaison Office accepted and arranged the transportation and placement of approximately 70 per cent of applicants through just two branches – the Istanbul and Ankara offices – creating a large, bureaucratic bottleneck.²³ Approximately 640,000 Turkish men and women applied at either the Istanbul office (from 1961 to 1973) or at the Ankara office (from 1963 to 1967).²⁴

To guide workers through the process, West German officials published instructional and orientation materials. What these materials mostly describe, though, are West German attitudes towards the program and its applicants. More than just instructional booklets, orientation materials were also a way for West German officials to present a stylized view of the new West Germany as host. Orientation materials also revealed the relationship West Germany wished to develop with its guest workers – one of German dominance. How Does One Go to Germany to Work? Living Conditions in the Federal Republic of Germany is a booklet less about life in West Germany, as the subtitle suggests, than a list of rules on how to apply for the program in Turkey before departure. The tone of the booklet is equally important, as it emphasizes the BA’s absolute authority; as one example, the preface notes that it was forbidden to seek a job from a private person.25

Other orientation materials, such as the Hallo Mustafa! booklet with the clock graphic that opened this chapter, took on a more cheerful and pedantic tone. Hallo Mustafa! was a 1966 publication with identical editions in four different languages: Turkish (“Hallo Mustafa”), Italian (“Hallo Mario”), Spanish (“Hallo José”), and Greek (“Hallo Spiros).”²⁶ Positive interactions with West Germans were a key element of this booklet: “I know that you had concrete goals as you left your homeland for the foreign. You want to earn money … But one also lives in the period when one is toiling away … One looks around and sees fellow men, who also see, notice, greet and speak to him or her.”²⁷ In contrast to the frustrating and dehumanizing application process, this book countered ideas of exclusion: “Your rambles through our towns are like visits in a zoo or in a museum … But you should not feel alone. Today I want to welcome you. We work and live side by side.”²⁸ Most important, it underscored West Germany’s desire to have these workers and to invite them: “I want to tell you something in good faith that you have probably already noticed: good workers are needed here; you are needed, and most likely not just for this year.”²⁹ Despite such words of welcome and concern, including Sabel’s mention of marrying a German girl, there was little evidence of formal steps taken to address integration in West German society.

Indeed, orientation materials that hint at a more permanent life in Germany sent a confusing double message. Although most instructional manuals rarely discussed the length of guest workers’ stay in West Germany, Hallo Mustafa! did comment that workers’ stays could be more permanent: “Here you can start something and if you are tenacious and a little bit adaptive you can make plans for the long term, and you will certainly not be eternally a foreigner or a guest, but known as an equal and esteemed colleague.”³⁰ Such messages of European unity and of long-term plans in West Germany conflicted with the messages both of an application process that scrutinized “non-Europeans” and of the guest worker program’s founding rotation principle. The 30 October 1961 German-Turkish agreement stated that Turkish workers would be in West Germany for exactly two years. However, already in 1962, officials considered striking the limitation on the stay in West Germany, citing orientation costs and problems with integration in factories.³¹ In the agreement’s 30 September 1964 revision, officials jettisoned the rotation clause, and no other limit on the stay in West Germany was included in the contract.32 Equally important, suggestions of a more permanent stay might also offer clues as to what applicants might have had in mind about their future homes in and plans for West Germany.

Words of Welcome

Many orientation materials emphasized a post-war nod to a common European community, similar to the Turkish Republic’s view of itself as European. Hallo Mustafa!, especially, emphasized mutual understanding after the war: “We want to be good friends. We are not just fellow citizens of the world but also of this small Europe, which we all want to rebuild in peace together, simply because we belong together … We are at home in Europe: we are neither foreign nor guests.”³³ Such comments of reconciliation are indicative of the initial spirit of the early years of the guest worker program. In its instructional materials, West Germany revealed efforts to reclaim its history and a sense of nationalism. Certainly, through the guest worker program, Germany could not just rebuild its economy but also revise its historical image and trajectory in the eyes of the international community. In the case of How Does One Go to Germany to Work?, the front cover features grand buildings, majestic mountain ranges, and a great thinker, highlighting the positive aspects of German history and society and evoking the popular idea that German is at its heart a land of Dichter und Denker, or “poets and philosophers” (see figure 4). Interestingly, the booklet’s back cover features a quote from Atatürk, or “Father of the Turks,” who founded, Westernized, and secularized the Republic of Turkey. The Ataturk quote “Türk, öğün çalış güven,” or “Turk, be proud, work, trust!,” connects Turkish national pride to work and, significantly, to trust – a main message of many instructional materials. The booklet Would You Like to Get to Know Germany? features women and men in traditional dress dancing a folk dance, harkening back to a pre-twentieth-century Germany, and begins with a brief introduction to German history, from the Holy Roman Empire through both world wars.

