In the 1960s Germany's economy was growing rapidly. They wanted assembly line workers and were not concerned if these workers were skilled or educated. They just wanted to continue their economic boom. They reached out to Turkey and recruited workers from remote areas that were populated with unskilled and uneducated individuals. This appealed to the Germans because this type of labor was cheap. Germany signed a labor agreement with Turkey in 1961 to have their citizens work in Germany and live in dormitories. These labor workers worked on assembly lines for companies such as Siemens. The Turks were willing to work under these conditions while the German citizens refused. The political agenda for Germans was to utilize their power against the Turks for their personal economics growth. However this was not thought out correctly by the Germans because the Turkish workers did not integrate in German society and were isolated with other Turks and the two cultures did not mesh together.
The Germans exercised a pull factor when bringing the Turks into their home country for their own personal gain and growth. Although the Turks felt homesick they realized that they had no opportunities in their home country due to political turmoil. So they had their families join them in Germany. They slowly left the dormitories and moved into apartments which drove Germans out of these apartments. As the years progressed companies were demanding more skilled workers no longer needing the cheap laborers. Germans in the 1990s proposed a ploy offering up to 10,500 deutshmarks hoping to "promote the desire to return home" for guest workers. Unlike Britain and the United States Germany at the time did not consider long term integration and this let to the strong disconnect between the two cultures. Many Germans wish to free their lands of Turkish citizens. It is difficult for most German citizens such as Thilo Sarrazins ("Germany Does Itself In") to see the many mosques and foreign women with head covers walking in their streets. They feel as if these strange and foreign ways are slowly creeping in their homeland and fear that one day their home land will be taken from them. Meanwhile the Turks feel pride that their hard work and contribution to the German economic growth has led them to share in a piece of German soil.
