{"id":16394,"date":"2009-12-08T21:44:11","date_gmt":"2009-12-08T19:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=16394"},"modified":"2023-04-05T10:37:59","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T07:37:59","slug":"the-german-forced-to-become-a-turk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2009\/12\/08\/the-german-forced-to-become-a-turk\/","title":{"rendered":"The German Forced to Become a Turk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\n\t\t\t\t\tOAS_RICH('Top2');\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><span style=\"display: none;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<div>\n<h5 id=\"spShortDate\">12\/04\/2009<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<h1>Victim of Immigration Policy<\/h1>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<p>By Jochen-Martin Gutsch<\/p>\n<div id=\"spArticleTopAsset\">\n<div id=\"spCenterGallery-49448\"><span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/fotostrecke\/fotostrecke-49448.html\">  <\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"spCenterGalleryCredit-49448-1\" style=\"display: inline;\">Carsten Koall<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/fotostrecke\/fotostrecke-49448.html\">  <\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"spCenterGalleryCredit-49448-2\" style=\"display: none;\">Norbert Enker<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/fotostrecke\/fotostrecke-49448.html\">  <\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"spCenterGalleryCredit-49448-3\" style=\"display: none;\">Carsten Koall<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/fotostrecke\/fotostrecke-49448.html\">Start Gallery<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"spIntroTeaser\"><strong>Mohammad Eke was born and grew up in the German city of Essen. Until authorities found out that his parents had entered the country illegally, Germany was his home. Then Eke was deported to Turkey, even though he&#8217;d never visited the country and didn&#8217;t speak the language. It&#8217;s just another run-of-the-mill case of German immigration policy in action.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The young man sits with his bag in Istanbul&#8217;s airport, as he often does when he doesn&#8217;t know what to do with himself or his time.<\/p>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\n\tif (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('iPhone') == -1) {\n\t\tdocument.writeln('\n\n\n<div>');\n\t\tdocument.writeln('<scr'+'ipt type=\"text\\\/javascript\">');\n\t\tdocument.writeln('');\n\t\tdocument.writeln(\"OAS_RICH('Middle2');\");\n\t\tdocument.writeln('\\\/\\\/ -'+'->');\n\t\tdocument.writeln('<\\\/scr'+'ipt>');\n\t\tdocument.writeln('<\\\/div>');\n\t}\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n<div><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\nOAS_RICH('Middle2');\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/div>\n<p>The bag holds two towels, two pairs of jeans, three T-shirts, a pair of shoes, a jacket and his toiletries. It also contains an English dictionary, a folder containing documents from a German Office of Alien Affairs and a bottle of antidepressant pills, which he needs to fall asleep. The bag is the size of a carry-on bag, and he could easily be mistaken for a tourist visiting Istanbul for a couple of days. Such tourists are eager to see the sights and do the things tourists do here: see the Bosporus, Topkapi Palace, the Blue Mosque or a game of Fenerbah\u00e7e, the city&#8217;s famed football team &#8212; and then return home.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, there is probably nothing Mohammad Eke would like more than to go home &#8212; to board an airplane, take off and arrive at his destination. But, for him, that would be difficult and perhaps even impossible. Going home would mean returning to Germany, where officials have spent a lot of time and effort over the last few years trying to get rid of him and send him to Istanbul.<\/p>\n<p>When they finally succeeded, it was Aug. 6, a hot summer day. Sometime between two and three in the morning, Eke walked out of his cell at a deportation center in B\u00fcren, a town in northwestern Germany. He hadn&#8217;t slept. During the nine months he spent in custody pending deportation, he had dreaded this moment &#8212; while at the same time longing for it.<\/p>\n<p>Then, he was handcuffed and driven a short distance to D\u00fcsseldorf&#8217;s airport, where he was searched &#8212; his clothing, his bag, his body. Then he was driven out to an aircraft so that he could board it before the other passengers. He sat down in the window seat in row 29. He was joined in his row by two federal German police officers who were accompanying him during his deportation. And just in case there were any problems during the flight &#8212; such as a suicide attempt, perhaps &#8212; there was a doctor sitting in the seat in front of him.