4 “How does one go to Germany to work? Living conditions in the Federal Republic of Germany.”

Source: İş ve İşçi Bulma Kurumu Genel Müdürlüğü Yayınları [Labour Office Directorate Publication], no 28. (Ankara: Mars Matbassı, [National Library Ankara] 1963), DOMiD, 637 SD.

Application materials, as well as the program in general, allowed West Germany to recast itself in its own best image. Many booklets addressed issues in Nazi Germany in elliptical fashion, intimating a continuity of democracy and self-determination even in the Third Reich. When discussing the interwar period, Would You Like to Get to Know Germany? vaguely stated, “The Saar Basin that was to be subject to an international administration under the League of Nations in 1919, was returned to Germany following a plebiscite in 1935.”34 Historians would take issue with this presentation of the Nazi takeover of the Saar Basin. In a similar fashion, Today’s Germany ignores twentieth-century German history altogether, choosing instead to feature images of centuries-old architecture while discussing older history or contemporary prices, tourism, and social life. A note from the publisher on the inside cover points out that the “Federal Government of Germany” called for its publication, underscoring the role that the West German government played in attempting to orient not just foreign workers but also, perhaps, the country itself to its new leadership position of post-war uplift.

German Bureaucracy Meets Turkish Cunning

Tedious bureaucracy as well as lists of steps to follow and requirements to meet dominated the predeparture period. First workers had to go to the German Liaison Offices in Turkey, where “committees of qualified members” would select workers through a precise and systematic process.35 German employers would first communicate their wants and needs to the BA, whose employees would then notify the various branches in Turkey. Second, “a committee of at least two people” would consider candidates to see whether they matched the “desired age, education, and experience requested by the German employer.”³⁶ Third, candidates who matched were then sent letters of invitation, and, fourth, within ten days of receiving the letter of invitation, candidates had to report to the local employment office at their own expense. If applicants did not report within ten days, they would risk losing their place and would have to start the application process over again from the beginning. The extremely limited advance warning made it impossible for some workers to make the deadline. Finally, an additional committee, of at least three staff members from “suitable bureaus of the employment agency,” would determine the particular position assigned to a potential worker by taking into consideration the wishes of the German employers and whether the candidate had the appropriate age, education, skill level, physical build, and even “personal appearance and attitude.”³⁷

Determining personal appearance and attitude added an element of the subjective to the application process, one that implied West Germans’ interpretations of potential Turkish workers’ character. “Those considered inappropriate,” the instructional guide warns, “will not be chosen and the referral process will be stopped. The selection committee’s decision is final.”³⁸ For example, a criminal record would prevent a potential applicant from being eligible. The booklet notes that applicants proven to have committed any of the following crimes would not be considered because they were “inexcusable”: embezzlement, theft, bribery, rape, and other such “disreputable crimes.”³⁹ Therefore, the BA sought to have workers who were not only skilled in a desired profession but also of a certain presumed moral character. Although the committee often had no basis on which to make such judgments, the booklets also warned against general moral and cultural deficiency.

Though instructional booklets might not have had much information about future employers, they did offer clues as to how employers and the German recruiters perceived Turkish applicants. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the published directives focused on the German employers’ points of view, wants, and needs. Instructional booklets were also filled with admonishments of “Turkish” mindsets and behaviours based on stereotypes, such as when authors discouraged tardiness and stated that criminals need not apply. Above all, they noted, bribery would not be tolerated: the authors emphasized that the BA’s services were free and that officers would not take money from Turkish workers seeking employment or from German employers looking for workers.

