“Your Homeland – Our Homeland”: The First Turkish-Language WDR Television Program for Labor Migrants (1970s)

Abstract

Heimat was also a central concept in the public debate on labor migration in the Federal Republic. Was there a dual homeland? The first Turkish-language television program on West German Broadcasting [Westdeutscher Rundfunk or WDR] was called “Your Homeland – Our Homeland.” The presenters, who included Aysim Alpman (center), hosted the show from Cologne, but Istanbul served as the backdrop, with the mosque symbolizing Islam.

Source

Source: Printed in Deniz Göktürk, David Gramling, Anton Kaes, eds., Germany in Transit. Nation and Migration, 1995-2005. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, p. 242.

Rita Chin, “Democratization, Turks, and the Burden of German History,” in The Modernist Imagination. Intellectual History and Critical Theory. Essays in Honor of Martin Jay, edited by Warren Breckman, et al. New York: Berghahn, 2011, pp. 242–67.

“Your Homeland – Our Homeland”: The First Turkish-Language WDR Television Program for Labor Migrants (1970s), published in: German History Intersections, <https://germanhistory-intersections.org/en/germanness/ghis:image-96> [December 01, 2023].