<\/p>\n<p>At approximately 8 a.m., Turkish Airlines flight TK 1530 took off for Istanbul on a normally scheduled flight. Eke watched Germany&#8217;s industrial Ruhr region slip away beneath him, and he thought back to the only time he had traveled abroad, for a weekend in The Hague with his football team. He was a child then, but now he was 21 and sitting in an airplane for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>The only reason he was taking the first real journey of his life was because he was being deported to Turkey. He had never set foot in Turkey. He didn&#8217;t speak any Turkish.<\/p>\n<p>Eke remained quiet throughout the flight, looking every bit the tourist among tourists.<\/p>\n<p>A Turkish police officer was waiting at Istanbul&#8217;s Ataturk Airport. The escorts from Germany disappeared, and then Eke spent a number of hours in two police stations. Eventually, he was handed a document that he couldn&#8217;t read, though it seemed important.<\/p>\n<p>Then he was free to go.<\/p>\n<p>By the time Eke left the police station, it was already dark. The only things he had on him were his travel bag and the \u20ac50 ($75) he had been given as a deportee.<\/p>\n<p>For the first few weeks, he spent nights in a mosque on the airport grounds. He hid in a corner and slept on a carpet that smelled musty from the feet of the people who prayed there. During the day, he walked over to the departure hall and watched the travelers pulling their trolley cases past the glass booths of the Turkish border officials. He went to a mobile phone shop that offered free Internet use to keep up with German football scores and write e-mails to his girlfriend back home in Essen. Otherwise, he simply waited &#8212; either for a surprise turn of events or for someone to come along to tell him that it had all been a mistake.<\/p>\n<p>What else could it be, he thought. He wasn&#8217;t a criminal. He was born in Germany, and he had spent his entire life there. Germany was his home, and German was his native language &#8212; German with an accent from the Ruhr region. How on Earth could they deport someone as German as he was?<\/p>\n<p>That question still haunts him, and all the time. But what Eke lacks is a good answer, something that will make his story make sense. But perhaps there is no explanation, at least not one that makes sense. And if there is, it&#8217;s typically German &#8212; complicated.<\/p>\n<div>The immigration office in Essen is housed in a new, cube-shaped building.  J\u00f6rg Stratenwerth, its director, sits in an office on the fifth floor. He is an  amiable, heavyset, 38-year-old man who has spent his entire career working for  this agency. He was promoted to head the office a few months ago, and there is  now a file sitting on his desk that he will use to help explain the case of  Mohammad Eke. Two clerks are also sitting in on the meeting, as is Detlef Feige,  the spokesman of the city of Essen. Four men for one story, and a story that is  neither particularly significant nor particularly confusing. In fact, by the end  of the meeting, you might have been left wondering why this story ever  happened.<\/div>\n<div>Stratenwerth opens the file. It all began 21 years ago, on May 30, 1988,  when Mohammad Eke was born. He had a different name then: Mohammad Ahmed. During  his childhood, he was always told that his parents came to Germany from Lebanon  before he was born, after fleeing the civil war there. Since they had no  passports, they were all classified as refugees with &#8220;unresolved status.&#8221;  Mohammad Ahmed went to kindergarten and then school. He played in the local  football club, and he was an FC Bayern fan. He was a Lebanese from Essen whose  German was better than his Arabic.<\/div>\n<div>In 2001, Mohammad&#8217;s parents received a letter from the immigration office.  The letter stated that officials had discovered evidence that they had provided  false information about their origins when they immigrated to Germany.<\/div>\n<div>Stratenwerth pulls a piece of paper out of the file. He speaks quickly, and  his sentences are filled with the flotsam of data and legalese. But when all the  important details are filtered out, Eke&#8217;s story boils down to this: In 2001,  immigration offices across the country launched investigations, and special  police commissions had been formed to find so-called &#8220;fake&#8221; Lebanese. The  authorities suspected that a few thousand Turks had come to Germany in the 1980s  as part of a large wave of refugees claiming to be victims of the civil war  ravaging Lebanon. In the first few years of the new millennium, the immigration  offices conducted DNA tests to ascertain degrees of kinship and searched for  evidence in Turkish birth registries. In the case of Mohammad Eke, the officials  found what they were looking for: his parents were part of the group they had  uncovered.<\/div>\n<div>DNA tests were done, and the results showed that they were not Lebanese.  Instead, the test indicated that they were from the remote Mardin Province in  southeastern Turkey, where Arabic is spoken. &#8220;The parents presented Lebanese  papers,&#8221; Stratenwerth says, &#8220;but they were amateurish forgeries.