Admittedly, bribery and barter were somewhat common aspects of Turkish bureaucracy at the time. Indeed, contrary to West Germany’s state policies, in interviews, former workers talked openly about the role of bribery during the application process. For example, Hasan, who went to work at Ford in 1962, said that when his blood was taken during the medical exam, he gave the man fifty to sixty lira to “make sure it was clean.”40 Another worker, Adil, recalls that he went to a man in his village and asked him to come up with a letter stating that he had worked for him for two years.⁴¹ Mehmet, who was injured in the military and had lost the use of his hands, had his friends “harass” a German doctor. This German doctor had previously told Mehmet that no one would possibly hire him in such a condition, but later (after the alleged “harassment”) the doctor signed off on a forged medical record. As a result, Mehmet made it all the way to West Germany, but his employer subsequently fired him when he discovered that Mehmet could barely use his hands.⁴²

The BA was well aware of bribery’s role in Turkish bureaucracy. A 1961 report noted: “Bribery does not evoke a moral dilemma for Turks; they do not have any moral qualms [about it]. Whoever lets himself be tricked is considered the dummy.”⁴³ How prevalent a role bribery or harassment might have played is not clear; however, the fact that both Turkish publications and German internal memos mention bribery documents officials’ concern. Turkish and German authorities’ attention to bribery could be considered either as playing on stereotypes or as an awareness of a certain Turkish cultural sensibility – a recognition that such practices took place in Turkish bureaucracy and were simply an aspect of a different bureaucratic system.

Skirting rules, bribing doctors, and assisting fellow applicants were common and stemmed from a more community-based culture than that found in Germany. One former worker, Erol, recalled from his medical exam that the men in line helped one another, sharing, for example, urine samples if someone knew of a problem; these men helped others at the risk of their own positions as applicants. Another man had friends fashion fake tooth fillings for him from bottle tops. Moreover, in sharp contrast to the lengthy and detailed official application, one former worker had a friend set up his application for him within only a week’s time with the help of a forged document:

[A] friend … told us that if any of us wanted to go to Germany, he could arrange it; he knew someone who could send us there. I didn’t quite believe what he said, but at the same time I wanted to go to Germany. He took us to the Employment Office … [then] the man he knew took me to the German Liaison Office … The people working there knew about my friend’s friend, and they welcomed us. This guy told the civil servant working there to send me to Germany. They said, “Your wish is our command.” They immediately filled out an application with an old date on it, and I signed it. I got my invitation within a week and started doing the paperwork.44

In this case, an applicant number, an assessment of his moral character, professional abilities, age, and general appropriateness did not matter – he was connected. In short, for many workers the printed instructions were false, irrelevant, ineffectual, or ignored at some point. Significantly, workers’ ability to ignore or modify instructions and call on networks of friends and family for help is evidence of how they manipulated the situation instead of simply being manipulated by it.

Bureaucracy’s Burdens

Appointment through official channels was an involved, multistep process, at least according to published literature. Workers who were accepted via the official channels would first receive a letter of appointment, which provided the first and only information about their future work in West Germany – the name and location of the position; the hourly wages; the amount of deductions for taxes and health insurance; information about overtime wages, yearly vacation, and social help; whether room and board would be provided; and, if applicable, what deductions from wages would be made to cover these costs.45 Even though the published instructions state that information about assignments in West Germany would be given in detail, in reality, it was unlikely that applicants would know much about their placement in advance. Second, workers who accepted these conditions then had to provide additional paperwork: proof of a clean criminal record, proof of smallpox vaccinations, birth certificates, passport pictures, and letters of recommendation from previous jobs.⁴⁶ They also needed to obtain a passport, visas (for Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, which they would pass through on the train), foreign currency (in Deutsche mark or US dollars), and a physical. For workers who had never before left the country, obtaining a passport meant having an original copy of their birth certificate, a certificate of completion of military service, a completed passport application, and the application fee – items that they may or may not have had or been able to find or afford. Obtaining the necessary documents could not have been an easy task – one could get a passport only from Ankara or Istanbul.⁴⁷

The application process was a large commitment of time and money, as well as a great personal financial risk. Applicants began at a local office where they had to fill out paperwork in person, in which they listed their profession, education level, and (for men) whether military service had been completed. The goal was to obtain a “worker’s card,” an appointment date at one of the liaison offices, and a placement number. There was little flexibility in the appointed time and place and little understanding of the expense involved in travelling to a liaison office. Adil recounted that he had to borrow money to travel to Ankara once he got his appointment: “We had no money. I went to the village merchants … and asked them to loan me 100 lira. No one gave me the money. [Eventually] a friend of mine managed to get the money for me so that we could go to Ankara.”⁴⁸ Travel to Istanbul could be even more expensive because of the western location, and room and board along the way had to be considered as well, as the trip could take up to eight days in some cases.

