Sixty years of Turkish “guest workers” in Germany

IT WAS NOT poverty or ambition that drew Irfan Demirbilek to Germany from Turkey in 1968, but the lure of its splendid cars. Spotting a queue outside an employment office in Istanbul one day, Mr Demirbilek, an electrician who had long dreamed of having his own wheels, decided to join them in applying to work in West Germany. The countries had signed a “guest-worker” deal in 1961, and a brief spell earning Deutschmarks would suffice for an Opel or VW Beetle. A few months later Mr Demirbilek was on a three-day train to Cologne, his head full of excitement and apprehension.