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German politics xth attempt


kiko

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The Doppelpass legislation and practice seems anything but simple and straightforward. Surprising for me that in 2011 (the only year we have numbers for) Turks are only the third most numerous group of double passport holders (after Poles and Russians) in Germany and there are (as of 2011) about 1.5 Million Turks in Germany without a German passport, 800,000 of Turkish descent with only a German passport and about 530,000 with both.

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/doppelte-staatsbuergerschaft-und-doppelpass-das-sind-die-fakten-a-1124805.html

 

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Really? 

Without looking at any statistics, I would have guessed that Russian-Germans would occupy the top spot as far as dual citizenship is concerned.  Remember a lot of them moved to Germany in the early 90s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and they always had an easier road to a German passport than the Turks who had been living in Germany for 2-3 generations. 

That was the hypocrisy behind Koch's election campaign in Hessia that really made me mad back then. Well, that and the Jewish inheritance for the conservative party.

I didn't expect Poles to outnumber the Turks and to come in second though. 

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I got the numbers from the linked article and did not independently check them as the numbers for the Turks seemed most relevant now anyway. I guess that the numbers would have been different in the mid-1990s when it was more difficult for Turks while the Russian Germans received it easily (some of them have probably died in the last 20-25 years).

690.000 Deutsche zusätzlich die polnische, 570.000 die russische und 530.000 die türkische Staatsangehörigkeit.

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Yes, some have died, some didn't. Remember they only needed to provide a German grandfather (or grandmother) somewhere in their family tree to obtain the German citizenship. But my working hypothesis was, that the ties to the homeland are properly still strong for families who migrated to Germany in the 1990s, so I could see second Generation Russian Germans walk into the Russian embassy and ask for a Russian passport.

On a second thought, the number of Poles really shouldn't be that surprising, basically same story as with the Russian Germans. East Prussia, Silesia etc. Though I assumed a lot of those folks moved west after WWII and never became Polish citizens, which was of course not a realistic assumptions.

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I don't know anymore whether I should find the increasing childishness of Erdogan and his lackeys funny or be horrified by it. It's like all the would-be dictators of our time make it a competition to look as much as a caricature of themselves as possible.

I mean, he got something resembling of a point when he criticised Germany of allowing the people he likes to persecute and drop bombs on to make a rally against his version of the Ermächtigungsgesetz while his lackeys are not allowed to get a platform to advertise just that. And then his lackeys ruin it by getting baited by the BND chief. Sure, it might have not been the most prudent decision during the current tensions for a secret service chief to call Erdogan out on his blatant lies when it comes to painting Gülen as a scapegoat. Not that we didn't all know that before. But now trying to paint a conspiracy theory in which German spies caused it, really? As a sarcastic quip I might have given that one a pass, but Isik's wording doesn't make it hard for Erdogan's more rabid supporters to take this one seriously.

What's with Nazis and their fucking conspiracy theories?

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  • 4 weeks later...

Tomorrow is the referendum in Turkey. I'm not really concerned that Erdogan will not win (even if he looses he'll likely call for re-elections until he likes the result better, that's kinda his thing), but I'm still concerned about the Turkish equivalent of Ermächtigungsgesetz.

The German media is full of polls and interviews about it right now. Weirdly enough, the polls say that it's currently an utterly open race (which I find pretty dubious, especially in regards to the opposition crackdowns that completely wiped out any kind of counter-campaigning).

The media impression also pretty much confirms my suspicions in regards to the Turkish Germans. While Erdogan manages to rile up his usual fans (old people who always voted for him and see nothing wrong with it, as well as badly integrated other ones across the board), the opposition appears split between a small number of politically interested young people who will actually vote 'no' and politically uninterested who go "It doesn't affect me anyway, so I won't bother". Damn...

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An interesting point is that we (again) get confirmation that the Turkish diaspora is (at least) two groups. There are highly educated, secular, liberal democrats from Ankara who move to the US. US Turks voted overwhelmingly no. (So did UK Turks.) And then there are Turks from the Anatolian Steppe who fail to integrate into modern Turkey just as they fail to integrate into modern Europe. They make up the vast majority of continental European Turks. They voted yes, roughly 2 out of 3. (More in Belgium.) 

