Anti-Kurdish Racism in Germany: Decolonial Perspectives on the German Education System

Educational institutions are places of identity formation and reformation, contributing differently to existing identity politics.¹ As A. describes very impressively in the quote above, anti-Kurdish racism affects subjectivization processes, leading to the invisibilization and, ultimately, erasure of Kurdish identities.² The presentation of school experiences emphasizes the importance of the education system as both a living environment and a critical space for the formation of one's identity. In my doctoral thesis on anti-Kurdish racism in the German education system, I conducted biographical narrative interviews with people from various regions of Kurdistan who had migrated to Germany either by themselves as young adults or with their families as children, and who had attended primary, secondary, or high school in Germany and went on to university or vocational training.³ Through these interviews, which are part of my PhD project titled “Experiences of Racism by Kurds in Germany—Functions and Effects of (Not) Speaking About Anti-Kurdish Racism in the Educational Realities of Migration Society,” I frequently encounter instances of devaluation of Kurdish identities due to racialization and everyday invisibilization.

The professional demands on educational institutions, on the other hand, require them to give resonance and validity to the multitude of identities and diversity of experiences and affiliations in society and to make these visible. A critical pedagogy of decolonization involves overcoming our colonized perspectives and acquiring alternative forms of knowledge. In my research, I adopt a decolonial perspective to acknowledge and problematize the mechanisms of invisibilization and identity erasure. This approach not only shifts hegemonic orders of knowledge in terms of content but also enables the recognition of different modes of articulation.

Kurds represent one of the largest stateless diasporas in the world. There has been and continues to be a high level of migration, particularly to Germany, which is considered the “most important migration destination country in Europe” for Kurds (Ghaderi and Almstadt 2023: 5). An estimated 1.3 million Kurds live in Germany (2). Obtaining exact numbers is challenging, as Kurds predominantly hold the citizenship of their country of origin. A.’s opening quote also resonates here: in official surveys, Kurds are usually recorded as Iraqis, Iranians, or Turks (Baser 2017). The beginning of this diaspora in Germany dates back more than one hundred years. As Sabine Skubsch (2000: 105) points out, economic and political reasons for Kurdish migration cannot be clearly separated. However, according to Çinur Ghaderi and Esther Almstadt (2023: 5–7), until the early 1960s, mainly Kurdish intellectuals migrated to Germany, leading to the establishment of student organizations such as the Kurdish Students Society in Europe (KSSE) (6). Kurdish labor migration began with the German-Turkish Recruitment Agreement in 1961 and continued through 1973. At least 500,000 Kurds were among the 2.1 million people who migrated to Germany from Turkey (6). Finally, since the 1980s, Kurds have repeatedly had to flee to Germany in large numbers for various political and war-related reasons. In the 2010s these people sought protection from the terror of the Islamic State (IS). Currently, there is an increased migration of Kurds from Turkey, owing to the political situation and the earthquakes in February 2023. Refugee movements from Syria and Iran also persist to this date (8).

The institutional obstacles for Kurds are as old as the Kurdish migrations to Germany. The initial ignorance of the German authorities until the mid-1980s can be summarized with the above reference to the official surveys: Kurds were not perceived and recognized as a separate ethnic group; they were mostly considered Turkish, Arab, or Iranian. The civil war in Turkey (1978–99) brought about fundamental changes on one hand, yet it opened only a very limited window of attention on the other. The quasi-equating of all cultural and political expressions with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) has legitimized many institutional practices of criminalization to this day. Since the banning of the PKK in Germany in 1993, members of Kurdish organizations have been subjected to special surveillance and are considered “suspicious.” For instance, the personal data of the members has been routinely passed on to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution since 1994 (12). The ban has resulted in the criminalization of Kurdish life in Germany, impacting the lives of many individuals, limiting political rights and opportunities for expression, and leading to controls and prohibitions on events.⁴

