643781

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SACXXX10.1177/1206331216643781Space and CultureGüney et al.

Article
Space and Culture
2017, Vol. 20(1) 42­–55
The Existential Struggle of © The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1206331216643781
Immigrants in Kreuzberg: journals.sagepub.com/home/sac

Answering Spatiotemporal
Change

Serhat Güney1, Bülent Kabaş2, and Cem Pekman3

Abstract
The second generation of Turks to migrate to Germany played a crucial role in recasting the
migration experience of the 1960s into a unique diasporic culture. This research, which takes
the Kreuzberg district of Berlin as a center of the Turkish diaspora’s ongoing maneuvering for
existence, shows how in various stages of migration history, the second generation’s narratives
transect the quarter’s own sociopolitical history and spatiotemporal change. It notes three
crossroads. The first is when the Turkish diaspora stakes a claim as an independent power
within hobohemia. The second is when a political, oppositional momentum is activated among
the diaspora. The third crossroads, comprising the first 10 years after the fall of the Wall, is
the stage where the district comes under the influence of neoliberalism and becomes just
“bohemia.” This research shows how Turkish immigrants have been positioned at a crossroads
where the “hobo” character of the quarter evolved into a bohemia.

Keywords
Kreuzberg, gangland, diaspora youth, migration, bohemia

Introduction: Migrancy at the Crossroads

Berlin is emblematic of the wave of Turkish worker migration to Germany in the 1960s. Indeed,
the city hosts the largest German–Turkish population and what may be considered a prototypical
Turkish diasporic culture. The long-time home of the Turkish population in Berlin is the district
of Kreuzberg, a once ghettoized and introverted neighborhood that has been rebranded in recent
years as one of Berlin’s most cosmopolitan quarters—no small feat given that Berlin itself has at
the same time come to be defined as a cultural capital of Europe and a world city. The situation
of the German–Turkish community of Kreuzberg is optimal for investigating the relationship
between the experience of immigrants and spatiotemporal change.

1Galatasaray University, Istanbul, Turkey

2Sakarya University, Serdivan, Turkey
3Kocaeli University, Kocaeli, Turkey

Corresponding Author:
Serhat Güney, Galatasaray Üniversitesi İletişim Fakültesi, Çırağan Cad. No. 36, Istanbul 34349, Turkey.
Email: hserhatguney@gmail.com
Güney et al. 43

The role of “second-generation immigrants” in the persistence and evolution of the experience
of migration and the formation of a unique diaspora culture must not be underestimated. As this
generation was emerging into the public sphere in 1970s, research on the subject of migration
was focusing on the dominance of homeland culture. In academic works, the migrancy was por-
trayed almost as a self-inflicted situation defined by one’s relationship to the homeland (Abadan-
Unat, 1985; Kağıtçıbaşı, 1987).
The significant and distinctive approach of Kaya (2000) took as its subject young, second-
generation Turks in Kreuzberg, a neighborhood that he defined as “Little Istanbul.” The research
was consistent with the general trend of migration studies in the 1990s, wherein anthropologic
methodologies were gaining ground, and Gilroy’s concept of syncretism had become widely
accepted. According to this argument, bricolage and mixing underlie the complex and dynamic
processes by which culture is formed (Gilroy, 1987). These processes are motivated by a drive to
acquire autonomy over essential identity, which in the context of migration leads to the new sta-
tus of the “transmigrant” located in “transnational” space (Abadan-Unat, 2002; Faist, 2000;
Schiller, Basch, & Blanc-Szanton, 2004). Such conceptualization is further in accord with
Chambers’ (1994) argument about tensions between migration and modernity. He describes the
migrant as a hybrid metropolitan figure who is rootless, and that rootlessness “inevitably implies
another sense of ‘home’, of being in the world. It means to conceive of dwelling as a mobile habi-
tat, as a mode of inhabiting time and space, not as though they were fixed and closed structures”
(p. 4).
With this theoretical argument underfoot, the field of research has expanded to peripheral
areas of migration experience. Among them, youth culture is a popular subject, given its myriad,
cultural products (Çağlar, 1998; Cheesman, 1998; Güney, Pekman, & Kabaş, 2014; Kaya, 2007;
Soysal, 1999, 2001). These studies scrutinize the areas of cultural production unique to the estab-
lishment of a diasporic identity, such as hip-hop: a dynamic, diffuse, and interactive product of
migrancy. That said, the complexity of diasporic identity and the quality and content of the dia-
logue with mainstream German society has been examined largely only through such tangible,
cultural products (Yurdakul, 2002). The question remains: “Just how has this dialogue—which
has been undeniably decisive in shaping diasporic culture, action, and identity—evolved through
time and space and in the context of changing social, political, and economic relations?” Some
research has attempted to answer this question along parallel lines. Schwarz (2013) discusses
endeavors to make room for complex histories of immigration in German history by addressing
a commemorative void in relation to Berlin’s urban landscape. In her research on Turkish
“Queers” in Berlin, Petzen (2004) underlines the complexity of immigrant identity and its rela-
tionship with space in the context of interacting with people of varying backgrounds.
Karaosmanoğlu’s (2013) study focuses on the role of immigrant districts’ gastronomic spaces in
contemporary consumption culture and argues that especially restaurants presenting an authentic
and exotic experience make such districts appealing and exciting even if they have a reputation
as “dark, rubbish-strewn, poor, and dangerous.” From a political perspective, Gerbaudo (2014)
discusses the role of power relations in a district like Kreuzberg where immigrants are histori-
cally settled. Similarly, Awan and Langley (2013) map a migrant “territory” of Turks and Kurds,
referring especially to the relationships among power, politics, and space. These studies are illu-
minative as they imply that the transformation of migrancy is correlated with complex series of
factors and affected by interrelated actors and forces.
Kreuzberg was traditionally a “hobohemia”: the poor outskirts that played host to Berlin’s
outcasts after World War II. Turkish workers from Anatolia settled into the migrant district of
West Berlin in the 1960s, one of few places where they were accepted. By in large, the first gen-
eration of guest workers were not proactive in shaping the destiny and identity of the district in
which they lived, but as the collective longing for “return” faded, subsequent generations pre-
ferred to struggle and seek out ways to have a voice in the place where they grew up and lived.
44 Space and Culture 20(1)