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><strong>Grasping for an Identity<\/strong><\/div>\n<div>Sitting in a caf\u00e9, Eke calls this all &#8220;the lie.&#8221; He spits out the words  like poison. The lie divided his life into two identities. Suddenly he was a  Turk. Mohammad Ahmed became Mohammad Eke. He was ashamed of his parents and  ashamed to face his friends. How could he explain to them that he had lived with  a fake background, in a Lebanese fairytale? The lie began to pervade his life.  And it quickly and inexorably set in motion the series of events that would end  with his being stranded here in Istanbul.<\/div>\n<div>Eke speaks in a quiet voice. He is wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and his  face is the face of a boy. &#8220;I&#8217;m confused,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know what or who I  am. I don&#8217;t know whether I&#8217;m a Sunni or a Shiite. I have no history &#8212; or at  least not one I&#8217;m aware of.&#8221; His father, he says, never told him where the  family came from, not even after the lie had been exposed. He remained clueless  about his family&#8217;s past. Instead, Eke withdrew into the only thing that seemed  indisputable to him. &#8220;In my heart, I am German,&#8221; he says. But that has caused  problems for him, too. He has no former life. But he doesn&#8217;t have a new life  yet, either.<\/div>\n<div>For example, Eke has been in Istanbul for more than three months, but he  has yet to explore much of the city. He rarely goes into downtown Istanbul  because, as he says, it&#8217;s too dangerous there &#8212; too many thieves and swindlers.  He&#8217;s noticed that the kebabs are drier than they are in Germany and that they  have &#8220;less meat and less lettuce.&#8221; Likewise, Eke finds it hard to deal with the  Turkish mentality. The Turks are stingy and unfriendly, he says &#8212; though he&#8217;ll  admit that this impression might have something to do with the fact that he  doesn&#8217;t speak Turkish. At any rate, he says, the best place in Istanbul is the  airport. &#8220;There&#8217;s Internet here, so I can distract myself,&#8221; Eke says. &#8220;And  everything is monitored.&#8221;<\/div>\n<p id=\"spIntroTeaser\">Part 3: From Would-be Deportee to Refugee<\/p>\n<div>In October 2002, German officials refused to extend Eke&#8217;s residence permit,  which meant that he was now legally required to leave the country, as were his  parents and siblings. The first attempt to deport the family came in April 2005.  It failed, because the parents weren&#8217;t home that day; instead, they were at a  family gathering in Bremen. After that, the father disappeared for several  months. The mother was overwhelmed, and the immigration office obtained a court  order to appoint a guardian for her six underage children. The authorities were  closing in.<\/div>\n<div>On Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005, police surrounded the house again. This time,  though, everything went according to plan. The parents and the younger siblings  were taken into custody and deported to Turkey. By chance, however, Mohammad had  spent the night at the house of his older brother. The next morning, he came  home to an empty house. His family was gone.<\/div>\n<div>Frightened and confused, Eke thought about his options. The good news was  that he was still in Germany. The bad news was that he was 17-years-old and, as  of a few hours, parentless. He decided to go to the immigration office, where he  expected them to be waiting for him. And perhaps, he reasoned, they would give  him a chance because he had missed his family&#8217;s deportation and somehow stayed  behind, because he was born in Essen, after all, and really just a German boy.  At least that&#8217;s the way he saw it.<\/div>\n<div>At the immigration agency, Eke and his court-appointed guardian were  sitting in the office of a clerk when they were told that he could not be  deported &#8212; at least not right away &#8212; because he was a minor and his parents&#8217;  exact whereabouts were unknown. Instead, he would be placed in Essen&#8217;s Hermann  Friebe House, a home for refugees. Now he would be Mohammad Eke,  institutionalized child.<\/div>\n<div><strong>&#8216;Integration Achievement&#8217;<\/strong><\/div>\n<div>At that point, says Stratenwerth, the head of Essen&#8217;s immigration agency,  nothing had been decided. Nothing at all. Under certain conditions, though, Eke  could have stayed in Germany. But that&#8217;s not how Eke sees it. &#8220;Of course,&#8221; he  says, &#8220;he was more or less required to leave the country. That much is  completely clear.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div>But, after spending his entire life in Germany, wasn&#8217;t Eke really a German,  a de facto native, so to speak? Were 17 years not enough?