In many areas, the social life of Kurds is restricted by state authorities in their countries of origin, primarily by the Turkish state and other countries they come from. In the 1960s, consulates of the countries from which a considerable number of migrants originated were responsible for arranging the language lessons specific to each group. Since Kurds were considered citizens of the countries they came from and were not recognized as a separate ethnic identity, Kurdish language classes were not offered at consulates. As a result, there is still little Kurdish-language teaching in Germany, which is currently leading to difficulties in maintaining the language (Darici 2018). The extraterritorial status of the Turkish diplomatic representations in Germany also enables Turkish authorities to exert political influence on the German naturalization of Kurds by delaying their release from Turkish citizenship and regarding Kurdish names as a violation of “Turkish customs and traditions” (Skubsch 2000: 140). Turkish influence negatively affecting Kurds is often observable in present-day events. As an illustration, in 2023, the German Islam Conference, led by Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser, did not include Kurdish mosques, owing to the objection of Turkish representatives in Germany.

Kurds in Germany, despite constituting a significant population and having faced racism in their home countries, particularly from members of the dominant ethnic groups (Iraqi, Turkish, Iranian), are not considered worthy of dedicated support or assistance addressing the challenges they face in Germany. The lack of interest and support is visible, especially concerning the experiences of Kurdish youth within German educational institutions. Scarce scholarship on the Kurdish youth in Germany shed light on the presence of Turkish racism against Kurds (Ammann and Blaschke 1992), widespread stigmatization in the education system due to the Kurds’ alleged proximity to the PKK (Baser 2013), which is classified as a terrorist organization, and the invisibilization of Kurdish life in the education system (Baser 2013; Kızılhan 1995; Şenol 1992). Simon Schleimer (2015) emphasizes that the German education system lacks differentiated knowledge about Kurds. Sabine Skubsch (2000) also particularly emphasizes the lack of teaching in the mother language. It is noteworthy that this existing body of knowledge regarding racism against Kurds, which has already passed the threshold of recognition as scientific expertise, receives little attention in critical racism and intersectionality research in academic discourse. The neglect of Kurdish perspectives in scholarly discussions, despite Kurds having long been integral to German migration society, raises important questions: Why are Kurds’ experiences of discrimination so inadequately acknowledged? To what extent does Turkish anti-Kurdish propaganda infiltrate German academic contexts, thus fostering apprehension or reluctance to be perceived as politically biased?

In my research, I initially focused on addressing the failure to acknowledge the invisibilization of anti-Kurdish racism in critical race theory research and discussions on racism in schools. Therefore, at the center of this research lies significant questions: what characterizes anti-Kurdish racism, and how does it impact Kurdish individuals within the German educational system? In my interviews, I begin by providing a space for Kurdish students to discuss the challenges they personally encounter in both social and educational institutional settings. The biographical interviews provide a space for firsthand knowledge from Kurdish individuals about anti-Kurdish racism, particularly within schools—an area of knowledge seldom sought or acknowledged in scholarly discussions. Kurdish young people experience a distinctive social situation, as well as a special distinct collective situation—both of which remain unaddressed in German educational institutions:

The experiences described by A. indicate that educational centers represent a parallel world for Kurdish young people that “does not feel so real.” A. describes the everyday and normalized experience in which there is no room for her as a Kurdish woman, accompanied by a perception that this reality, to some extent, feels unreal. She points out a discrepancy between Kurdish life in Germany, the oppression of Kurds in Kurdistan, and the school setting where these experiences fail to find resonance. Kurdish young people observe that the acts of violence in the countries linked to their identity, with histories and developments significantly present in their families and contexts, do not take place in Germany, rendering them seemingly insignificant. They cannot improve their German because of a lack of institutional support; their identity is made invisible, and they are addressed as Turks, Persians, Arabs, and so on. When they are perceived as Kurds—as several interviewees reported—they often experience devaluation and racialization.