This dynamic struggle for autonomy and the foundation for a diasporic motherland was con-
firmed and paralleled by rapid changes in West Berlin itself, which was in a process of reuniting
after the fall of the Wall.
The purpose of this article is to explore the functions of the Turkish diaspora during Kreuzberg’s
transformation from a cold war “hobohemia” into today’s postindustrial “bohemia.” We delve
into Turkish immigrants’ stances with regard to these historical, social transformations, as well
as the roles they played in the drama. The research takes as its subject members of the second
immigrant generation, which we consider to be the first true generation of the diaspora. We note
three crossroads: the first is when the Turkish diaspora stakes a claim as an independent power
within hobohemia. The second is when a political, oppositional momentum is activated among
the diaspora under the influence of the German 1968 Movement and interaction with Autonome1
groups. The third crossroads, comprising the first 10 years after the fall of the Wall, is the stage
where the district comes under the influence of neoliberalism and becomes just “bohemia.” Ours
is a work of oral history positioned in the tradition of ethnomethodology. We have employed
several ethnographic data-collection techniques to position the second immigrant generation
within these three stages, as well as to analyze the cultural differences among different immigrant
generations in Kreuzberg. Members of second-generation subcultures (gangs, hip-hop scenes,
etc.) are one focus, as are immigrants who escaped the 1980 military coup in Turkey, as well as
the self-anointed Autonome youth that grew out of the 1968 Movement and came from West
Germany to Berlin in the 1970s.

Segregation, Exclusion, and Autonomy

In the postwar period, when skilled workers started to leave Kreuzberg for modern suburban
houses because of the lack of infrastructural investment in a war-torn housing stock (Porter &
Shaw, 2009), thousands of Turkish guest workers began settling in Kreuzberg, along with other
ethnic minorities and groups at the margins of West German society (Novy, 2012). The district’s
new demographics included students, radical political activists, artists, hippies, and other drop-
outs: an amalgam known as the “Kreuzberg mix” (Rada 1997, p. 140). In the words of Bader and
Bialluch (2009),

[T]he Kreuzberg mix refers not only to an ethnic and social mixture but also to a population with a
partly alternative attitude and rebellious character, a strong subcultural influence and simultaneity of
living, small-scale crafts and shops in the same building. (p. 94)

The fundamental survival strategy for the first public actors of the second generation was to secure
a self-contained, physical, and social territory: discrete spatial entities where cultural enclaves
lived together in their isolation, without interaction. With reference to Iain Chambers’ (1994)
analysis on migrant landscapes, we suggest the purpose of this strategy is to specify, locate, and
limit a particular self. It is neither narcissism nor solipsism. It is also possible to interpret such
jostling by second-generation Turks as a process of self-segregation. According to Park (1925),

[T]he processes of segregation establish moral distances which make the city a mosaic of little worlds
which touch but do not interpenetrate. This makes it possible for individuals to pass quickly and
easily from one moral milieu to another, and encourages the fascinating but dangerous experiment of
living at the same time in several different contiguous, but otherwise widely separated, worlds. (pp.
40-41)

Indeed, Park’s observations mirror the experience of immigrant workers’ children as they began
to surface on the streets of Kreuzberg, but we reconsider this parallel in light of a different con-
cept: that of “hobohemia.” In his book, The Hobo, Anderson notes how certain streets, parks, and
Güney et al. 45

their surroundings in the city center where hobos “hang around” facilitate an evolution in to com-
munity. He describes these “stems” as “location[s] where street regulars could find other regu-
lars; elders could find other elders; radicals, optimists, imposters, drunks, in short everyone could
find their equal,” and he called this place “hobohemia” (Anderson, 1923, p. 4). The hobo’s dis-
ruptive appearance at the urban center is frequently represented in modern narratives of literature
and cinema. According to Cooke and Stone (2013, p. 83), the hobo of the Great Depression

was a migratory labourer in a world without work and thus homeless, penniless wanderer defined by
a life on the road or airways, whose label may have derived from an abbreviation of the ironic reply
“Ho-meward bo-und” to the eternal question of where they were headed.

