Germany's young Turks: vulnerable to extremists?

Two Turkish groups have come under increased scrutiny of German authorities. German Interior Minister Otto Schily banned the group called Caliph State, believed to have supported terrorism in Turkey and to have had superficial contacts with Al Qaeda. Led by Metin Kaplan, now jailed in Germany, the group once had as many as 4,000 members but is now believed to have 1,000.

Of greater concern to German authorities is the ethnic pride movement Milli Gorus, which roughly translates as National Vision, and had some 27,500 members in 2001, according to the annual domestic intelligence report. The organization has so much support among young Turks that it fills soccer stadiums for rallies. Their mission is to unite the traditionally splintered Islamic community.

Islam is the third largest religious denomination in Germany, but because it lacks a centralized structure like the Catholic and Protestant churches, it doesn't have the same rights and privileges as the Christian churches. Milli Gorus wants to be recognized as an Islamic church. Meanwhile, the Turkish government is pressing Germany to crack down on the organization, saying that it supports extremists in Turkey. But whether Milli Gorus poses a danger to Germany is disputed.

Wilhelm Heitmeyer, a social scientist at Bielefeld University, was sharply criticized several years ago when he published a book called "The Temptation of Fundamentalism." The book studied Turkish youth in Germany and concluded that a large number of young Turks who had trouble integrating into mainstream German society harbored sympathies for Islamic fundamentalism.

"At the time we did this study," he says, "such conclusions simply weren't acceptable. But there are few critics left today. Directly after the events of Sept 11 it was startling to see that many Turkish youths in the schools secretly approved; not all, but many."

But that evidence is anecdotal, Mr. Heitmeyer acknowledges, and there are still no empirical studies of the reaction of Turkish youth in Germany to Sept. 11.

Young Turks here often live between two worlds. They speak German and often feel a distant relationship to Turkey, land of their parents and grandparents. Their parents' generation came here in the 1960s and 1970s as so-called "guest workers" to fill jobs in German factories. Germany's political elite expected them to work, save money, and then go home. Until recently, little effort was made to integrate them.

Heitmeyer says integration is the way to avoid the kind of alienation that could make Turkish youth vulnerable to radicalization by extremists. "The greater the opportunities for these young people, the greater their identification with German society will be."

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