The Existential Struggle of Second-Generation Turkish Immigrants in Kreuzberg

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.

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 portrayed 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 status 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 habitat, 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 establishment 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 dialogue 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 relationship 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 historically 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 illuminative 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 generation 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 preferred to struggle and seek out ways to have a voice in the place where they grew up and lived. This dynamic struggle for autonomy and the foundation for a diasporic motherland was confirmed 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 Autonome ¹ 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 dropouts: 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 concept: that of “hobohemia.” In his book, The Hobo, Anderson notes how certain streets, parks, and their surroundings in the city center where hobos “hang around” facilitate an evolution in to community. He describes these “stems” as “location[s] where street regulars could find other regulars; 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 disruptive 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 system 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 families 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 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 siblings, 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 subcultures in a rather poor quarter of the city. Being on streets or on “promenade” brought with it disappointment. In line with Cohen’s conceptualization of the motivations for the foundation of gangs, immigrant children in Kreuzberg experienced crises of self-assurance under the burden of their disappointments 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 experienced 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 environment 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 restructured 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 associations, but their relations with active, local Antifa ² 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 trying to prove themselves” (personal communication, June 18, 2013). This criticism points to 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-Genç ³ 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 communication 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 demonstration 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 communication, 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) organization 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)

Although the revival of racism did not necessarily lead to a comprehensive, ideological transformation 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 “solidarity” was still the underlying strategy of existence for those in the first generation of the diaspora. 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 instrument 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 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 implicated and charged with conspiracy to murder. The unwarranted charge of premeditation encouraged 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 ourselves 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 important step in the evolution of the struggle for existence among the Kreuzberg immigrant community: “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 demographic 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 district, 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 population 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 showing 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 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 sovereignty 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 prototypical. 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 cultural 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 immigrants 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 diasporic cultural accumulations and codes to reposition themselves during this transition. In the spirit of the new era, “marketing” became prominent. Turkish immigrants justified the experiences 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 noncompliant. 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).

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 generation 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 production company. As a result of a decree by the Senate of Berlin, some gang members with criminal 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 differences were discounted. The new bohemia makes space for individualism, multiculturalism, and entrepreneurship, enabling immigrants to find their own, personal paths. Few, however, managed 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 sociopolitical 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.