Most members of the first immigrant wave to Kreuzberg’s answer to this question was almost the
same, as they saw the place as a temporary stop along the way back home. Indeed, the migrant
workers’ role in the district’s communal life consisted of avoiding social conflict while shuttling
between work and home, always with the myth of return on their minds (Abadan-Unat, 1964;
Castles & Kosack, 1973). This work-oriented mode of life collapsed and devolved into social
tension with the rise of the second generation and their proactive claims on their district.
The children of immigrants were often neglected by their families due to their guardians’
heavy workloads. Some were forced to grow up at home alone, while others were often sent to
relatives in Turkey and compelled to be independent of their parents. When they started school,
they were shuffled into semisegregated classrooms where foreigners made up the majority of the
student population (Kula, 2012), exacerbating their sense of isolation from society and their
issues with self-confidence. F.T., a member of the Şimşekler, one of the first street gangs to
emerge from the Turkish diaspora, argues that the isolation began with classroom composition:

There were Turkish classrooms for Turks. I attended a Turkish classroom in the first grade. The
segregation started then. There were Turkish teachers from Turkey. In the second grade, I was
transferred to a mixed classroom because my German was good, but the teacher couldn’t say my
name and keep calling to me: “You, child with the difficult name, you answer!” (Personal
communication, June 21, 2013)

In mixed classrooms, yet another conflict concerned the tension between immigrant families’
traditional, homeland values and the Western philosophy that shaped the secular education sys-
tem in German schools. A member of a gang called the 36’ers, S.O., illustrates the point:

We opened the book; there was human evolution . . . how we evolved from monkeys into humans. I
stood up and objected. I said: “My nation, my parents, us, we didn’t come from monkeys. But you
insist that you came from monkeys. Then, why don’t existing monkeys become human?” He grabbed
my neck and shook me: “You always disturb my classroom!” I was later punished, of course.
(Personal communication, June 30, 2013)

Segregation and the lack of a planned, organized educational policy for immigrant children thus
resulted in the second generation’s weak interaction with formal schooling. But immigrant fami-
lies themselves were also part of the issue. As first-generation immigrants were distracted by the
idea of returning to the homeland, communication with and care of their children was often a
secondary concern. According to Y.T. of the 36’ers, parents worked hard and did not have the
cultural and educational capital to motivate their children in school: “My father always said,
‘study, study, study!’ But how could I study? You ask a question about math, and he knows four
operations, but no more. Or you ask something about German, and he can’t answer” (personal
communication, July 2, 2013). Rather than motivating and including children, the atmosphere at
46 Space and Culture 20(1)

school magnified the structural exclusion of immigrant children, forcing them to funnel their
energies into areas of life outside of school:

Childhood was really great. . . . Our life was so adventurous, but if you’re asking about school, well
. . . it was boring. I mean, you don’t care about school, you just think about going out into the street.
Because, life . . . it’s right there. (N.Ç., 36’ers, personal communication, July 11, 2013)

Second-generation Turkish children attracted one other like magnets and began to organize on
Kreuzberg’s street corners. As Thrasher (1927) notes, children who have energy that is not
directed, controlled, and disciplined seek to express themselves and find spontaneous meaning
through nascent social ordering. Gelder (2007), moreover, suggests that in addition to personal
experiences, the stories of Hollywood films and dime store novels shape the founding lore of
gangs just as for hobos.
Kreuzberg, as a peripheral district, was an endless playground for immigrant children. This
semiimagined world, that marked the childhood of second-generation immigrants, was surreal:

There were ratty buildings and idle factories left over from the war, full of bullet scars. . . . This was
fascinating for us, children. I mean, it was an adventure! We would come in through one hole [in a
building] and go out through another. (T.Y., 36’ers, personal communication, July 13, 2013)

We played in construction sites. There was an apocalyptic atmosphere. It was like they’d dropped a
bomb and you were growing up in the middle of it. (N.Ç., 36’ers, personal communication, July 11,
2013)

Second-generation children often took the notion of forming independent gangs from older sib-
lings, who enjoyed their own collective power in the district. While speaking on the appearance
of the first gangs, S.T. of the 36’ers suggests that there was a prototype for the gangs of the 1980s:

We’d meet and play football, and later on these parks were built. Our elders started to seize the parks.
There was a gang called the Şimşekler [Lightnings] before us, and we modelled ourselves on them.
They had unity and camaraderie. They supported one another; 30 of them could meet up in a minute.
In time, we found ourselves among the Şimşekler. (Personal communication, July 17, 2013)

