Austria: German-language courses are a provocation for Turkey
Translated from Kurier (via NRP):
Representatives of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) visited Ankara recently in order to see how to improve the integration of Turkish Austrians. They were told by Mehmet Özavsar, head of the Turkish Religious Affairs authority (Diyanet) that second and third generation Turks in Austria did not have serious integration problems, since the young Turks in Austria have already breathed in deeply of the European air. If there were problems with integration, he said, the Austrian politicians should come up with projects to fix the situation. But he did not go into concrete details.
Gürsel Dönmez, a political scientist who had lived in Vienna for 22 years, said that courses in German were perceived as a provocation in Ankara. "A Turk will always feel like a Turk, we just have a very strong national awareness."
Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan tasked Dönmez with creating a new agency to care for Turks abroad. Erdogan recently told German Turks to learn Turkish before they learn German. Does that mean they should remain Turks? Dönmez: No, of course we can't say that. But, he adds, assimilation is a violation of human rights, as Erdogan says.