For workers who were unemployed, application expenses would have been extremely difficult to secure. For employed applicants, taking time off to meet appointments and procure documents was equally difficult. Application fees did not cover additional expenses such as the medical exam, the passport application, and postage. The total of the application procedure was on average 181 Turkish lira or about 13 dollars in 1963.49 This was not a small price for a Turkish worker to pay in the early 1960s. To put the application costs in perspective, the wages listed for a Turkish male worker were hourly rates of between 2 and 2.8 German marks (DM) and for female workers, an hourly rate of between 1.5 and 1.7 DM.⁵⁰ In other words, a woman would have to work about 32 hours in West Germany or 128 hours in Turkey to earn the amount equivalent to the application fees.⁵¹

Adil’s experience of borrowing money to be able to go to the Liaison Office was fairly common. In her 1964 study, Abadan-Unat found that workers typically paid for travel to the Ankara or Istanbul Liaison Office by borrowing money or by selling off their belongings, an irrevocable commitment to the chance for a better life in West Germany.⁵² Even after arrival at a liaison office, applicants had to stay in hotels or pensions during the ten to twelve days of bureaucracy. After the application was completed, the wait was still not over: the typical period between the date of application and the departure date was between one and three months.⁵³ As applicants flooded employment offices, delays in the application process resulted from the beleaguered and understaffed offices. A memo to the BA complained that the staff in Turkey was overwhelmed, lacked office space, and at best could hope to reduce the period between signing the contract and placement to between six and eight weeks.⁵⁴ The German Liaison Office did not collect data on applicants’ trips from their hometowns and villages to liaison office branches, and workers’ recollections provide only a vague sense of the costs involved in applying. For many, applying for work in West Germany was a risky and serious investment in an uncertain future. Workers’ insistence in their recollections decades later that they made the right decisions must also be considered in light of the sacrifices they made simply to apply.

Published guides emphasized that workers had little say over their placement. Employers’ demands determined the direction of causation: the BA was not looking for jobs that matched workers’ skills but rather for employees who matched the jobs offered. Candidates could either list one single profession or state that they were open to any profession. If the latter was the case, however, they would have to take the work assigned to them, and they would be forfeiting their rights to protest if they later found a job in Germany that better suited their education and vocational training. The profession listed could impact one’s departure order, and many applicants knew this. If two workers applied on the same day, a worker who had a profession that was currently in demand would be given priority and sent first.55 “Additionally,” the booklet states, “Germans might be looking for a specific age, education level, and work experience.”⁵⁶ In other words, applicants who matched specific, requested descriptions would be given priority as demand arose. Consequentially, workers might have tried to list what they hoped would be a more desired profession, but picking the wrong profession could potentially trap an applicant in an endless waiting process as jobs were continuously opened and filled – a process that offered little transparency for applicants. Workers were, therefore, at the mercy of the market-driven demands of German employers, creating a frustrating, helpless, or hopeless situation for many who could be left waiting for years.

In practice, though, many application procedures were for naught, as workers’ recollections stand in stark contrast to the officially archived materials. Former workers, in fact, rarely mention placement numbers or orderly procedures at all. Instead, they recall chaotic scenes and confusion at the employment office and at the departure point. Erol recalled that a man used a megaphone to shout instructions to thousands of workers waiting in line, and instead of calling the names of workers with appointments, he called company names. “The Bremen something factory,” Erol paraphrased, “to the dockyards … to Opel in Rüsselheim, to Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, to Mercedes, and so on and so forth.”⁵⁷ Moreover, even successful assignment was not always sufficient. Even though Erol had already been assigned a position at Siemens and was ready and waiting to leave, Siemens management did not take him. Apparently Siemens had already filled its personnel quota. To put it in context, Erol had quit his job, travelled to Istanbul, and gone through a year-long application process, only for Siemens to turn him away at the point of departure. Erol’s example demonstrates that employers were also working around official procedures, in which the BA mandated that workers be selected and ordered based on their skill set, position on the wait list, “appropriateness,” and other tedious decisions German Liaison Offices had made.58

Yet the instructional books, such as How to Go to Germany, did not address cases like Erol’s; in fact, it does not mention quotas at all. Instead, the author urged Turkish applicants to consider the West German employers’ concerns: the author warned that, during the month-long application process, one should not give up and “disappoint the wishes of the German employer, especially without prior notification.”⁵⁹ Much to the dismay of people like Erol, there was no consideration of how West German employers might frustrate applicants.

