Migration 9

Three daughters, two sons. Who did you leave them with as you left? Such a beautiful home. You set it on fire and left. You would have married there. Seven years have passed and you haven’t come home. You send some money. For whom is the money supposed to be of use? Your family with five children, all of them are only looking for you.

Quoted from Ceren Turkmen, original source Ruhi Su; Sümeyra Çakir (1977): "El Kapıları", Imece Plaklari: Istanbul, Vinyl, LP. music album. The year (1960) indicates the approximate date of origin.

This text is one of the first popular migration songs that accompanied the labour migration from the Black Sea region to Europe, which was beginning at the time. In 1977 the musicians Ruhi Su (1912-1985) and Sümeyra Çakir (1946-1990) released the album "Kapıları" (Foreign Countries) together with the "Dostlar Korosu" (Friends' Choir). Sümeyra died in political exile in Frankfurt. In 1980, she sang the Communist International at a concert in West Berlin by the (Turkish-speaking) West Berlin Workers’ Choir, which brought politically organised migrant workers together around music. After this concert, she had to stay in Germany and in Turkey before the state repression after the military coup in 1980 flee.

Diasporic workers' choirs across Europe turned the song "Almanya (Germany), bitter home" into a hidden anthem which achieved cult status, and was sung at major political events as well as everyday cultural club gatherings. For more than 20 years, the song symbolised a cultural practice of migration that was determined by a "nostalgic migration narrative". This narrative, which was also common in diasporic communist-socialist workers' choirs, also masculinised migration dynamics. Despite regional differences, the song ignores female labour migration to Europe, which has been central since the 1950s, as well as female wage labour (in family farming, in semi-economised agriculture and in factories) in Turkey.

Deutsche Welle (2021): The German-Turkish Recruitment Agreement 60 years on.

1960