The interviewees find that the experiences echoing the conditions of Kurds in their countries of origin—marked by violence and humiliation—are repeated within the German education system. When they are perceived as Kurds, the pejorative criminalizing equating of Kurds and the PKK becomes a recurring theme. In the interviews, my participants revealed that, since a young age, they have been confronted with the eternal question: “How do you feel about the PKK?” All of my interviewees described that the only form in which recognition as a Kurdish person could be received was through othering,⁵ specifically in connection with criminalizing attributions. Kurdish identity is depicted as the other—criminal, evil, terrorist—compared to one's own, which is portrayed as good, innocent, just, and nonviolent.

María do Mar Castro-Varela (2017) refers to the deep-rooted nature of racism in educational institutions. On the one hand, the structures there contribute to “accepting racism as a matter of course and with little irritation” (para. 6). On the other hand, within a racist order, it is then a matter of “perceiving and assuming the assigned place in society as the true and therefore only correct one” (para. 6). In a similar way, the experiences of oppression and nonrecognition from the countries of origin are also passed on at a large scale. The nonrecognition of Kurdistan is echoed in the nonrecognition of individual Kurdish identities. A. explains this in the interview: “Kurdistan is simply not recognized as a region of origin. This is just the continuation of oppression that runs from Kurdistan to here to Europe, to Germany, so to speak. That is also an oppression, just not being recognized. This is no recognition of what is happening.” Here, an experience of anti-Kurdish racism in the form of denied recognition becomes clear. Schools appear incapable of absorbing these particular experiences: in the German education system and among teachers, there is not only a lack of knowledge about the history and living condition of Kurds but also an understanding of the resultant effects. This is, in part, attributed to the absence of a concept of racism in educational institutions that distinguishes anti-Kurdish racism from other forms of racism.

Racism is usually perceived as originating exclusively from the dominant society. This dichotomy (or relationship between the two forms of racism) or conceptual construct, is important for understanding how powerful racism is in a given society. However, if we superimpose this dichotomy or this conceptualization on a very differentiated society and think that racism is just that, we lose sight of more complex social situations, such as the distinct situation of Kurds. This also has consequences for pedagogical approaches. When instances arise in which individuals from Turkish, Arab, or Persian backgrounds, who themselves have experienced discrimination, engage in discriminatory behavior toward Kurds, many white German professionals struggle with their existing knowledge frameworks, which often rely on a rather simplistic perpetrator-victim dichotomy. Even though this dichotomy is crucial to understanding the power of racism in society, it lacks an intersectional reflection and action that could furnish young individuals affected by racism, who have biographical relations to Iraqi, Iranian, or Turkish dominant societies, with a framework to transcend their “victim position” and acknowledge their position of power, thus allowing them to defend themselves against racism. These chances for reflection are constrained by the otherwise beneficial category of people of color, as it is not sensible to perceive the different groups—all of which are impacted by racism in relation to the dominant society—as a monolithic entity. Only a differentiated knowledge of Kurdistan and the Kurds, including local conditions, actors, history, and economic structures, can provide a remedy here; it is through this approach that the respective racist structures can be traced and institutional recognition is achieved.

As Walter Mignolo (2009) points out, modernity, which often emphasizes progress and improvement, is inextricably linked to the logic of colonialism, which is characterized by oppression and exploitation. Similarly, Arathi Sriprakash and colleagues (2023: 6) point out that scholars often dismiss the history of the oppressed as “polemical, overly political, or peripheral to the ‘proper’ subjects of study.” Thus the handling of knowledge is also subjected to racist hierarchization. The negotiation of what counts as knowledge is based on a “systematic subalternization and erasure of forms of knowledge and ways of being of colonized populations” (Brunner 2016: 29). Decolonial interventions are, therefore, essential within the framework of school practices and structures critical of racism. Adopting a decolonial research perspective involves a continual awareness of the powerful hierarchization of knowledge production—understanding what is known, how knowledge is made accessible and processed. As A. remarks, “When I think about which term paper topics I want to choose or what I want to investigate, it simply restricts me. I'm just not allowed to write about what I want precisely because the data basis is simply crap.” Here A. problematizes the lack of Kurdish knowledge in hegemonic science and describes the continuation of experiences of invisibility in educational research. The scholarly practice that focuses exclusively on written texts as sources and disregards oral testimonies embodies epistemic violence, while it directly perpetuates and reinforces the historical dimensions of colonial exploitation and the erasure of entire knowledge systems. This is realized through the lack of representation of individuals with diverse, in this case anti-Kurdish, experiences of racism within scientific/school materials and knowledge offerings. Grada Kilomba (2021: 300) makes it clear that “science is not a neutral place but reflects the political interests of white society.” This raises the question of which knowledge is recognized, included in the academic agenda, heard, and finds its way into the (re)writing of history.

