The project entitled “Turkish-German Relations and Cultural Transfer” seeks to explore how interactions between Turkey and Germany reciprocally influence each other and how these influences can be used as tools in intercultural communication, especially in the publicly often cited so-called integration process of people of Turkish descent living in Germany, but also in any other Turkish-German encounter. A special focus will be on the often neglected impacts of Turkish-German re-migrants or German inhabitants in Turkey.

Main research will be done in the fields of cultural theory, literature, language/linguistics and media.

Following aspects are within the scope of the project:

- identify and document the main current  issues in Turkish-German relations by considering power balances, not only focusing on Turkish migration to Germany but also on re-migration of Turkish-Germans to Turkey and Germans living in Turkey or visiting for business or any other reason.

- explore what a fruitful mediation in conflict situations could look like, and how cultural products like literature and media could contribute here

- explore the influences between the recent political situation and the cultural production by or about people of non-German background in Turkey and non-Turkish background in Turkey.

- reflect and modify existing theories of culture and intercultural communication in the light of existing agreements or disagreements in Turkish-German encounters and their representation in Turkish-German cultural production

 

The project has an emphasis on research as well as education. A joint master degree in “Turkish-German Studies” between the German Departments of Istanbul University and the University of Paderborn is supposed to be established by the end of the 3-year project.

 

An international conference will be part of the project as well as two graduate student conferences in order to promote young researchers working on Turkish-German issues.