<\/div>\n<div>Stratenwerth shakes his head. It&#8217;s claiming a false identity, he says. And  under German law, Stratenwerth explains, Eke can be held responsible for his  parents&#8217; lie.<\/div>\n<div>This is the point at which Eke&#8217;s story becomes a legal matter &#8212; and even a  matter of government policy. The life of Mohammad Eke is now measured against  the &#8220;public interest to regulate the immigration of foreigners,&#8221; to quote a  later court decision on the Eke case.<\/div>\n<div>Stratenwerth flips through the file. He has never met Eke but in the end,  he says, his is nothing more than a run-of-the-mill case. There are about 1,800  similar cases in Essen alone, he adds, of Turkish parents falsely claiming that  they were Lebanese when they first entered the country &#8212; and of children who  grew up in Germany and spent their first 10, 15, 20 years in the country. Each  of these cases ends with the question: Can they be allowed to stay, or do they  have to go?<\/div>\n<div>Stratenwerth says that everything depends on what he calls &#8220;integration  achievement,&#8221; which he sees as the intent behind Germany&#8217;s Residence Act.  &#8220;The more someone is integrated,&#8221; he says, &#8220;the greater his or her changes are.&#8221;  In cases where individuals are well-integrated, deportation can be classified as  legally unacceptable. It is a discretionary decision, though, and one with which  immigration authorities have a certain degree of latitude.<\/div>\n<div>In the end, this meant that Eke had to take an examination of sorts &#8212; an  integration test, so to speak. But it was a test he wouldn&#8217;t be able to  pass.<\/div>\n<div>Granted, Eke has a few legal blemishes on his file. He had driven without a  license; he had illegally altered a moped; and he had been convicted for theft  and embezzlement after selling a borrowed Playstation for \u20ac70 ($104). But none  of these were all that shocking or more than your average youthful  indiscretions. And as Stratenwerth says: &#8220;None of this stood in the way.&#8221;  Instead, Eke was told to abide by his guardian&#8217;s instructions. He was instructed  to live at the refugee facility and go to school. By doing so, the authorities  reasoned, he would be demonstrating his &#8220;integration achievement.&#8221;<\/div>\n<p id=\"spIntroTeaser\">Part 4: The Final Hurrah<\/p>\n<div>After a few days, officials at the Hermann Friebe House reported that Eke  was missing. As he puts it, he didn&#8217;t want to be an institutionalized child.  After that, he did what he was told and participated in a program called  &#8220;Training and Employment for Adolescent Asylum Seekers.&#8221; But he stopped  attending after six months, and he also broke off contact with his guardian. On  June 9, 2006, a few days after his 18th birthday, the immigration office noted  that his whereabouts were now unknown and issued a warrant for his arrest. He  was now a legal adult, but one that was illegal and eligible for  deportation.<\/div>\n<div>In retrospect, Eke admits, it might&#8217;ve been a mistake. But, at the time, it  seemed like his only option. He didn&#8217;t trust the immigration authorities, the  same authorities who had deported his parents and siblings. And he didn&#8217;t trust  his guardian, either.<\/div>\n<div>For the next two years, Eke stayed off the radar. He lived with friends in  Essen and then moved in with his sister in Bremen, who has a German passport. He  played football in various clubs and earned a little money by giving lessons to  children. He likes to tell the story of how he played professionally with  Rot-Weiss Essen, a local football club, with Mesut \u00d6zil &#8212; a fellow Turk and a  member of the German national team today.<\/div>\n<div>In the late afternoon of Nov. 7, 2008, Eke gave up. The police had  surrounded his brother&#8217;s auto repair shop in Essen. Eke ran to the emergency  exit hoping it would be his last chance to get away. But when he opened the  door, there were two police officers waiting outside with weapons drawn.<\/div>\n<div>&#8220;I was almost glad when they caught me,&#8221; Eke says. &#8220;I thought: Now  everything will be straightened out. I really thought they would say: &#8216;It was  our mistake&#8217; and &#8216;Of course you&#8217;ll get another chance.'&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><strong>What Exactly Constitutes Integration?<\/strong><\/div>\n<div>In fact, Eke still seems surprised. He opens his bag and pulls out a few  documents: references from the German football clubs he had played with, a  letter from the petitions committee of the state parliament of North  Rhine-Westphalia, a certificate showing that he had attended an industrial  placement program at BMW facilities in Essen, and the boarding pass from his  August deportation flight. The documents are now little more than yellowing  pieces of paper, testaments to his unsteady German life.<\/div>\n<div>Eke left secondary school after ninth grade. His parents hardly speak any  German, and they paid little attention to the education of their 11 children.  