So Pithy

In the Euro 2008 semifinals Germany will face Turkey. This could get interesting given the large Turkish population in Germany (largely a result of West Germany’s guest worker program). Any controversey over the outcome of the match may very well spill out into the streets of Berlin and other German cities. There’s also the possibility, of course, that a well-earned German victory (which many “experts” seem to predict) could unite everybody behind the German team, regardless of citizenship or background.

Prior to the year 2000, citizenship was difficult for non-Germans to attain because German citizenship was based on blood (jus sanguinis) instead of place of birth (jus soli). Thus even the second and third generations of Turkish guest workers who had only ever known Germany, spoken German, etc. were not automatically German citizens and could only obtain citizenship with some difficulty.

Reforms to bring German citizenship law in line with the rest of the European Union changed things for the better, but nonetheless decades of exclusion have created a population of Germans who are not legally Germans.

(An interesting side note: Euro 2008 is co-hosted by Austria, a country which after World War II had to restore Austrian citizenship to all its inhabitants and strip them of German citizenship as a result of Germany’s annexation of the country before the war.)