Like Germany’s president, I really like a very good kebab. Cosying as much as autocrats like Erdoğan, much less so | Fatma Aydemir

“Nazis eat döner kebabs in secret,” should be one of many dumbest slogans I’ve seen at German protests in opposition to the far proper. Sure, the recognition of the kebab in Germany has develop into one thing of an emblem of labour migration from Turkey after the second world struggle. And sure, Nazis get hungry, too. So what? If the consumption of ethnic-minority meals was actually an impediment to the ideology of white supremacy, Germans would both be starved out by now or they wouldn’t vote for Different für Deutschland (AfD). Neither of those is the case: the kebab is the second hottest quick meals amongst Germans, and in accordance with polls, the AfD their second hottest political celebration.

Nonetheless, for the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, it appears to be an indication of cosmopolitanism to advertise kebab consuming, so his staff thought it a good suggestion to ship him to Turkey with an entire skewer stuffed with meat as a part of an official go to this week, the primary by a German president in 10 years.

Bilateral relations could also be shaky however Turkey stays a extremely strategic accomplice within the European Union’s 2016 cash-for-refugees deal (for which Steinmeier thanked Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday) regardless of latest stories concerning the deal’s unsustainability and the dearth of transparency across the €6bn paid to the Turkish state for stopping refugees from fleeing in direction of EU territory.

Turkey can also be the origin nation of the most important diaspora residing in Germany, comprising about 3 million folks, now in second, third or fourth generations.

Certainly one of them is Arif Keleş, a snack-shop proprietor from Berlin, who accompanied Steinmeier to Istanbul this week and served the company at a reception straight from his rotisserie. In lots of cultural contexts, 60kg of meat wouldn’t essentially be the worst reward a visitor might deliver to a celebration. Particularly not on this financial system. However Steinmeier’s speech expressing gratitude for Turks introducing the “German nationwide dish” within the Sixties, and his clumsy picture stunt with an enormous knife, upset many Turkish-Germans, who felt their group’s achievements had been degraded and lowered to an reasonably priced snack. Not me.

I’m the daughter of small enterprise homeowners of Turkish and Kurdish descent. Even when in my case it isn’t kebabs however simply plain bread, I’ll by no means really feel disgrace or anger about the truth that my mom served meals to Germans and afforded us a reasonably comfy life by doing so. Sure, Turkish-Germans additionally invented the BioNTech vaccine in opposition to Covid. However my mother and father didn’t, and neither did I. Why would I take pleasure in issues another person did, as a substitute of celebrating the working-class heroes who raised and nurtured me?

Not solely do small companies resembling kebab retailers nonetheless supply probably the most accessible probability of social mobility for many individuals of migrant heritage in Germany, they’re additionally locations wherein they aresometimes liable to being bodily attacked. It wasn’t by coincidence that every one 9 individuals who had been murdered by the neo-Nazi terrorist organisation NSU between 2000 and 2006 had been small enterprise homeowners at work, visibly folks of color, simple to trace down at their grocery shops kebab stands or stitching retailers.

Die Dönermorde (döner kebab murders) was the German media’s racist time period for these horrific incidents, till the neo-Nazi murderers unmasked themselves.

In fact, like many different present and historic details, this was not a part of the pleasant sandwich present Steinmeier introduced throughout his journey to mark 100 years of diplomatic relations between Germany and the fashionable Turkish republic. It was ironic that Steinmeier met Erdoğan in Ankara on the identical day that the Armenian genocide, which the Germans and Turks collaborated on in 1915, is historically commemorated. No shock that this went unmentioned at their assembly, for the reason that genocide remains to be being actively denied by the Turkish state. Germany lastly acknowledged the genocide in 2016, however Turkish nationalists among the many diaspora usually achieve stopping memorials from being in-built public areas, as they did final yr in Cologne.

It’s onerous to disclaim {that a} majority of the Turkish diaspora in Germany is fairly conservative, no matter generational traces, and helps an autocratic authorities in a rustic they solely go to for holidays. From the time Germany’s drive to recruit “visitor staff” from Turkey began in 1961, the German state has been strongly supportive of fundamentalist and rightwing immigrant associations, initially as a part of an try to weaken the left in the course of the chilly struggle. The result’s a really well-organised construction of Turkish ultranationalists in Germany, and severe conflicts with different ethnic minorities, in addition to dissidents who’ve emigrated from Turkey to flee political repression.

I’ve to say, I like a kebab quite a bit, when it’s finished effectively. And that’s largely the case when it’s served by Kurdish cooks in retailers disguised as “Turkish” for each advertising and safety causes. Sure, there’s additionally an incredible security downside for Kurds in Europe, as latest assaults on Kurdish households in Belgium by the so-called Gray Wolves have proven. In truth, Steinmeier’s döner diplomacy might have simply led to a frank and helpful dialogue of the Turkish state’s political repression of Kurds, if Germany wasn’t already for many years now complicit in persecuting Kurdish activists and extraditing them to Turkey.

The issue with döner diplomacy is de facto not the supposedly insulting fast-food references or stereotypes. It’s the cynicism with which a 60kg meat skewer is introduced as a tantalising image of real German-Turkish friendship, whereas masking the true nature of this morally unsavoury, if pragmatic present of unity.

• Fatma Aydemir is a Berlin-based writer, novelist, playwright and a Guardian Europe columnist