German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Wednesday marked 50 years since their countries' "guest worker" pact, taking stock of an often fraught partnership. When Turkish migrant workers first arrived to work in Germany's car plants, coal mines and steel foundries half a century ago to fill a yawning gap in the booming country's workforce, most Germans thought they would soon be gone.
Today, some three million Turks or Germans of Turkish origin are settled in this 82-million-strong country, representing its largest ethnic minority. In her most recent weekly video podcast, Merkel urged Turks to do more to integrate but acknowledged that Germany must boost efforts to attract and keep qualified workers of non-German origin.
"If you just look at what kind of life is in Istanbul, how much growth and how much change you see there, then it also shows us: we must present immigrants with a good offer," she said on the occasion of the anniversary of the first migration agreement with Turkey.
Erdogan told Wednesday's Bild newspaper that Berlin had made mistakes in its immigration policy with regard to Turks and in failing to back Ankara's drive to join the European Union. Some 900,000 Turks arrived between 1961, when the Turkish-German labour exchange pact was signed, and 1973 when the oil crisis and rising unemployment put paid to it, according to the German migration centre (DOMiD).
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