There were multiple ways to subvert official rules and several channels existed for arriving in West Germany. One of the most significant was the “nominated appointment,” or namentliche Anforderung, in which workers persuaded employers to hire friends or family members by requesting them by name, regardless of their standing on the waiting list.⁶⁰ The Liaison Office had the ultimate control over appointments and had little patience for those unable to comply with its rigid regulations. Applicants who travelled to West Germany through unofficial channels as tourists often encountered visa problems, as was the case with Ms Arikan who travelled to West Germany as a tourist and found a job only to be fired for not having a work visa.⁶¹ Furthermore, the BA noted that it would not be held responsible if after a worker received a letter of appointment, it was found that he or she had failed the medical exam, did not have the profession required, had not or could not obtain a passport, had been convicted, or had left the country in an illegal way.⁶² A clear tension existed between West German employers’ impatience for workers, applicants’ strong desires to depart Turkey, including enduring the tedious application or subverting it, and the West German officials’ simultaneous desire and inability to control and regulate the program.

The Medical Exam

Though the medical exam was just one part of a larger application, former workers talk about it more often than any other aspect of the application. The medical exam was an extremely negative experience for most applicants. More than simply a visit to the doctors, many applicants experienced the physical as a deeply personal violation at the hands of a foreign man, who was speaking in a language they did not understand. In interviews, almost all workers recall the exams as uncomfortable and even strange. Perhaps workers wished to express their greater anxiety about the move to West Germany through a description of this initial violation in a semipublic space. According to historian Mathilde Jamin, the experience of the medical was at the very least a culture shock in which workers were interviewed in a group, in their underwear by doctors and translators, without consideration for having male doctors for men and female doctors for women – both men and women were present.63 In short, the physical was a disconcerting experience in light of the Turkish cultural consideration of modesty.⁶⁴

However, none of the discussions in the employment office files mentions handling problems with cultural norms of modesty that such exams might threaten. In other words, they did not discuss what potential workers would think of such exams or how to address potential problems that might arise. Cultural norms about modesty (different from those of Western Europe) made having such a private exam in a group setting or undressing in front of a member of the opposite sex – or even in front of just a stranger – an extremely personal if not traumatic experience for many potential workers. The procedures were unfamiliar for most, especially the women, who made up about 30 per cent of all Turkish applicants. Elif recalled her medical exam thusly:

[The] things they did were very strange … The women were all together in one room in just their underwear. We were almost naked and went to the examination like this. They didn’t have extra changing booths. We waited inside of a big room all in a line, we were almost naked … The doctor was a man and the translator was a woman … I didn’t really have a problem with the doctor being a man. A doctor is a doctor whether he is a man or a woman. If the doctor had been a Turk, we might have been more relaxed. The translation took a long time.⁶⁵

Elif mentioned twice that they were “almost naked,” because they were in their underwear, implying that she found this state of undress unacceptable and perhaps demonstrating a modesty different from that in Western Europe. She also pointed out that the doctor’s foreignness made them even more uncomfortable. When asked what other women thought of the medical exam, Elif recalled: “I have to point out that, because we were from Istanbul, we were more relaxed and it was to our advantage. In the later years, those coming from Anatolia had a different lifestyle … There were women [not from the city] who were seeing a doctor for the first time … So I couldn’t say it was the same as what they experienced. We were more comfortable.”66 Elif’s comments highlight the gendered aspects of the examination, which must have been extremely difficult for women who had never been to a doctor before and most likely had never worn a bathing suit or been seen in public in less than full dress, which might have been the case for women from Anatolia, the interior of Turkey.

