Diasporic cinema: turkish-german filmmakers with particular emphasis on generational differences

CHAPTER 1: THEORISING DIASPORA

Today’s world is conceived as a unified geopolitical entity thanks to the ostensible permeability of borders. Economic and political interdependence between nations and growing inter-cultural exchange have become definitive elements of the contemporary globalised world. In this context, Habermas’ idealisation of Europe, with its ever-increasing number of non-native subjects, as a civic community based on a voluntary act (Loshitzky 2006a: 629) seems to be ever more feasible and relevant. However, a borderless world has proven to be illusionary, as witnessed in the global rise of securitisation practices especially after the September 11 terrorist attacks.² “In Australia, asylum-seekers are arbitrarily detained. In North America, refugee settlement programmes have dried up, and in Europe, increasingly restrictive policies are criminalising asylum-seekers and marginalising refugees” (Koser 2007: 233).³ In brief, what in some contexts appears a welcoming Europe, that encourages integration and expansion, contrasts in other contexts with an increasingly cautious and rejecting Europe that fortifies seemingly weakening nation-states. Regardless of which one of these Europes one supports, at the core of any discussion concerning Europe and the European Union are the immigrants, refugees and diasporas that constitute its current “others”. “The war on terror, together with moral panics about threats to the economy, culture and national security posed by immigrants, have heightened anxieties about the inclusion of ‘outsiders’ in the nation-state and sharpened national discourses on citizenship rights, national belonging and inclusion” (Phillips 2010: 209). Diaspora thereby becomes an indispensable concept when it comes to the definition, analysis and understanding of the contemporary sociocultural, economic and political condition of Europe.
The term “diaspora” has been applied in a variety of different contexts and disciplines resulting in considerable conceptual complexity. In the last decade, the concept has become highly contested in numerous disciplines, such as migration studies, ethnic studies, and cultural studies, with proliferating discussions and applications of the term diaspora. “There has been a veritable explosion of interest in Diasporas since the late 1980s. ‘Diaspora’ and its cognates appear as keywords only once or twice a year in dissertations from the 1970s, about thirteen times a year in the late 1980s and nearly 130 times in 2001 alone” (Brubaker 2005: 1). Moreover, “a glance through recent academic journals reveals an increasing preoccupation with theorisations and questioning of diaspora and nation” (Braziel and Mannur 2003: 2-3). Diversity in approaches and methodologies marks the field. This study aims to contribute to existing scholarship by combining this relatively new area of research with film studies. Before any attempt to suggest that diasporic cinema is a solid and clearly defined category in film studies, it is necessary to frame and clarify the concept of diaspora in relation to other relevant terms such as “exile”, “migrancy”, “transnationalism”, “hybridity”, “postcolonialism” and, inevitably, “nation”. In order to accomplish this, it is important to take an eclectic route that cuts across various disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, politics and cultural studies, since the concept of diaspora suggests and requires an interdisciplinary approach for a comprehensive understanding. Hence the following conceptualisation of the term “diaspora” draws on a diverse range of scholarly literature.
In what follows, I will attempt to draw a theoretical outline which aims to explore the prevailing debates about the term diaspora. Given that this study focuses on Turkish filmmakers living and working in Germany, it is crucial to establish whether the Turkish community in Germany can be classified as a diaspora or not. Only then will it be possible to analyse the work of Turkish-German filmmakers as a significant example of diasporic cinema in contemporary Europe. I will initially venture to conceptualise diaspora with regard to the proliferation of the term in the theoretical realm. This will be followed by an analysis of the relation between diaspora and globalisation. I will also problematise the shift in the meaning of nation in relation to diaspora. The chapter will conclude with an investigation of the Turkish community in Germany as a possible example of diaspora.

The Proliferation of Terms: “Diaspora”, “Migration” and “Exile”

