Claiming Spaces, Making Places: Examining Zazaki Identity in Germany

Germany is home to about four million people of Turkish origin and ancestry. My paper looks into the ethno-linguistic layers that often disappear under two established labels: those of German “Turks” and of German “Kurds”. The Turkish presence in Germany relates to the recruitment of guest workers in the 1960s and to the family reunification law of 1974, when people from Turkey could start becoming German citizens and permanent residents. What are some of the complexities of this diverse population today? While there is a substantial amount of scholarly and popular interest around the “Turkish” presence in Germany, I focus on the Zazaki-speaking community originating in Turkey, in its tension with the larger Turkish and Turkish-Kurdish diasporas.

Zazaki speakers’ ethnic identity as Kurdish is the subject of controversy both among Zazaki members themselves and among other Kurds (the majority of which speak related variations of Kurdish languages). Thus, Zazaki speakers are a migrant minority in Germany, an ethnic minority among German “Turks”, and a linguistic minority among the Kurdish diaspora. The paper looks at some of the relevant processes of identification of this Zazaki German diaspora, using language as an entry point into larger discussions about mobility, citizenship, cultural values, and the accommodation of linguistic rights in European societies. It is based on seven weeks of ethnographic fieldwork near Frankfurt, and it makes the case for an analysis of Zazaki identity in light of both transnational mobility and of its relations with larger Kurdish, Turkish, and German discourses and identities.