ARHUS, Denmark This is a love
story with its share of pain. It begins in a Turkish village where geese
roam the dusty streets and days turn to the rhythm of harvest and prayer.
It ends in this bustling Danish port town where passion undid tradition
and cultures of East and West clashed.
Ali Simsek started it all. Like millions of Turkish immigrants drawn
to a Europe that needed laborers, he turned his back on the harsh hills
and hushed nights of central Anatolia to become a "guest worker" in a Danish
timber factory near here. That was back in 1970, and as befits a "guest,"
he did not plan to stay forever.
So much for plans. His wife and four children soon joined him a simple
procedure at the time. He worked hard, made money, obeyed the law. But
Mr. Simsek never learned a word of Danish or forsook Turkish customs. So
when his oldest son, Bunyamin, turned 17, it seemed natural to arrange
a marriage for him.
Back in Turkey, the daughter of Mr. Simsek's closest friend was waiting,
a modest young woman in a traditional headscarf who knew nothing of life
outside the village. The couple were married in a month. "I did not know
I could say `No,' " Bunyamin says. "What my parents said was the truth.
So I said `Yes.' "
But the arranged marriage would collapse, undone by the sharp cultural
differences between Bunyamin, a Dane in all but name, and his Turkish bride.
For millions of second-generation immigrants in Europe, people who are
often tugged between strict tradition and freewheeling Western habits,
the failure is an emblem of the unsettling contradictions of their lives.
European governments, uneasy about an influx of foreigners, now say
these immigrants must resolve the contradictions by embracing the culture
of their adoptive lands. The bureaucrats have focused on arranged marriages
as disastrous: they hinder integration, offend Western values and encourage
immigrant ghettos, or so officials say. They also bring more immigrants
because "family unification" is one of the few legal ways left to get into
Europe.
"Immigrants must adapt to Danish cultural norms, which include free
speech and the right to choose your spouse," said Nils Preiser, a senior
Interior Ministry official. "Arranged marriages are a problem because compulsion
is unacceptable and because if generations of immigrants find their spouses
back home, ethnic groups remain separate."
Certainly division seems hard to overcome. In many ways, Bunyamin, now
30, is a Dane. He was 2 when he arrived in Aarhus; he is a Danish citizen;
he speaks fluent Danish. Unlike his father's cautious generation of newcomers,
this second-generation immigrant is at ease with the brisk give- and-take
of Western society.
But he is olive-skinned, black-haired and dark-eyed. No Viking, he.
Four portraits of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state,
hang in his living-room. He is a Muslim; no Danish bacon for him. This
year, he is fasting for Ramadan. Some people call him a "Nydansker," or
"New Dane," a term that sets him and others like him apart.
"Like many second-generation immigrants, I have two identities," he
says. "An outside face for my Danish friends, and an inside one for my
family. I cannot give up one or the other. With my name, my religion and
my appearance, I will never satisfy people here that I'm a Dane. And I
know these calls to become Danish are dishonest because we are always presented
with a moving target."
Politics of National Identity
As European states accept often grudgingly that they have become
"immigrant societies" despite enduring self-images of ethnic homogeneity,
they are looking anew for ways to preserve their national culture, or whatever
globalization has left of it.
This campaign often portrayed as the defense of a cohesive European
model of society against a fragmented American "multicultural" model
crosses party lines. In the featureless post-cold-war political landscape
of a Europe no longer at risk, the politics of national identity have become
pervasive, a leitmotif of the times.
In Germany, the new buzzword of the center-right opposition Christian
Democrats is "Leitkultur," a vague "guiding culture," Christian and German,
to which immigrants, many of them Muslims, are being asked to conform.
In Denmark, the prime minister, Poul Rasmussen, a center-left Social
Democrat, said recently that he could not accept certain "aspects of the
Islamic religion," like interrupting work with prayer. "It must be clear
that in Denmark we work in the workplace," he said.
The message is clear: Conform, at work and in marriage. Denmark, saying
90 percent of Danish Turks find wedding partners in Turkey, passed legislation
this year to deter any immigrant younger than 25 from bringing a foreign
spouse to Denmark.