When Eke is asked what his parents did for a living, how they made money, he  says, &#8220;with nothing.&#8221; It was a large family that survived on welfare. Under  these conditions, how could Eke be expected to score well on any &#8220;integration  achievement&#8221; test?<\/div>\n<div>When asked whether he believes that he&#8217;s integrated, he says that he  doesn&#8217;t exactly know what the term means. Still, the fact is that, in Germany,  no one really knows what it means. Can integration really be measured? Eke  speaks German like a German. He isn&#8217;t a criminal, and he isn&#8217;t a bad guy. That,  so to speak, is his integration achievement. Is it necessary to ask more of him?  Or is there also such a thing as a German integration achievement? Is there a  level of responsibility that someone must achieve after having lived in Germany  for 21 years?<\/div>\n<div>On Nov. 8, 2008, Eke was taken to the deportation center in B\u00fcren. He spent  the first few weeks in a six-man cell with three bunk beds. After two months, he  was permitted to work as a cleaner in the detention facility. He was having  trouble sleeping, so the in-house doctor wrote him a prescription for  antidepressants. When his hair occasionally fell out in dark clumps, both the  doctor and Eke attributed it to stress.<\/div>\n<div><strong>Arguing His Case in Court<\/strong><\/div>\n<div>Twice during his nine-month incarceration, Eke was taken to the Turkish  Consulate. But, on both occasions, he refused to apply for a Turkish passport,  arguing that he was &#8220;born in Germany and am therefore a German citizen.&#8221; His  sister in Bremen hired attorneys, who filed a lawsuit against the government&#8217;s  deportation efforts. At this point, he was hoping that the German courts would  come to his rescue.<\/div>\n<div>But that wasn&#8217;t in his cards. In a tersely worded ruling dated Jan. 14,  2009, an administrative court in Gelsenkirchen, near Essen, wrote: &#8220;The  claimant&#8217;s consciously illegal stay in Germany after his disappearance already  suggests a lack of integration because it shows that the claimant intends to  make his integration into the German legal order dependent on his interests.&#8221;  The judge also ruled &#8220;that it is in keeping with the need to fairly balance the  public interest in regulating the immigration of foreigners against the  claimant&#8217;s private interest in remaining in Germany that the claimant return to  Turkey.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div>Subsequently, Eke&#8217;s lawyers filed an appeal with the administrative appeals  court of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. On June 5, the appeal was denied.  The judges argued that there was no evidence of Eke&#8217;s being rooted in &#8220;German  society&#8221; to a degree that would &#8220;make deportation to Turkey seem  unacceptable.&#8221; Besides, the judges wrote in their decision, &#8220;through his  illegal presence in Germany since June 2006, the claimant has demonstrated his  ability to cope with difficult living situations.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div>Eke had run up against a wall. He filed an appeal with a commission  responsible for adjudicating hardship cases, but it also was denied. On July 9,  the Federal Constitutional Court, Germany&#8217;s supreme legal body, decided not to  hear Eke&#8217;s constitutional complaint. Now 21, Eke had exhausted his legal options  in Germany. The only people left who could have prevented his deportation were  J\u00f6rg Stratenwerth and the immigration officials in Essen. But they didn&#8217;t.<\/div>\n<p id=\"spIntroTeaser\">Part 5: Stretching the Boundaries of Reasonable<\/p>\n<div>Stratenwerth closes the Eke file. He has been working for the immigration  authority for almost 15 years, and he has witnessed all of the German debates on  integration, abuse of asylum privileges, Turkey&#8217;s accession to the European  Union, double citizenship, a German green card and mainstream culture. These  days, Germany defines itself as a country of immigration. This perception might  reflect reality &#8212; and it might just be little more than wishful thinking.  Stratenwerth isn&#8217;t sure. He doesn&#8217;t make the laws, he says, he just enforces  them. He did his job correctly, he adds, as he looks out the window at the fall  foliage.<\/div>\n<div>&#8220;The chance was there,&#8221; says Stratenwerth. &#8220;His mistake was to drop out of  the training program and disappear. Now he has to deal with the  consequences.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div>If you follow the logic, it would seem that Eke failed to live up to an  expectation that he grow up more quickly than normal &#8212; something which a German  youngster from a similar background would never have been expected to do.  Moreover, that German youngster would certainly not have suffered the same  consequences as Eke for failing to pass the test.