Europe consistently fails to attract migrants that are compatible with European values and labour markets.

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20 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Europe consistently fails to attract migrants that are compatible with European values and labour markets.

Looks a bit superficial to me. As far as Germany is concerned, most of those Turks that voted yes, are not first generation immigrants. The first generation of Turks migrated to Germany in the early 1960s. Bit historical background. Germany experienced in the 1950s an economic boom, ususally refered to as the economic miracle. That resulted in a labour shortage, which has lead to different agreements about workers being allowed to come Germany (remember this was pre EU freedom of movement). The first states with which those agreements were reached were Italy and a bit later Spain and Greece, and Turkey (Turkey with some political pressure from Turkey as a NATO ally). The labour markets had different requirements back then, so those migrants were compatible. The original idea was, those work migrants, spend their working lives in Germany, and then basically bugger off, when they get old. That this concept idea was and is somewhat flawed should be obvious (cue starting a family and being of working age is surprisingly correlated (who would have thought?)).

Nothing lasts forever. So the agreements regarding hiring new workers was put on halt in the late 1960 early 1970 I think (would need to look it, but the time frame is about right). There were also a couple of law changes involving financial support of children not living in Germany (which basically meant less money if the kids were in Turkey and not in Germany), so the second wave was the families of the workers. The late Helmut Schmidt managed to get some laws passed during his reign as chancellor, that quietly reduced the number of migrants from Turkey and which made it easier for them to move back and start (or resume) a life in Turkey again.

Anyway, in the 1980s Turkey was not a particularly stable country, so that (at least partly) resulted in a third wave of migration from Turkey to Germany. Bear in mind, among those migrants from all those stages, there was also a number of Kurds, who are not particularly fond of Erdogan.

Sidenote. Apparently Turks in Germany voted 60% in favour of Erdogan, which is a bigger margin than the overall result (51%). I find this apparent democracy lack somewhat disturbing, and one could argue, that the culture in Turkey is more democratic, than it is in our Turkish communities in Germany.

 

 

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Serdan at his best, as usual!

I agree it's disturbing. Also, Erdowie- er, Erdogan has really been riling them up against Germany, with his nazi accusations and suggestions like his "have 5 kids each of you to fight them from within!" comment... But I've generally made my peace with the fact that democracy is SO last century, so ...whatever.

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On 17/04/2017 at 5:25 PM, Happy Ent said:

An interesting point is that we (again) get confirmation that the Turkish diaspora is (at least) two groups. There are highly educated, secular, liberal democrats from Ankara who move to the US. US Turks voted overwhelmingly no. (So did UK Turks.)

There were only 7,000 votes in the UK, and the Turkish community in the UK is, apart from Turkish Cypriots who are inelgible to vote, mostly Kurdish, so I think that says little about their education or secularity, but I suspect you know that.

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On 17.4.2017 at 7:31 PM, Notone said:

Sidenote. Apparently Turks in Germany voted 60% in favour of Erdogan, which is a bigger margin than the overall result (51%). I find this apparent democracy lack somewhat disturbing, and one could argue, that the culture in Turkey is more democratic, than it is in our Turkish communities in Germany.

It should be noted that only ~40% of eligible Turkish voters in Germany voted in the referendum, and a lot of those living in these Turkish communities weren't eligible to vote at all.

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On 19.4.2017 at 10:19 AM, Jon AS said:

It should be noted that only ~40% of eligible Turkish voters in Germany voted in the referendum, and a lot of those living in these Turkish communities weren't eligible to vote at all.

60% of 40% is still 24%.So we know that at least every fourth Turkish voter supported Erdogan in this (assuming the other 60% would have turned him down). I find it hard to see that as comforting. But for the pure argument's sake, how many of those 60% of eligible voters would've voted Hayir?

 

On 19.4.2017 at 0:27 AM, Mindwalker said:

Also, Erdowie- er, Erdogan has really been riling them up against Germany, with his nazi accusations and suggestions like his "have 5 kids each of you to fight them from within!" comment...