The Şimşekler may be understood as the first organized initiative of immigrant children seeking
their own space in hobohemian Kreuzberg. Underlying it was the disposition that they were a
permanent part of the district. Hence, a basic difference between the diaspora and their immigrant
parents was the acceptance of and commitment to settlement:

We were not thinking like our parents; we were from here; we weren’t thinking of going back to
Turkey. Even if they tried to impose this on us, we didn’t entertain such thoughts. We had to define
the limits of the space where we [actually] lived. (F.T., Şimşekler, personal communication, June 21,
2013)

You don’t know where you belong; you have to find this answer on your own. We, at that time,
understood that we were from here—that this was our homeland, too. The place we called home was
Kreuzberg. This district was like an island for us. (S.O., 36’ers, personal communication, June 30,
2013)

Even so, immigrant children had to overcome the difficulty of living together with myriad other sub-
cultures in a rather poor quarter of the city. Being on streets or on “promenade” brought with it disap-
pointment. In line with Cohen’s conceptualization of the motivations for the foundation of gangs,
Güney et al. 47

immigrant children in Kreuzberg experienced crises of self-assurance under the burden of their disap-
pointments and rejection by the broader society. These negative encounters “formed a roof suitable for
interaction by gathering similar victims” (Cohen, 1955, p. 59). Given the inherent tensions experi-
enced in the isolated atmosphere of Kreuzberg, it seems inevitable that immigrant children would
grow up feeling angry, rejected, and subpar. It seems inevitable that they would contract into social
interactions and contexts where they could feed their hostile emotions and avenge the injuries to their
self-respect (Shoemaker, 2009). As Y.T. of the 36’ers puts it, “[W]e had to be strong because we lived
in a district where power talked. We had to project ourselves as strong. We had to adapt to the environ-
ment in order to survive, and we adapted” (personal communication, July 2, 2013).
Unlike their parents who felt and behaved as if their presence in hobohemian Kreuzberg was
a temporary circumstance, the first diaspora generation struggled for survival like true hobos. By
the 1970s, having wrestled a visible and strong role in Kreuzberg’s social structure, the second-
generation Turks had brought gang culture and violence to the neighborhood scene. They restruc-
tured hobohemia as their own gangland. The Turkish gangs of Kreuzberg, just as Anderson’s
model suggests, surfaced spontaneously from cracks in the social fabric and later became
devolved into violent practice. Meeting, planning, acting collectively, and “attachment to a local
territory” (Anderson 1923, p. 57) were effectively a means of socialization. But while these
forces tied gang members to their autonomous territory, it also made for fanciful figures who had
little comprehension of the social dilemmas surrounding them. The means by which the second
generation sought to create their neighborhood—as a gangland—turned Kreuzberg not only into
a safe, protected island for immigrants but also into a prison. This was a form of polarized hobo-
socialization, without external interaction.

Defiance, Fear, and Solidarity

Kreuzberg’s communal social structure began to change by the late 1970s. At the crux of this
change was an organized resistance against urban transformation policies that had been adopted
by a coalition of the public sector and players in the local real-estate market. Kreuzberg became
known as a center of urban resistance and rebellion (Rada, 1997) as punks replaced hippies.
District councils (i.e., independent tenant unions) and a militant squatter movement added to the
new dynamism. Between 1980 and 1981, some 169 buildings in Berlin, most of which were
awaiting demolition, were occupied by squatters. Eighty of these were in Kreuzberg (Berger,
1987).
While immigrants were certainly a part of the so-called Kreuzberg mix, their relationship to
this emerging solidarity movement is indistinct. The organized struggle of Turkish immigrants at
the turn of the 1980s related to working conditions and immigration issues rather than to spatial
changes in the neighborhood. At the same time, demographic changes in the Turkish community
defined the era, as leftist refugees flowed into Germany following the 1980 military coup in
Turkey. Kreuzberg became a center where political actors took shelter and renewed their associa-
tions, but their relations with active, local Antifa2 groups were weak, as one former activist of the
Autonome relates,

When the refugees first came, we tried to contact Communist Party members. We managed with a
few, but not with most. They were not interested in German politics at all; their minds were always
in Turkey. Naturally, the conditions [in Turkey] had created problems that called for more urgent
action. (U.H., personal communication, July 20, 2013)

According to E.Y. who moved to Kreuzberg as a refugee in 1982, “The leftists coming here were
a primitive left, disconnected from both Turkish and European realities. There were a people try-
ing to prove themselves” (personal communication, June 18, 2013). This criticism points to
48 Space and Culture 20(1)

ideological splits. According to a German Autonome activist, H.M. (personal communication,

June 4, 2014), differences in paradigm were apparent: “What we understood of the revolution did
not quite coincide with [their understanding].” H.G., who escaped to Germany in 1981, sums up
the barriers that surfaced as a result of different political cultures and social contexts:

Dev-Genç3 sought common ground based on the conviction that the German Communist Party was a
brother party, but it didn’t happen because Turks coming out of a more dogmatic movement couldn’t
adapt to the ideology of German leftists. The Turkish leftist attitude of blind self-sacrifice collided
with Germans’ left-liberal mind sets. On one side, a leftist tradition that regarded women comrades as
sisters, on the other, German leftists defending sexual liberty. (Personal communication, June 5, 2014)

Antifa Westberlin, founded in 1983, played an important role in overcoming some such commu-
nication problems. It served as a bridge for refugees withdrawing from their old associations and
moving into the Autonome movement. A soccer match between the Turkish and German national
teams in 1983 also played a role. Rumors that right-wing extremists were organizing a demon-
stration on the day of the game and planning to act out against both immigrants and squatters
awakened a sense of common purpose:

We made a splash that day as Antifa. But more important was the improved sense of trust between
immigrants and German leftists. There was a synergy among the people of Kreuzberg who had been
keeping away from one other. This was one of the first events that unsettled the formula of living
parallel lives. (E.Y., personal communication, May 29, 2014)

One consequence for Turkish immigrants in Kreuzberg was a new sympathy for activist groups
about whom they previously knew little. However, tensions created by diaspora gangs remained,
independent of the political shifts taking place. Indeed, their presence grew more conspicuous as
Şimşekler, the 36’ers, and the 36 Boys joined forces in the second half of the 1980s.4 These
groups were looking out for their Kreuzberg in a different fashion, insulated from political
thought and nourished by hip-hop culture. Their struggle with other immigrant gangs from other
ghettos of Berlin was nonideological and motivated by a drive for power. According to F.T. from
Şimşekler, the gang movement was spiraling into crime, violence, and infighting (personal com-
munication, June 21, 2014).
The gangs were like extended, supportive families carrying forward the traditional cultural
protocols that their parents had brought with them from the homeland. Diaspora youth had felt
safe and free with these values being reproduced on the streets, and as such, Kreuzberg gangs
adopted a defensive stance toward the leftist Turkish refugees who showed up after the 1980
coup. Political unrest was perceived as a threat to traditional codes of unity and order. According
to N.C. (personal communication, August 1, 2013) of the 36’ers, the political groups popping up
wanted to use the gangs for their own purposes. Y.T. of the same gang recalls that “[t]here were
not only the leftists, there were also the nationalists. They tried hard to become involved with us,
but our approach was different” (personal communication, July 2, 2013).
The year 1987 was a milestone for both the political resistance movement in Kreuzberg led by
the Autonome and for the involvement of diaspora gangs in political action. In response to a wave
of attacks by a racist group called Wotan’s Children, the AntifaGençlik (Antifa Youth) organiza-
tion was founded both to protect foreigners in Kreuzberg against threats, as well as to integrate
them into the district’s culture of resistance. A former German AntifaGençlik member, U.H.,
summed up the new situation:

Nazis had gained strength by the middle of the 80s. Racist groups took any form of difference in
Kreuzberg as a threat. Punks, homosexuals, leftists and immigrants . . . they made no distinctions, and
their attacks were against the lifestyle of Kreuzberg [itself]. (Personal communication, July 20, 2013)
Güney et al. 49

Although the revival of racism did not necessarily lead to a comprehensive, ideological transfor-
mation among the first generation of the diaspora, it did lead to an awareness and sensitivity to
the political context. Immigrant youth who participated in 1987 and subsequent May Day events
began to reframe their common enemy with the leftist groups in Kreuzberg as racism itself, even
if a basic motivation in their participation was still to exert power, a holdover from gang culture.
T.Y. of the 36’ers depicts an atmosphere lacking in political motivation:

Back then, the police were treating us badly. We were after the police but couldn’t beat them. So May
1st served that purpose. We wore black masks together with the Autonome. We were attacking the
police with axes. No one expected it. (Personal communication, July 13, 2013)

While immigrant youth were interacting and teaming up with Kreuzberg’s leftist, resistance
groups for specific joint actions, “autonomy” rather than any ideological notion of “solidar-
ity” was still the underlying strategy of existence for those in the first generation of the dias-
pora. E.D. of the 36 Boys portrays being a part of a May 1st demonstration as a thrilling
achievement in terms publicizing the gang’s presence (personal communication, August 12,
2013).
Second-generation Turks who were active in 36 gangs characterize their interaction with the
resistance movements of the period as functional rather than political. They coopted political
events as opportunities to claim their position and existence in the district, and their basic instru-
ment was violence. The sporadic and uneasy alliance between politically motivated groups and
immigrant youth evolved into a closer and livelier relationship only after the fall of the Berlin
Wall. The threats from Nazi groups increased throughout the latter half of the 1980s, reaching a
peak with the collapse of the Wall. In Kreuzberg, the immigrants’ safe haven was under threat
from the East, and in terms of their hard-won self-confidence, immigrant youth suffered setbacks
in subsequent years. While untouchable in their enclave, they were isolated in the shadow of the
Wall. When this protective barrier was dismantled, there were obvious signs that immigrant
youth would not be able to handle this transition on their own. E.D., of 36 Boys, summarizes the
image of the post-Wall East:

[It] was an eerie place for us. We wouldn’t go to that side, if possible. If we had to, we’d go in groups.
If you had a girlfriend in the East, if you were on a date and wandering around, a group of [your] men
would guard your back. It was a strange situation. (Personal communication, August 12, 2013)

According to T.Y. of the 36’ers, the Wall had been a natural border, and while close spatially, the
East was a whole different world:

When you came out of one of the stations in the East . . . it felt like you were entering a different
world. Everyone was blond. It wasn’t like in Kreuzberg. Of course, they were surprised when they
saw us, too. A bunch of strange, dark men on the streets. (Personal communication, August 12, 2013)

The threat of Nazi groups was good reason for the communities of Kreuzberg to draw together, and
by this point, immigrants understood that they could not defend themselves on their own against the
attacks on the ways of life in their neighborhood. The direct threat prompted a shift: immigrants
moved from the periphery to the center of social and political movements. The support of existing
political-activist bodies against attacks on immigrants facilitated the move, and ties between the
immigrant AntifaGençlik organization and more broad-based groups became stronger, as all
became more proactive. P.M., a former German activist, describes the relationship as follows:

There were many leftist groups in the district: political groups, activists and organizations founded
by the immigrants. Everyone had their own agenda, but we were immediately united against the
50 Space and Culture 20(1)

attacks. There was a meeting point in Mehringdamm, and when there was an attack we would
assemble there right away. (Personal communication, June 14, 2014)

Immigrants thus became more visible in the pluralist, organized struggle of Kreuzberg, where
tragic events served to enhance solidarity. One such incident—a fatal 1991 attack in Kudamm, in
which a Turkish youth lost his life—led to indignation and protest in Kreuzberg. Another involved
the death of a right-wing politician, victim of an impromptu attack by young immigrants in a
Kreuzberg restaurant. Following the latter event in April 1992, 11 immigrant youth were impli-
cated and charged with conspiracy to murder. The unwarranted charge of premeditation encour-
aged political groups in Kreuzberg to resist and ultimately change the course of the trial. At the
time, C.S. from AntifaGençlik was publishing the newspaper Herzschlag (Heartbeat), with the
mission to reverse negative propaganda toward immigrants. He acknowledges “it was the
Germans who ensured solidarity and led the whole movement” (personal communication, June
11, 2014). One of the German activists of Antifa, U.H. explained the defensive strategy: “It was
a long trial and solidarity was built around the immigrants in Kreuzberg. We had to protect our-
selves because there was a collective attack. Of course, the murder was unacceptable, but we
couldn’t leave these people alone” (personal communication, July 20, 2013).
A disclosure by N.C., who had spent his early youth running with 36 gangs, reveals an impor-
tant step in the evolution of the struggle for existence among the Kreuzberg immigrant commu-
nity: “There were Germans here embracing us more than we [embraced ourselves]” (personal
communication, June 10, 2014). As the 2000s approached, the sense of solidarity in Kreuzberg
congealed as the first generation of the diaspora began to participate in the quarter’s culture of
resistance. A new era, where Turkish immigrants and the diaspora would take on altogether new
identities and roles, was just around the corner.

Retraction, Orientation, and Fragmentation

The shift to postindustrial society that characterized the 1990s transformed not only Kreuzberg
but all of Berlin. Power relationships and consumption habits, as well as professional and demo-
graphic structures, were undergoing a sea change. From a spatial perspective, the conventional
notion of territory conceived of as a bounded entity was fragmented into an “archipelago” whose
various islands have fluid and temporal boundaries (Awan & Langley, 2013, p. 241). According
to Awan and Langley (2013, p. 241), as a postindustrial spatial entity, the archipelago “refers to
a dual condition, the fragmentation of sovereign power and the rise of extraterritorial powers.”
As the analogy suggests, after its clearly defined borders become invisible, Kreuzberg is exposed
to the external pressures and hierarchical powers being applied to it. One outcome was racist
attacks and the other, gentrification. During the rapid neo-bohemian transformation of the dis-
trict, places once used exclusively by immigrants and marginal cultures became the new targets
for gentrification (Shaw, 2005). Like the Kudamm and Kreuzberg restaurant events, the eviction
of the Gülbol family from their Kreuzberg apartment of 20 years was yet another symbol of the
chaotic situation after the fall of the Wall. Our communication with members of immigrant popu-
lation in Kreuzberg shows that their concerns about the changing district echoes Marcuse’s
(1986) description of the emotional pressures on New York City residents whose neighborhoods
were being gentrified: friends are leaving; stores are going out of business; new stores are show-
ing up for a new clientele; public facilities, transportation patterns, and support services are
changing; and the area is transforming into a less liveable place. T.Ç.’s complaint about the recent
situation mirrors this account:

When I am going to the Morning Prayer . . . to mosque in the early morning every day. . . . I walk
through people who are going back home to sleep, just leaving the bars, clubs. . . . I remember the
Güney et al. 51

past and I can’t believe that it is the same place that once belonged only to us. You couldn’t see
anybody on the streets at 5 a.m., it was out of the way, and no one would pass by outside of our
control. (Personal communication, August 21, 2013)

To survive in the new bohemia requires new strategies different from those employed in the past:
displacement (instead of fight or struggle) and self-salvation (instead of solidarity and unity). For
the first-generation diaspora who have a cultural background like hip-hop, integration with the
mechanisms of the global culture industry appears to be a practical means to maintain sover-
eignty over their territory. However, since the global culture industry itself represents the rise of
extraterritorial power, the colonization of cultural reproduction seems probable. Obviously, neo-
bohemia’s fluid and temporal boundaries allow global power structures to invisibly intervene
into traditional lifestyles more easily than in the past. In contrast with the hobo way of life, the
bohemian lifestyle conforms to contemporary ownership relations and economic patterns, thus
merging industrial capitalism and art into consumption society. According to Wilson (1999, p.
20), almost all of contemporary metropolitan culture has been “bohemianized.” Berlin is proto-
typical. After the fall of the Wall, Kreuzberg, once an outskirt, suddenly became the center of
Berlin and the center of attraction. It is a leading destination for a new wave of contemporary
urban tourism, cultural consumption, and entertainment venues. Kreuzberg today embodies cul-
tural pluralism, ethnic variety, and alternative lifestyles, and in Forkert’s (2013, p. 151) words,
“neo-bohemia” is realized as lifestyle within contemporary capitalist society. Alternative and
outcast lifestyles, which would once have been understood as niche, have become mainstream.
In a process where marginal space moves toward the center, local cultures also profit contingent
on their capacity to move across transnational cultural scenes. In this context, the status of immi-
grants has inevitably changed. Conflicting cultural codes and marginal practices that were once
a basis for the “othering” of immigrants are now accepted as authentic, and they are assimilated
into new transnational ways of life. As the immigrant quarter evolved, the “hobo” aspect was
abandoned, leaving just a bohemia.
Second-generation Turks reconsidered their hobo past, as well, looking to their unique dia-
sporic cultural accumulations and codes to reposition themselves during this transition. In the
spirit of the new era, “marketing” became prominent. Turkish immigrants justified the experi-
ences and actions of their gang pasts by packaging them as marketable cultural products: hip-hop
under the influence of the ideology of consumption. In this period, these children of immigrants
found new strategies for existence by reproducing their histories as marketable stories and goods.
One of the most remarkable of these makeovers was by T.R., the only German member of 36
Boys, who gained nationwide fame in the field of gastronomy. Key to his success was the market
value of his biography (Raue & Adrian, 2011). T.R.’s ability to use the media to turn an infamous
past into a lucrative career sent an important signal to the Turkish diaspora, who discovered that
the name “36 Boys” had a marketing value in itself.
It must be noted that cultural innovation is generated not by those at the top of the cultural
hierarchy but rather from further down: by the poor, weak, marginal, oppositional, and noncom-
pliant. The originality to be found within these castes subsequently attracts culture industries
(Gans, 2007). Though there is a sharp theoretic contrast between cultures of resistance and those
of conformist fashion, this distinction has been blurred. The “legendary” gangs of Kreuzberg
have, in turn, used this ironic entanglement to their strategic advantage. Among other things, they
turned gang names into fashion trademarks. C.K., a former gang member and current business
manager for 36 Boys, staged a runway show for the Berlin Fashion Week in 2010. The 36 Boys
trademark garnered interest, and C.K. contends that the event was an opportunity to promote the
young, dynamic, and multicultural lifestyles of Kreuzberg. M.T., a partner in the 36 Boys store
in Kottbusser Tor, considers the fashion initiative to be the gang’s symbolic immortalization
(personal communication, August 23, 2013).
52 Space and Culture 20(1)

Nevertheless, the entrepreneurship initiatives of second-generation Turkish immigrants in the