<\/div>\n<div>Stratenwerth is open to discussing most issues, including the question of  who is responsible for Mohammad Eke. Is it Germany, the country where he was  born, or Turkey, a country he had never even visited beforehand? &#8220;Legally  speaking, Turkey is responsible for him,&#8221; says Stratenwerth, who holds a legal  degree. &#8220;From an emotional standpoint,&#8221; he adds, &#8220;perhaps he belongs in Germany.  But under international law, he&#8217;s Turkish.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div>Perhaps Eke could get a job, Stratenwerth suggests, in an attempt to look  on the bright side of things, as if that would make everything better. &#8220;With his  language qualifications, his German and Arabic,&#8221; Stratenwerth says, &#8220;he has  excellent job prospects in Turkey.&#8221; A return to Germany, on the other hand,  could be difficult. He could marry a German woman or someone with the right  legal status. &#8220;But before returning to Germany,&#8221; Stratenwerth adds, &#8220;he would  have to pay back the costs incurred by his deportation.&#8221; In Eke&#8217;s case,  these costs could be quite steep. There&#8217;s the nine months he was in detention.  And then there was the airfare for himself, the two police officers and the  doctor. And then, of course, the costs of the medical reports. &#8220;It&#8217;ll certainly  come to about \u20ac20,000 ($30,000),&#8221; Stratenwerth figures.<\/div>\n<div><strong>Foreign at Home<\/strong><\/div>\n<div>Mehtap Sabah, Eke&#8217;s 23-year-old girlfriend, says she would be willing to  marry him. She is a petite girl with a German high-school diploma, Turkish  parents and a German passport. &#8220;\u20ac20,000?&#8221; she asks. &#8220;How are we supposed to come  up with that kind of money?&#8221; Sabah is in her second year of an apprenticeship to  become a tax accountant&#8217;s assistant. In August, shortly after Eke was deported,  she went to see him in Istanbul. It was a strange visit. As they walked through  the streets, she served as his interpreter. She also talked about the beauty of  the city, the sea, the warm climate &#8212; and soon she felt like his Turkish tour  guide, as well. But all Eke could say was: &#8220;I feel lost here.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div>Eke is her first love. She could join him in Turkey, but she doesn&#8217;t want  to live there. Germany is her home, she says. Sometimes, when she compares his  life with hers, she sees no difference between the two. Both of them were born  and raised in Essen. But she received a German passport at some point, while Eke  was deported.<\/div>\n<div>At moments like this, despite the fact that it is her home, Germany must  seem like a mysterious, inscrutable country to someone like Sabah.<\/div>\n<div><strong>Lost<\/strong><\/div>\n<div>Back at Istanbul&#8217;s airport, Eke is thinking about where he&#8217;ll sleep  tonight. He has spent the last few weeks in Esenyurt, a neighborhood in Istanbul  where he had been working at a small bakery during the day, dusting off the  flour from pita bread. He lived in the apartment of Shekmus, a baker who spoke a  little Arabic. It was musty and dark in the apartment, and they slept on dirty  mattresses. But it wasn&#8217;t bad, Eke says. At least he had a place to stay. But  then he was told that the bakery was going to close soon because sales were  poor. Perhaps it was true. Or perhaps they just didn&#8217;t need an employee from  Germany to dust off the flour from their pita bread, particularly one who didn&#8217;t  even speak Turkish.<\/div>\n<div>Eke hasn&#8217;t spoken with his parents since they were deported in September  2005. He can&#8217;t forgive them for lying. For practical reasons, he now has a  Turkish ID card. But he doesn&#8217;t have a Turkish passport. As he sees it, doing so  would mean taking another step into a Turkish life, a life he has still  successfully managed to keep his distance from.<\/div>\n<div>If marriage is his only option for returning to Germany, Eke says he&#8217;ll do  it. Marriage, at 21-years-old, just to return to the place where you&#8217;ve always  lived.<\/div>\n<div>He gets up. It is almost midnight, and he is thinking about spending the  night at the baker&#8217;s apartment. &#8220;It takes about two or three weeks to get to  know Turkey, to see all the sights,&#8221; says Eke. He sounds like a tourist.<\/div>\n<div>He walks through the arrivals hall at the airport, not quite sure where  he&#8217;s going. He&#8217;s a young man with a bag in his hand.<\/div>\n<div><em>Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>12\/04\/2009 Victim of Immigration Policy By Jochen-Martin Gutsch Carsten Koall Norbert Enker Carsten Koall Start Gallery Mohammad Eke was born and grew up in the German city of Essen. Until authorities found out that his parents had entered the country illegally, Germany was his home. Then Eke was deported to Turkey, even though he&#8217;d never [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":34116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}