Well, that comment had me laughing actually. The comment in his entirety was really absurd. It was something like this (I am too lazy to lock up the actual phrasing). "I want you to have 5 kids, dirve the biggest cars and send your kids to the best schools." yadda, yadda, yadda. Like his supporters actually could send (or had themselves attended) the "best schools", The highly educated, well integrated guys isn't really Erdogan's crowd.

And Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan is old. The Schnuckelschnauzer.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

So the Social Democrats lost a series of regional elections, most notably in North Rhine-Westphalia. Looks like the Schultz hype is over. It won't be easy for the CDU to form coalitions, though. FDP seems to make a comeback but will be reluctant to join another coalition under Merkel. She'll probably be stuck with a disgruntled SPD in another grand coalition.

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13 minutes ago, Loge said:

So the Social Democrats lost a series of regional elections, most notably in North Rhine-Westphalia. Looks like the Schultz hype is over. It won't be easy for the CDU to form coalitions, though. FDP seems to make a comeback but will be reluctant to join another coalition under Merkel. She'll probably be stuck with a disgruntled SPD in another grand coalition.

I will believe in FPD reculancy to join a coalition if there is an CDU/FDP majority after the next election and they refuse Merkel's offer. Not a minute before. At least you Germans can still chose a lesser evil right now all Austrian parties are more or less unelectable from my point of view.  I'm at the point where I would vote for Merkel if I could...

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23 minutes ago, Wolfgang I said:

I will believe in FPD reculancy to join a coalition if there is an CDU/FDP majority after the next election and they refuse Merkel's offer. Not a minute before. At least you Germans can still chose a lesser evil right now all Austrian parties are more or less unelectable from my point of view.  I'm at the point where I would vote for Merkel if I could...

There probably won't be a majority. Not with the Greens, Linke, and AfD all in the Bundestag. But even if there is, the FDP just got burned too badly last time. Same as with the SPD. Merkel had to make a lot of concessions in the 2013 coalition talks because the SPD had been thrashed in the elections after the first Merkel-led coalition.

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I could hardly believe the Schulz hype in the first place. (I had thought this was a plot by Gabriel so Schulz would lose and Gabriel could make a comeback some time later.) The problem is that the German social democrats (not unlike their colleagues in France and elsewhere) seem either cynical or stupid. They have only lost by their movement towards neoliberalism, they catastrophically lost as "junior partners" of coalitions with Merkel. But they don't seem to realize it. There is right now a slight red-red-green majority in the national parliament. So there could have been an SPD chancellor. But they prefer junior partner and losing ever more. Completely regardless of actual policies (ever weaker unions, welfare cuts, selling out the autobahn, stupid wars in the middle east etc.) they should be smart enough to see that strategically they are destroying themselves and have become a perpetual opposition or junior partner. I really don't understand that after 12 or more years of losing elections they don't realize that. So the only viable conclusion is that they *do* understand it but don't care as soon as there is still a fat government pension in for them after a few years in parliament or even as a minister.

As for the election in fall, I don't think it will be enough for CDU/FDP. But as the Greens have shown in the last years that they are even cheaper whores (with due apologies to that comparably honorable business) than the FDP, there could maybe a "Jamaica". Or most probably another CDU/SPD until people are so fed up with them that the CDU will be at 27 and the SPD at 17 percent and they need the FDP or the Greens to form a majority.

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The SPD needs to go full nationalism. Protect their own working class against the globalist, neoliberal elite.

Strict border controls, zero immigration from MENA, strict secularism, principled defence of free speech, tough on law and order, clear preference to citizens over non-citizens, draconian assimilation policies, minimal welfare payments to non-citizens, make naturalisation very hard, no double passports, and very generous repatriation incentives for migrants. Strong focus on knowledge in education, over inclusion. Principled rejection of identity politics and all other forms of essentialism. (Not sure what to do with the Euro, though. It is a terrible idea, but helps Germany. So from a parochial point of view, it can stay.)

All of this, though painful, is entirely compatible with social democratic ideals. Thilo Sarrazin (SPD) lays out most of these points in his books, in a perfectly social democratic fashion. The AfD would just die, and the working class (and even the precariate) would immediately start voting SPD again. 