Researching subaltern bodies of knowledge can be challenging for students like A. and scholars alike, partly owing to the invisibilization that extends to the form in which these bodies of knowledge exist. In modern science, writing is considered a superior function necessary to overcome the “fleetingness of the immediate, situationally integrated speech act” (Ehlich 1994: 18). Dealing with Kurdish history and identity, on the other hand, inevitably brings us to the realm of oral history, as the knowledge and intergenerational self-understanding of the Kurds is based largely on oral tradition. As a researcher, I also experience the impacts of power asymmetries and the marginalization of knowledge on my work. The emphasis on the need to give more voice to marginalized positions can quickly lead to the devaluation of the knowledge I produce. Given that I am conducting this work within an academic institution, and this institution is part of the sphere of colonial knowledge production, I find myself dependent on it as well. This dependency arises from my desire (and necessity) to attain recognition from it in the form of a doctoral degree as an outcome of my research. In addition, my research also takes place within the given conditions of power: the highly political Kurdish perspective, in contrast to many other viewpoints, presents a distinct challenge—particularly in terms of acquiring empirical data and maintaining necessary objectivity (Orhan 2020: 16). Moreover, it poses personal risks for me. For instance, if, as a researcher, I intend to cite a newspaper banned in Germany, this decision raises concerns about the academic integrity of my research, potentially jeopardizing my existence as a researcher.

In my research, which embraces a decolonial perspective, I offer Kurds the opportunity to actively engage with their own experiences of racism as Kurdish students, allowing them to shape the research process. The participants have a shared concern: they seek to understand their personal experiences of racism and make their voices heard. One approach is to affirm their Kurdish identity and community, which consequently becomes a responsibility of educational institutions. In the context of these experiences of non-belonging, nonrecognition, and the suppression of Kurdish identity, all of my participants call for representation in educational institutions and point to the need for diverse identities finding resonance in educational institutions. Toward an anti-racist education system in Germany, my research therefore contributes to decolonial education studies by addressing the need for a framework that actively incorporates the history, representation, and knowledge of Kurdish students who lack a written history and face institutional, structural, and individual discrimination. In my view, such a framework is essential for a differentiated theory of racism as well as an equally differentiated theory of education.

According to Sriprakash and colleagues (2023: 6), “Critical approaches to history can be a generative process for imagining a future that is reparative rather than reproductive of past and present injustices,” and “education is a necessary precondition for reparative action.” This includes collective practices dedicated to exploring different historical narratives and empowering individuals to share and shape their stories, all the while critically challenging established historical representations (Pente et al. 2015: 234–48). Therein lies the potential to make the perspectives and history of socially marginalized Kurds visible and, in turn, challenge dominant narratives.

As long as systematic invisibilization and the disregard of different narratives persist, the potential of critical race theory and the decolonization of education will remain unrealized. The inclusion of historical knowledge about Kurdish communities, whose struggle was suppressed in the education system, underlines the need for dialogue between people whose positionings and experiences are complex, transcend classic perpetrator-victim dichotomies, and demand global and historical contextualization. Decolonial intervention and the expansion of knowledge critical of racism are prerequisites for educational work. These are not only necessary to avoid convenient, simplistic answers in pedagogical situations characterized by complex structures of oppression, but also to do justice to the experiences of the subjects. Furthermore, they are crucial to mitigate the effects of the structural violence experienced on a daily basis.

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