Dilek Güngör is an up-and-coming journalist, columnist and author who in her writings blends her Turkish background and her German upbringing, providing a unique perspective on life's complexities in twenty-first century Germany. Born in Swabian Gmünd to Turkish Gastarbeiter, Güngör had a fairly normal childhood. She has said, however, that she has always been aware of being different from those around her, because "if someone didn't want to play with you or didn't want to speak to you, it was because you were Turkish and you realize that very, very early."(1) Güngör attended a Catholic high school and the University of Mainz, where she studied Translation Studies and Journalism. From 1998 to 2003 Güngör worked for the Berliner Zeitung as a journalist writing a weekly column in which she mused about her family life and experiences growing up the daughter of Turkish immigrants. In 2004 she went to England and earned a Master's degree in Race and Ethnic Studies from the University of Warwick. Güngör now resides in Berlin and her column currently appears weekly in the Stuttgarter Zeitung. Although she insists that she is "not the spokesperson for Turkish society or the Turkish community" in Germany, Güngör has been placed at the forefront of recent discussions about second generation Turkish-Germans whose parents came to Germany following the 1961 labor agreement between Germany and Turkey.
Güngör's first book, Unter Uns: Meine türkische Familie und ich (Berlin: Edition Ebersbach, 2004; btb, 2006), is a collection articles she wrote for the Berliner Zeitung which depict the small delights and troubles of Güngör's family life. Amusing yet poignant, these columns show that Turkish family life is the same as that of any other nationality's: full of crazy relatives, small secrets and hilarious idiosyncrasies. The book put Güngör on the literary and cultural map, giving her the reputation of being 'Ms. Perfectly-Well-Integrated,' a distinction which Güngör repudiates: "I don't see myself as integrated," she remarks, "I do not adapt to the German way of life because there is no German way of life."(2) A second set of articles has been assembled in her book Ganz schön deutsch: Meine türkische Familie und ich (München: Piper, 2007).
Güngör's second book and first novel, Das Geheimnis meiner türkischen Großmutter (München: Piper, 2007) tells the story of a young woman traveling to a small village in Turkey because of the imminent death of her grandmother, whom she gets to know while also discovering a dark family secret. The young woman, Zeynep, learns to push aside many of the misconceptions she had about her family and their limited worldliness in a small provincial Turkish village, and learns instead that the women in her family, especially her grandmother, yearn for the kind of freedom Zeynep has enjoyed living in Germany. Throughout the novel, Zeynep associates herself with both her very European upbringing in Germany and her family's homeland and traditions in Turkey. Sensitive in particular to the subordinated role of women in Turkish society, Güngör's protagonist criticizes the repression of the women in her family by male relatives and stands up to her tyrannical uncle. Yet she is also presented as accepting of the choices the women in her family, including her mother, have made. By and large, the heroine seems to be content and successful in negotiating German and Turkish values, and rather than being unsettled by a lack of certainty as to cultural or national heritage and belonging, Zeynep is challenged in her sense of identity by the crime which haunts the members of her family.
Dilek Güngör's articles and novels serve as a gateway into the lives of Germany's current Turkish-German population, showing the reader that, on a basic level, there really is no difference between 'these people' and 'normal Germans.' In all of her writings Güngör acknowledges that there are differences between the German and Turkish traditions, but she does not depict the intense tension and strife other Turkish-German artists, such as author Zafer Senocak or filmmaker Fatih Akin have shown. Güngör also does not insist that Turks are being marginalized in Germany because of their race and religion, a claim that has recurred in Turkish and German literature since reunification. She generally refrains from making outright political statements about Turks living in Germany, a feature of her writing that is both unusual and refreshing. Abating the sense of alienation felt by many Turkish-Germans, Güngör insists that she is essentially German, pointing to the need to redefine German national identity rather than to look at cultural and ethnic difference as a form of separation: "Nowadays to be German can also mean that you were born in Germany and that your parents are from Turkey. This is Germany's reality. I think that the concept of being 'German' should be broadened - Germans should slowly understand that Germany is a country of immigration." (3)
1. "'I don't see myself as integrated: an interview with Dilek Güngör". Expatica 21 Feb, 2006.
http://www.expatca.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=80&story_id=27805
2. "'I don't see myself as integrated: an interview with Dilek Güngör". Expatica 21 Feb, 2006.
http://www.expatca.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=80&story_id=27805
3. Kreutzbeck, Vera von. "My Identity is Constantly Present: Spiegel Online Interview with
Author Dilek Güngör" Spiegel 9 Oct, 2007.
http://www.spiegel.de/ineternational/zeitgeist/0,1518,510365,00.html
- Laura Wynn |