globalized economy of Berlin have been limited. Fashion, art, and sports are at the core of these
enterprises, but there is not a coordinated strategy or strong commitment to grow them. While
there was a small corporate interest in the story of 36 gangs following the appearance at Berlin
Fashion Week, it fizzled. The education levels and sense of professionalism among the first gen-
eration of the diaspora are weak, and barring the career of the chef, T.R., few have been able to
successfully capitalize on their pasts. Simply, they lack the necessary cultural and economic
capital.
Other than the few joint ventures mentioned above, we observe that most second-generation
Turks who tried to build careers around their pasts did so as individuals. Invariably, their point of
reference was hip-hop. M.T., a former leader of the 36 Boys, was a world-class athlete and now
works as a coach. N.C. was a graffiti artist in the past and is today a film director often described
as “the Spike Lee of Germany” (Ukena 2009, p. 162). Brothers F.T. and M.T. own a music pro-
duction company. As a result of a decree by the Senate of Berlin, some gang members with crimi-
nal pasts now serve as Kiezläufer (district patrols), assisting youth and guiding them away from
crime.
While arising from a common experience, the paths of second-generation immigrants are now
disparate. In the past, traditional communalism was valued over individualism, and personal dif-
ferences were discounted. The new bohemia makes space for individualism, multiculturalism,
and entrepreneurship, enabling immigrants to find their own, personal paths. Few, however, man-
aged the high profile reputation that is the apex of the bohemian lifestyle; the rest carry on with
their local occupations.

Conclusion
The second generation of Turks played a crucial role in recasting the migration experience of the
1960s into a unique diasporic culture. This research, which takes the Kreuzberg district of Berlin
as a center of the Turkish diaspora’s ongoing maneuvering for existence, shows how in various
stages of migration history, the second generation’s narratives transect the quarter’s own socio-
political history and spatiotemporal change. What made these interactions possible was the
acceptance of the permanency of migration, which came about in this second generation.
We conclude that the various actors who effectively founded the Turkish diaspora also held a
distinctive and specific position in the unique social structure of Kreuzberg writ large. Their
struggle for existence, identity, and self-expression paralleled and contributed to the dynamic
changes that comprise the district’s recent history. But it would be overreaching to argue that
immigrants played the decisive or driving role in the transformation. Immigrant culture was but
one artery feeding the changes, insufficient on its own to substitute for the dynamics of Kreuzberg.
Hence, this research shows how Turkish immigrants have been positioned at a crossroads where
the “hobo” character of the quarter evolved into a bohemia.
Since the diaspora did not fully internalize the district’s dynamic politics and culture until the
fall of the Wall, they now seem to be at a disadvantage with respect to other actors. Although the
district is known as “Little Istanbul,” and Turks are everywhere, their structural role in Kreuzberg
is indefinite and delicate. A scarcity of cultural and economic capital is one explanation of the
disconnection. The district, which has transformed into a bohemia, is prospering. And while Turks
are trying to ride the coattails of this prosperity, often through the familiar route of food service,
unemployment among immigrants is growing. Considering the accompanying increases in
Kreuzberg’s rents, an exodus of immigrants from the center to the periphery seems eminent. Thus,
the center is recapturing the locations where once only outcasts dared to go after land owners
abandoned Kreuzberg in the 1960s. The new situation needs its own analysis, particularly as it
concerns the strategies of the third and fourth generations of Kreuzberg’s immigrant population.
Güney et al. 53

Acknowledgments
Authors gratefully acknowledge the support of Galatasaray University and Prof. Dr. Nilgün Tutal Cheviron.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article: This research is funded by Galatasaray University Scientific Research, Grant
14.300.001.

Notes
1. The Autonome (Ger. Autonomus) comprised young squatters with a fiercely leftist political agenda.
2. Antifa is a sobriquet for the European and German antifascist movement that originally emerged in the
1920s. Antifa organizations of the 1980s were creating a line of defense against the rise in Neo-Nazis
attacks. Among them, AntifaWestberlin and AntifaGençlik were ones into which immigrants were
drawn in particular.
3. The “Turkish Revolutionary Youth Federation” was founded at the end of 1965. It was a leftist student
movement that gained support at Turkish universities in the 1970s. After the military coup of 1980,
most of its members were arrested or fled abroad.
4. Street gangs such as the “36 Boys” and the “36 Youth” were named for one of the postal codes of
Kreuzberg at the time: 1000 Berlin 36.

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Key Online Resources

http://www.fhxb-museum.de
http://www.umbruch-bildarchiv.de/willkomm1.html
http://kreuzberged.com
http://www.goethe.de/wis/fut/prj/for/mig/en1053496.htm
http://www.streetunivercity.de

Author Biographies
Serhat Güney is an associate professor at Galatasaray University, Istanbul, and has worked extensively on
radio listenership, immigrant media, and music. He currently studies on migrancy within the scope of cul-
tural production and communication. He is lecturing on broadcasting history and music use in media.
Bülent Kabaş is an assistant professor at Sakarya University. He is studying on youth subcultures within
the frame of cultural globalization. His PhD thesis is an ethnographic research on the popularization of
youth subcultures. He is currently working on immigrant youth cultures in the context of youth centers.
Cem Pekman is a professor at the Communications Faculty of Kocaeli University. He is lecturing on
broadcasting history, broadcasting systems, and media policy. He is the author and editor of three books,
Private Television: The Transformation Process of European Broadcasting; The Music of Image, The
Image of Music; and Ertem Eğilmez: A Film Man; and author of several book chapters. His articles are
mainly on broadcasting history and policy in Turkey and Europe, film music, advertising, and product
placement.