The Liaison Office also noted that women who came from Anatolia were different. Authorities specifically stated that Anatolian women needed to have their medical exams immediately to determine whether they were “suitable.”⁶⁷ One woman who came from a small village and had previously worked in a cotton field applied together with a friend from her village. She noted that her friend was not chosen because she was illiterate, so she had to continue the application process on her own.⁶⁸ Female workers remained in high demand – a demand that was exacerbated by the fact that many of the female applicants were in fact deemed “unsuitable” during their medical exams.⁶⁹ It is interesting that both Elif and the German employment officials had the same stereotype about women coming from Anatolia – that they were different. Yet these Anatolian women were there in the same employment office as the women from Istanbul, making the same westward trip and travelling alone, even if they had entirely different reasons for going.⁷⁰

The medical exam was not necessarily easier for male applicants, who often describe the exam as invasive. One worker said he had to get completely naked to have his genitals examined. He noted that he was uncomfortable being examined together with twenty-five people in one room where all of them had to take off all of their clothes.⁷¹ Another male worker recalled his medical exam as intrusive and difficult: “They had us take off our pants and made us bend over so they could examine our anuses with their fingers … [There was a] German doctor, Turkish doctor, and of course there was a translator. [Was it difficult for you?] Of course it was difficult. I almost changed my mind and decided not to go to Germany when they had me take off my pants and made me bend over, but a girl came up to me and said that there was nothing wrong with what they had been doing.”⁷² The woman’s reassurance suggests that many men thought the exam was not a typical or normal procedure. He does not comment on what he thought of the woman’s presence when he was in such a vulnerable, exposed state. He goes on to comment on how strict the medical exams were, pointing out that the slightest problem would mean failing: “People who had both high and low blood pressure failed the checkups. Anyone who had signs of infirmity or who had more than three cavities failed. They didn’t care if you were tall, big-framed or not.”73 Strikingly, in light of such a careful medical exam, the same man also noted employment officials did not test his technical skills at all, implying that the medical exam was much more important than how vocationally qualified he might be. West German officials gave these medical exams priority over vocational exams – whether out of fear of overburdening the West German health care system, a desire for the strongest workers, or a more biased view of Turkish health care – which suggests that they thought something was at risk with these workers. Furthermore, despite otherwise detailed instructions on all other parts of the application, workers did not know what to expect from the medical exams at all, and most were surprised and extremely uncomfortable when doctors crossed the boundaries of their personal modesty.

Even more confusing were illustrated instructional booklets that presented false representations, as was the case with Hallo Mustafa!⁷⁴ Here the medical exams, as well as potential housing arrangements and social life, were presented in cartoon form in addition to text. The illustrations in the booklet, however, did not resemble anything like what workers would actually encounter during the medical exam before leaving Turkey or after arrival in West Germany. Figure 5 portrays the medical examination as a light-hearted encounter with an at-ease, whistling patient face to face with a whimsically smiling doctor, both exuding calm and nonchalance.⁷⁵ Significantly, this doctor and patient are both male and standing alone; the patient still has his pants on, or at least pulled up, while the doctor exams his chest.

5 “The medical exam.”

Source: Maturi, Hallo Mustafa!, 26

By July of 1971, the medical examiners of the German Liaison Office were examining more than seven hundred applicants per day.76 It is doubtful that the experience of the medical exam improved with such a high volume of exams taking place. The very personal aspects of the medical exams and the complete lack of acknowledgment of the gendered differences of the application and transport of workers were glaring omissions in published instructions. Instructional booklets had little information to offer about what this experience was like.

Harsh Realities

There were many bumps on the road to West Germany. The application process included many mistakes and opportunities for grievances. First, the language barrier provided a constant source of confusion. A 30 October 1962 memo from the Federal Employment Office notes that workers’ contracts were not clearly translated into Turkish from German, leading to misunderstanding and conflict.⁷⁷ In addition, the contract itself had a confusing layout. It had two columns, with writing in German on one side and in Turkish on the other. West German employers did not know Turkish and would fill out only the German side of the contract, leaving the Turkish side blank.⁷⁸ The result was that Turkish workers who could not read German had no idea what they were signing: “As a result of this omission the guest workers cannot have a clear idea about the working conditions offered to them.”79 This memo came a full year after workers had been signing contracts without knowing what awaited them upon arrival in West Germany, especially in terms of wages and job descriptions.