The aim of such policies may appear reasonable: promote integration
by obliging immigrants to become fully adapted members of society. But
a close look at Bunyamin Simsek's odyssey through his arranged marriage,
a passionate affair, divorce, family tumult and uneasy adjustment to Danish
life suggest a more complex and troubling reality.
Ali Simsek, trained as a Muslim cleric and known in his central Anatolian
village of Kizilcakisla by the high title of Ali Hodja, never really wanted
his son Bunyamin to be a Dane. Strictness marked the boy's upbringing.
As dozens of Turks followed Mr. Simsek to Aarhus from the village, a conservative
spirit came with them.
Early in life Bunyamin learned two central elements of Turkish culture:
respect, particularly of parents, and honor, particularly that of the family.
The Turkish word for honor, "sheref," was often heard, and its singular
weight was unmistakable.
Like millions of children of guest workers there are 2.3 million Turks
in Germany and tens of thousands in Denmark Bunyamin found himself tugged
between two apparently irreconcilable worlds.
Home was Denmark, but it was also the Turkish village, to which the
family traveled most summers a cluster of houses and dirt roads gathered
around a mosque where the boy played with animals and the open fields seemed
thrillingly vast.
In the summer of 1987, Mr. Simsek told Bunyamin that he would marry
Sorgul Ceran, a young woman whose father, Ali Ceran, had been a close friend
since elementary school.
"We had known each other all our lives, and we wanted to join the families,"
said Mr. Ceran, who works in the building trades.
But the joining barely masked a cultural abyss. Sorgul, six years older
than the teenage Bunyamin, had never set foot in Ankara, let alone Denmark.
When, a year after their marriage in the village, she secured Danish residence
papers and traveled to join her husband, she plunged into the unknown.
A son, Alattin, was quickly born. The couple lived with Bunyamin's parents.
Sorgul led a protected life, largely insulated from Danes, while her young
husband went out to study architecture. But when university studies ended
and he spent more time at home, things quickly soured.
"My wife was wearing a veil and that was a problem for me in Denmark,"
he says. "You have to adapt, give up something to get something, but she
would not. I was going out with Danish friends, but it was awkward with
Sorgul. I felt I could not show her in a veil."
Sorgul's version of events is that Bunyamin's father insisted that she
cover her head. She says that when her husband asked her to wear makeup,
she did but still could not please him. Confined to home, how could she
adapt and learn Danish?
When, in 1993, the couple moved to their own apartment in an area of
Aarhus known as "the ghetto" because so many immigrants live there, the
arguments became more bitter, even violent at times.
Bunyamin, who, finding nothing in his chosen field of architecture,
was working as a cabin attendant for a Danish charter airline company,
Sterling Air, felt suffocated. But Sorgul could not bear the thought of
their son's being raised without a father.
"I was living my life for my parents, to satisfy them," Bunyamin said.
"But then I saw that I needed to live things for myself, and I could not
do that without leaving Sorgul."
But divorce is dishonor, and dishonor, as the young Bunyamin had heard
so many times, is anathema. Mr. Simsek would be shamed before the 3,000
Turks of Aarhus, whose spiritual authority he had become, his "sheref"
shattered.
So when in 1994 Bunyamin announced that he was considering divorce,
the response from his father was immediate: "In that case, you will not
be my son anymore."
The Other Woman
By now, another woman with roots in Kizilcakisla had entered Bunyamin's
life. Fatma Oektem's grandfather came from the village to Denmark in the
1970's. But born and raised in Aarhus, fluent in Danish, Fatma, 27, is
very different from Sorgul: at home in the West, emancipated, sparkling,
sophisticated.
In good cliché fashion, she and Bunyamin met aboard one of his
flights to Antalya, in southern Turkey. As a cabin attendant, he served
her. On her return, in early 1994, they again met by chance at a gathering
of Aarhus Turkish associations.
"Oh," Fatma joked. "Can you please fly me back to Turkey?"
"Why go back to Turkey?" Bunyamin asked.
