The Struggle for the Mother Tongue of the Turkish Community in Germany From Past to Present: A General Evaluation

The most important problem of Turkish society in Germany originates from the mother tongue. As a matter of fact, the mother tongue has been one of the most discussed issues since the first years of migration. However, the limitations imposed on the mother tongue by the majority society and the mutually produced information pollution are an obstacle to the opening of an effective field of struggle. Immigration studies are devoted to the German spoken by the immigrants, rather than to their original language. Although the problem of the native language of immigrants is actually related to the field of linguistics it has been pushed into the lap of sociology by this discipline. However sociology does not include studies that examine the transfer and loss of language and its effects on migration. As a esult, the mother tongue debates have become like a labyrinth with no exit. In the study, the struggle for the mother tongue of the Turkish society in Germany was evaluated over generations. In the light of sociolinguistic theories and related literatüre, it has been tried to reveal how close this struggle is to the conditions required for the preservation of a language that is in the state of reference. The results show that Turkish should be taken under institutional protection in order to be able to maintain it as a mother tongue in Germany. Nevetheless, the struggle moves the Turkish society away from this goal as the generations progress. While the process is working towards language shift, the German society is also preparing to offer Turkish as a foreign language course in German schools. Parallel to this, the struggle for the mother tongue of the Turkish society also tends to install Turkish as a second foreign language course in high schools. This refers to the acceptance that Turkish children's mother tongue will no longer be Turkish in the future.