Workers signed their contracts in groups of ten within ten to fifteen minutes. The short period in which workers signed their contracts implies that applicants gathered insufficient information about the location and nature of their jobs.⁸⁰ Moreover, the majority (59 per cent) of workers Abadan-Unat surveyed left for West Germany within two days of signing their contracts, limiting their ability to find out more about their assignments and make departure plans. Travel costs were an additional point of contention: Turkish authorities wanted the contracts to state clearly that German employers were to pay for the trip between Istanbul and the city of employment and that they could not deduct this cost from employee’s wages at a later date. They note that confusion on this point had “quite rightly [caused] much discontentment among the guest workers,” implying that, up until this point, German employers had in fact been trying to deduct travel costs from workers’ wages.⁸¹

Moreover, even ten years after the initial agreement between Turkey and West Germany, delays were still common in the application process. In a 1970 memo from the Federal Employment Office to a West German company, officials wrote that it was difficult to get the workers picked out, contracts signed, and workers sent on their way in a speedy fashion, and they suggested that it would be simpler for everyone to take care of the paperwork with one contract, and for workers to travel en masse instead of being arranged singly.⁸² Confusion, delays, and problems on both the sending and the receiving ends not only slowed the application process; they also offer evidence that the detailed instructions issued to applicants were a fiction.

Turkish applicants and West German and Turkish officials all dealt with application problems by bending rules and skipping application procedures, often out of necessity. There is evidence that West German employers simply ignored rules that did not suit them – just as Siemens abandoned Erol at the departure point. One former worker, Rezmi, noted that while waiting at the departure point in Istanbul, he was one of 180 workers who were simply handpicked by a BMW representative.⁸³ Contrary to the official warnings to not “disappoint German employers” by backing out without proper notification, cases like Erol’s and Rezmi’s, in which employers picked workers like livestock, led to resentment among workers who had endured the long application process. West German employers were obviously not held to the same standards, and workers noticed. Erol remarked that the Turkish government sold its workers to Europe like “cattle at the market” and that it made him think about how “black slaves were smuggled from Africa.”84 Even a West German employer’s association noted that the recruitment of guest workers in Istanbul was like a “slave market.”⁸⁵ Erol was perhaps additionally bitter because the round-up point for departure, the Vinegar Seller’s Station, was located across from the busy Golden Horn harbour in Istanbul – an extremely public and potentially embarrassing place to be on display for employers’ selection.

The Turkish employment agency expressed concerns over procedures to German officials. Indeed, officials constantly debated guidelines through letter exchanges. In the case of the medical exam, the Turkish side resented the follow-up exam by a German doctor, which it considered a “sign of surveillance and mistrust.”⁸⁶ The Turkish side wanted to be more independent from the BA in the processing of workers. Furthermore, the Turkish agency apparently complained that the medical exam was too expensive for the uninsured, to which the Germans retorted, “The German side has no control over the fact that the applicant has to pay for the examination in the hospital, which, for uninsured workers, can cost up to 200 Turkish lira.”⁸⁷ Moreover, Turkish officials had originally planned for there to be seventeen different liaison offices, spread throughout every region of Turkey.⁸⁸ Their German counterparts, however, found this unacceptable and logistically difficult and were successful in having the number reduced to four: Izmir, Ankara, Istanbul, and Zonguldak, with centrally located Ankara being the easternmost location. This logistical decision surely negatively affected the initial goal of helping the impoverished regions (which were mostly east of Ankara) through the guest worker program in addition to increasing travel costs from the most remote eastern regions.

In sum, the modifications and negotiations, which resulted from interactions between different employment offices, in addition to the exchanges between the officials and the workers, broke down the streamlined, orderly appearance of the application process that the published manuals, media, and politicians suggested. Instead of an idealized German bureaucratic control, a constant negotiation between two different systems based on different motivations – control versus subversion and cheap labour versus economic uplift – drove the guest worker program’s initial years in Turkey. State-level negotiations mirrored ground-level interactions by two extremely motivated but also potentially dissonant groups – German officials and Turkish applicants.

In the end, despite their concern, Turkish officials were able to wield extremely little control over the application process, especially the selection of workers. For those who were not accepted because they either failed the medical exam or did not have the necessary skills, returning home was not always feasible. The majority (90 per cent) of the applicants had applied anonymously as unskilled workers. The West German Employers Association noted with concern that a harsh reality was in store for those who were rejected.89 It commented, “those who have saved up for years and sold all of their goods down to the last goat in order to go to Germany, the praised land, are now, after the necessary rejection, thrown back to zero if they have to return home.”⁹⁰ Workers took a leap of faith when applying to work in West Germany. They were unable to rely on their government to guide them through the process, and they could not rely on published German instructions to make applying easier either. The next chapter continues to explore these themes by focusing specifically on the train transportation for Turkish applicants to West Germany and how their experiences en route created the homogenized category “guest worker.”