NEW EMBASSY BUILDING IN BERLIN: A SOURCE OF PRIDE FOR OUR CITIZENS IN GERMANY

A project we have long been working on with meticulousness has been completed and our embassy in Berlin is moving to its new building on Tuesday. The opening ceremony will be attended by many guests from Turkey, particularly including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and three ministers. From the German side, we expect many high-ranking German officials including German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle to join us on this special day. Arriving in Berlin for the opening ceremony, I inadvertently remembered the years I had spent in this country for a number of occasions. At the outset of my career, for some reason, I was cold towards working in German-speaking countries, and during chats about our possible assignments, I would tell my colleagues, "It doesn't matter where I am assigned, but the only thing I don't want is to be assigned to a German-speaking mission." Perhaps, at that time, I didn't see German as an amiable language. But as the Turkish saying goes, "Bite big morsels of food, but don't recite big claims," I later regretted having said so. First, I worked in Austria for three years and then in Germany for seven years. In retrospect, I can realize only now what a big impression those years have left on my career. When the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, I was working as an counsellor at our embassy in Bonn. In those days, we were witnessing the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the media commentators were suggesting that the two German states would soon reunite. As countries from the Soviet bloc became independent one by one, we, the diplomats working in East Germany, could see that Germany's turn was coming. And this was exactly what happened in the end: the Wall was turn down from both sides and Germans were reunited after being separated from each other for 45 years since 1945.

After the reunification, Turkish-German relations remained as important as they had been during the Cold War era. Not only due to the fact that Germany had long been our number one foreign trade partner, but also the presence of more than 3 million Turkish expats living in Germany played a significant role in keeping these relations alive and strong. Despite occasional disruptions in bilateral relations, military embargoes and practices that would threaten the position of our citizens in this country, Germany has always been an important and priority country for Turkey.

In the 1980s, it was a daunting task to ensure unity among the Turkish expats in Europe. Indeed, each political or religious movement would act independently and it wasn't possible to gather them together for concerted action on certain national matters. There were few youths who had received a good education. I am glad to see the positive changes in the living standards of our citizens all across Europe during the intervening years. The number of Turkish expats who graduate from gymnasiums, i.e., Germany's high schools known for their quality education, has multiplied. Our associations are more powerful and our citizens are more conscious. Many Turks who see their future attached to Germany exhibit interest in German politics. There are many Turkish expats who are elected to state as well as federal parliaments. Most importantly, Turkish expats now know how to unite when national interests are at stake.

After it was understood that eight of our citizens that had been killed in Germany over the last ten years were actually victims of a neo-Nazi gang, we witnessed how our citizens living in Germany could unite in hard times. Visiting Germany in a delegation accompanying Mr. Ahmet Davutoglu in the wake of these developments, the Turkish expats we met conveyed to us their concerns. Xenophobia still remains a major unsolved issue in Germany. In order for all foreigners living in this country to feel safe and sound, the German government should correctly determine the problem and take proper measures.

During the time I worked in Germany, our embassies and consulates general were suffering from serious infrastructure-related problems. For this reason, we had difficulty in achieving the desired standards in providing services to our citizens. Now, the facilities are better equipped. Our new embassy building in Berlin has already become a source of pride for our citizens living in this country. But we didn't stop after renovating our embassy building. We are also performing some large-scale refurbishment work on the physical infrastructure of our consulates in Germany. We have purchased new buildings for our consulates general in Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Hamburg and Dusseldorf and will move into them immediately after renovation work is complete. The construction of our new consulate building in Mainz will start in early 2013. We have acquired lands in Cologne and Münster and we will soon start to work on projects related to them. We, as the Foreign Ministry, are investing in human resources. I remember from the time I worked in Austria and Germany that a significant portion of the employees in our consulates didn't know German. Today, we specifically pick diplomats who know German to serve in Austria and Germany. Our Ambassador Avni Karslioglu, from a Turkish expat family, knows perfect German. He has already become a popular figure for our citizens in Berlin in less than a year following his assignment. I think he has made a good impression on German officials as well with his perfect command of the German language. I am sure he will say a warm welcome in German to German guests during the opening ceremony of our new embassy building.

With its new building, our Berlin embassy has emerged as our largest and most splendid embassy structure. I hope this will further boost already amiable relations between the two countries.