"Because I'd like to live there," she said.
"You could never do that," he responded. "You'd be unable to adapt."
"Oh really," Fatma said. "Do you want to bet?"
With that, they shook hands on the bet and, as they tell it, their
lives were changed. They could not part hands that seemed made to be forever
intertwined. "Our love was clear in that moment," Fatma said. "And that
was the beginning of hell."
Here were two descendants of immigrants, both Danish citizens, living
in a Western city and falling in love. One was married, so complications
were likely. But the reaction they endured was in many ways that of an
Anatolian village: theirs was forbidden love.
Turkish women in Aarhus started calling Fatma to shout at her: it's
because of people like you that we can't let our husbands out of the house.
Her grandfather summoned Fatma and said: if you keep seeing that man, there
will be war between our families.
Her sister was repeatedly reduced to tears by insults. If ever Mr. Simsek
encountered Fatma on the street, he would turn his head away in disgust.
"It seemed that even before we started something beautiful, everything
was already ruined," Fatma said. "Our affair was the topic of conversation
in the community. We were back in the village and the village had decided
we represented danger."
Unable to stand the pressure, Fatma left for Antalya, where her father
lives most of the time, then went to Germany to train as a tourist guide.
But Bunyamin persisted, telling his father, "I will be a bad man in our
people's eyes, but I must be happy."
Sorgul, his wife, was desperate. By her account, Bunyamin had taken
to drinking heavily and disappearing for long periods. In a last effort
to save the situation, Sorgul said she would accept Fatma, even in their
home.
But to Bunyamin, the idea was unthinkable, another illustration of the
cultural gulf between them. Finally, they separated.
Sorgul, helped by an uncle in Aarhus, moved out, taking much of what
the couple owned, but plunging into a depression so deep that when a court
finally approved the divorce in 1997, custody of Alattin was awarded to
Bunyamin.
Back in the village, Sorgul's parents were shattered. To them, Bunyamin
suddenly changed, wanting a woman of Western mores. "Bunyamin is a Dane,
but Sorgul is still Turkish," Mr. Ceran said. "After such things, no reconciliation
is possible." Honor killings, common in eastern Turkey, are unknown in
Kizilcakisla, but the Cerans and the Simseks in the village never speak
now.
Even when Mr. Simsek finally relented on the divorce, he insisted that
his son "must never marry Fatma." Arguments about money lingered between
Sorgul and Bunyamin: they never talk to each other, even today.
At last, on March 6, 1999, Bunyamin and Fatma were married in Aarhus;
they took up residence with Alattin in Bunyamin's old apartment. Ali Simsek
still commands authority: when he arrives, the couple rushes like children
to hide their cigarettes.
But the severe father has softened, even telling his new daughter-in-law
that he has learned that "respect has nothing to do with how long your
dress is."
Mr. Simsek confesses that he has also learned something else: "Ten years
ago, 80 percent of marriages here in the Turkish community were arranged.
But I have seen that many results are bad. It's more healthy, I think now,
for children to find partners here." He paused, before adding, "But between
Turks, of course. Not with Danes."
Alienated From Danes
By rights, having suffered at the hands of old Turkish custom, the young,
bruised couple, both Danish citizens, should be enthusiastic supporters
of their adoptive land and its campaign to bring "Danish culture" to all,
including the more than 8 percent of inhabitants who are immigrants.
But the reality is one of increasing alienation, particularly for Fatma.
She has been jobless for a while and finds companies, when they see her
name, asking where she is from before declining even to interview her.
Always, she says, there is the sense of "us" and "them," the old Dane and
the new Dane, the blue-eyed and the dark-skinned.
"They say we'll change or threaten their culture, but if your culture
is strong what do you have to fear from Islam?" Fatma asked. "The fact
is the Danes have little national culture left. They adopt Halloween. They
adopt Thanksgiving. They adopt Valentine's Day. They eat burgers. And they
see our more genuine culture and worry."
That very erosion of national distinctions, occurring throughout Europe,
provides fertile ground for nationalist or anti-immigrant outbursts that
pay politically. Karen Jespersen, the interior minister, recently boosted
her popularity by saying asylum-seekers who commit crimes should be banished
to a desert island.
