Turkish immigrant finds love for German team
(AP)
Updated: 2006-06-23 10:02 Turkish soccer fans have been supporting their local German teams for many
decades, said Faruk Sen, the director of the Center for Turkey Studies in Essen.
"It's usually the Germans who are suspicious that the Turks don't want to
integrate themselves _ they don't understand that Germany has become our
homeland a long time ago," he said in a phone interview Thursday.
More than 203,000 Turks own a home in Germany, 64,000 are self-employed
businessmen and 860,000 have acquired German citizenship in the last several
years, indicating that the country's largest minority has really accepted
Germany as its new home country, Sen said.
One Turkish soccer fan went even a step further claiming that the Germans
copied their sudden display of national pride from the immigrants' visible
manifestation of patriotism during Turkish soccer games in the past.
"We know better how to party than the Germans," said Uenal Vedat, 35, who was
cutting thin slices of kebab meat for a customer at "Gueney Grill" on
Sonnenallee, a main shopping street in Berlin's Turkish district.
"I think they learned from us how to wave the flags without feeling ashamed
or too nationalistic."
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