Ideologically, the SPD should advocate Popper’s Open Society, not Soros’s.

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I am not sure if this would work out, regardles of whether it could be implemented at all and especially with today's politicians and "package deals", i.e. positions typically bundled together to form some kind of party profile. A hard anti-immigrant course would certainly not only gain voters but also lose some and lose any possible support by the Greens (who are by now basically green liberals).

Most recent SPD maximum was 1998 41%. Forecast for fall 2017 is 29-30%. Forecasts for AfD 8%. They would never get all of the AfD (note that almost everyone *active* in the AfD is either former FDP/CDU or further "right" or libertarian). Give them half of the AfD and half of the Left (about 8-9%, I think half of them as "ressentiment" left that could be gained by such policies is realistic, the other half is "hard core left" that would be abhorred by anti-immigration) and they would not even reach that 41%. So it basically depends on the ca. 30% who did not vote at all in 2013. And they would also lose some of their current voters who'd vote Green or something else because they'd be abhorred by "anti-human" anti-immigration policies.

I think the refugee/immigrant problem is a bugbear. The SPD fell from 41 in 1998 to 34 in 2005 (after being in power for that time) and a whopping  23%! in 2009 (after being Merkel's junior partner). All this precedes the refugees by almost a decade. I doubt that aping the AfD would gain them anything. They have tried to "gain the middle" for 15 years without success. Because Merkel and others are already in the middle. Furthermore, as we know from many issues, Merkel's CDU can turn on a penny and the CSU would already have the harsh anti-immigration policy waiting in a drawer. The SPD could again be easily overtaken even before such a turn brought them any advantages.

I don't really know what would help them. I perfectly understand that they have lost a huge number of members and core voters because of their "betrayals" around 2000 (mainly economic policy and severe welfare and pension cuts but also their Balkan and middle east wars) and that it will be very hard to be even a little trustworthy again. I think they should recant the welfare (and especially pension) cuts that deeply hurt their core clientele. But as the ones immediately hurt by that (the actually unemployed and poor) hardly vote at all, it seems open if they would even bother even in such a case. These non-voters might be sunk to deep into depression, videogames, some other stupor to care. And most of the ones who are "only indirectly" hurt because they still have some jobs but are under far more pressure than ever before and will have very small pensions despite paying into the system for decades, don't realize what happened and keep voting for the same parties anyway.

 

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27 minutes ago, Notone said:

I think it's a tad more complicated, right now. Yes, four years ago, they could've (and arguably should have tried that). But with the nationalist turn the left has taken in recent years with Lafontaine and Wagenknecht, I am not particularly fond of that idea. At least not as long those two afore mentioned persons have anything to say (check earlier posts, no need to repeat that argument). On the other hand, the SPD has managed to get some legislation implemented, but they failed to reap the rewards for that. Add to that, that Merkel hasn't really done anything incredibly stupid, she has been a pretty sane and stable voice. And with all the insanity happening on the international stage, that is a quality that can hardly be overestimated. The Agenda 2010 is another story, with the SPD getting all the blame, and the CDU/CSU reaping the rewards with the strong economy. You can disagree with Merkel on a lot of issues, but the stuff she is wrong about, she is still within the realms of sanity. And she is not as despicable as Seehofer or de Maiziere.

It was probably already too late 4 years ago. But they should have at least tried. If only for the experience of the disastrous 2009 result when they took all the blame and Merkel was hardly hurt by the "Merkelsteuer" etc. and praised for the reaction in the economic crisis. But this again shows that the roots lie far deeper: The economic crisis of 2007/08 was only made possible because Schroeder/Eichel went against Lafontaine's advice in 1999 and loosened up banking regulations etc. Virtually everything Lafo (and I admit that he is an insufferable Besserwisser) wanted back then would have avoided or buffered the crisis. But then he left and became the main enemy so they could not ever try a coalition with the Leftists.

The truly horrible thing is how they can believe it would work this time. With Schulz, of all people. He is a pure career politician. Before he entered politics he was largely a failure (left school, alcoholic) but then suddenly the youngest mayor...

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