Amid migrant wave, German Turks point at 'past mistakes'

As Germany takes in record numbers of people fleeing Syria and other war zones, its large Turkish community is warning the country not to "repeat the mistakes of the past".
 
Europe's top destination for refugees is also home to the world's largest Turkish diaspora, counting some three million, a legacy of Germany's post-war so-called guest worker programme.
 
From the 1960s, as then-West Germany enjoyed its "economic miracle" boom years, the government invited Turkish and other foreign labourers to man its car plants, coal mines and steel foundries.
 
"What went wrong in the past was that the guest workers were seen as just labourers who would go home again," said Gökay Sofuo?lu, chairman of the Turkish Community in Germany.
 
Instead, the vast majority chose to stay, becoming by far the largest ethnic minority in Germany. It's so big that today Turkish political parties come to campaign for the crucial expat vote.
 
Some 900,000 Turks -- 20 percent of them women -- arrived between 1961, when the Turkish-German labour exchange pact was signed, and 1973, when the oil crisis and rising unemployment put paid to it.
 
While Germany long resisted the notion that it had become a country for immigration, the "guest worker" programme's legacy irreversibly transformed German society.
 
Today, the guest workers' children and grandchildren are seen in German politics, the media, on the football pitch and in the pop music charts.
 
The Turkish greengrocer has meanwhile become a common shopping fixture, and the Turkish kebab now rivals the sausage as the nation's most popular fast food.
         
Still, a debate about integration continues, with regrets and recriminations voiced on both...