Of course, she was talking about criminals, and crime is rampant among
disoriented second- or third-generation immigrants in Denmark growing up
between worlds. But such negative messages about immigrants tend to cling
to all of them, industrious or idle, law-abiding or criminal. The far-right
People's Party prospers by denouncing the "family reunifications that bring
in 15,000 immigrants a year."
On his flights, Bunyamin is often asked by Danish clients where he comes
from. Aarhus, he replies. That meets incredulity. Well, guess, he suggests,
and the replies come in: Greece, Italy or Spain but never Turkey. "They
think I'm nice, so they don't imagine I could be Turkish," he says. "Turkey,
for them, is Islam, and Islam is fundamentalism."
Fatma notes how newspapers often refer to crimes by "two-language kids."
Thus bilingualism, an advantage, takes a negative connotation. Under a
new test for immigrant children entering school, her 5-year- old nephew
was asked what he used to buy things in shops. "Money," he said, and was
failed; the right answer was "Danish Krone."
"The Danes say one thing, that they want to integrate us, and do another,"
Bunyamin says. "That's why we have to fight."
He fights, chairing an "Integration Committee"; Fatma works for an immigrant
women's group. Three earnest social workers pay them a visit. They want
to know why immigrants have more difficulty finding jobs. They are told
about prejudice, and then one, Lars Jakobsen, bares his feelings:
"Yes, the fact is many Danes think, O.K., you came here for a while
to work, but don't try to bring all your families here, don't abuse our
hospitality." He adds, "Islam is seen as a danger." No mosque with a minaret
has yet been permitted in Denmark.
Jakob Buksti, the transport minister, says an interview: "We have to
integrate by preventing ghettos, arranged marriages, young women forced
to marry men back home. We have to tighten rules on refugees and bringing
relatives."
Across Europe, such political messages are garnering votes. But they
appear to ignore two basic questions about integration: On what terms should
it happen, and how can it occur when subtle barriers are constantly erected?
Arranged marriages are an easy target of attack. Safter Cinar, the head
of an association of Berlin's 130,000 Turks, says such unions remain "the
basic culture, the usual pattern." But he adds, "Western governments portray
this all as coercion, but that is not so, or rarely so."
The real issue, it seems, is that these marriages bring in new immigrants.
But then Europe, many say, needs immigrants 75 million over the next
50 years by some government estimates to compensate for its aging population.
And Fortress Europe is surrounded by people clamoring to get in.
Back in Kizilcakisla, for instance, the exodus continues. Bekir Siltas,
Sorgul's brother-in-law, says all the young villagers leave. "Most people
try to find a way to marry their children to someone already in Germany,
or Denmark or Holland," he said. "The first choice is get them out to Europe.
There is no money here."
Sorgul has already found a new husband in a nearby village through an
arranged marriage. He has not yet secured Danish residency papers, so the
couple lives apart. Sorgul, who has begun to learn Danish and found a job
sorting mail at the post office, warily voices hope that her new husband
will allow her to continue working.
As for Bunyamin and Fatma, the star- crossed couple, their passion is
now spiced with the occasional argument. "I guess Romeo and Juliet are
what they are because they never did get each other," Fatma observes. "We
got each other, and now we can argue about who does the dishes and who
feeds the cat."
He says you need to be realistic. She says you have to dream. He says
the Danes have some history they can be proud of. She says they have none.
He says he wants to stay in Denmark. She says she wants to leave because
in Turkey, she would be "invisible."
For now, they will remain, Turks in Denmark with Danish passports, in-between
people. With them is Bunyamin's son, the now 12-year-old Alattin Simsek,
a Danish citizen, fluent in Turkish and Danish, proficient in English,
and already a computer whiz.
The boy, two generations removed from Ali Simsek and three decades on
from his grandfather's pioneering three-day train journey from Anatolia
to Aarhus, has created his own Pokemon Web site. The site has already attracted
12,000 visitors; their culture is global, their nationalities unknown.