Diaspora, which combines two words; “dia” meaning through, throughout and “spora”, meaning scattering, spread, sperm (Peters 1999: 23) dates back to approximately the third century BC. The term was first used in the Septuagint, the Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures explicitly intended for the Hellenic Jewish communities in Alexandria to describe the Jews living in exile from their homeland of Palestine (Cohen 2003: 1; Boyarin and Boyarin 1993; Tölölyan 1991; Brah 1996: 181; Brubaker 2005: 1; Sheffer 2002). Here, the term was associated with a collective trauma and generally had negative connotations (Braziel and Mannur 2003: 1). Robin Cohen, however, argues that the term diaspora originally had a positive meaning:
For the Greeks, the notion was used to describe the colonisation of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean in the archaic period (800 - 600 BC). Although there was some displacement of the ancient Greeks to Asia Minor as a result of poverty, overpopulation and inter-state war, diaspora essentially had a positive connotation. (Cohen 2003: 2)
This early positive reference notwithstanding, the concept of diaspora is generally thought to carry negative connotations, which essentially are based on the experiences of Jews who were dispersed from their putative homeland. It may therefore be helpful to take the Jewish case as a starting point, before exploring how the term diaspora has been extended to other displaced communities. In this respect, my first attempt will be to understand the Jewish experience, not in order to suggest it as a definitive model for all diasporas, but to acknowledge the influence of this specific case on various explanations of the term diaspora.
Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin’s articulation of the historical experiences of Jews requires no further explanation: “What is most real about real Jews is that Europe, in any case, does not know what to do with them: Christians demand their conversion; monarchs expel them; republics assimilate them; Nazis exterminate them” (1993: 700). This denigrating attitude towards Jewish people can be given as the reason why Jews have assumed a symbolic status as the paradigmatic example of marginalisation and exile, whereby they have come to represent most minorities and other diasporic communities.
[T]he destruction of Jerusalem and razing of the walls of its Temple in 586 BC created the central folk memory of the negative, victim diaspora tradition – in particular the experience of enslavement, exile and displacement … The crushing of the revolt of the Judeans against the Romans and the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD precisely confirmed the catastrophic tradition. Once again, Jews had been unable to sustain a national homeland and were scattered to the far corners of the world … In the summer of 1096, beginning at Rouen, the Crusaders slaughtered or forcibly converted the majority of Jews in the Rhine valley, killing 1000 in Mainz alone. When the Crusaders finally arrive in Jerusalem in 1099 they gathered all the Jews they could find into a convenient synagogue and burned them alive ... The Catholic hierarchy also remained wedded to its hostile position for centuries … Between 1290 and 1293 the Jewish communities in the Kingdom of Naples were almost entirely destroyed. (Cohen 2003: 3-9)

A glimpse at this brief summary of calamitous history of Jews elucidates why the Jewish community and thus the concept of diaspora are mostly associated with “loss”, “dislocation” and “trauma”.

When it comes to modern narratives about the Jewish diaspora, two key but rival narratives come into prominence: one focuses on the displacement, whilst the other underscores the return of Jewish people in the diaspora to the sacred homeland. These contesting contemporary narratives are not mutually exclusive and are basically varied interpretations of the experience of exile that derive from the descriptions in the Bible. One narrative asserts the autochthony of Jews, claiming that they came into existence in the land of Israel so they will be re-autochthonised once they return; whereas the other focuses on the deterritorialisation of Jews since Abraham, claiming that the land of Israel was not the birthplace of the Jewish people; that is, they had to leave this putative homeland in order to go to the “promised land” (Boyarin and Boyarin 1993: 718). The latter seems to be at the core of the myth of wandering Jews and explains why Jews occupy an archetypal position among all diasporic communities. Jews were the first people who were displaced and forced to live in exile, who were prevented from founding their own state where they could live together as a national community, and who were treated as undesirable subjects, as “others” by the societies in which they lived. Consequently, having experienced all these, Jews were left with no other option but to create and sustain a strong longing for an imagined homeland and a faith in returning to this homeland one day. These narratives of Jewish dispersal remain the prototypical historical example of diasporic experience and are widely utilised to explain the characteristics of diaspora.
Braziel and Mannur, however, argue that most recent theorisation about diaspora has been marked by the ambiguities of the term diaspora itself (2003: 4), which is fundamentally due to the fact that diasporas evolve over time, and as a result, they now differ considerably from the early Jewish diaspora both in their character and structure. In this respect, it becomes vital to find a reference point to clarify the concept. William Safran suggests a categorisation, with particular emphasis on the Jewish diaspora as the “ideal type”. According to his classification:

1. 
   They or their ancestors have been dispersed from an original center to two or more foreign regions
   
2. 
   They retain a collective memory, vision or myth about their original homeland including its location, history and achievements
   
3. 
   They believe they are not – and perhaps can never be – fully accepted in their host societies and so remain partly separate
   
4. 
   Their ancestral home is idealised and it is thought that when conditions are favorable, either they or their descendants should return
   
5. 
   They believe all members of diaspora should be committed to the maintenance or restoration of the original homeland and to its safety and prosperity
   
6. 
   They continue in various ways to relate to that homeland and their ethnocommunal consciousness and solidarity. (Safran 1991: 83-84)
   

In a similar manner to other scholars such as Needham (1975) and Clifford (1994), Robin Cohen builds on this definition by amending some of Safran’s components and by widening the list even further. Thus the definition becomes more comprehensive and allows us to include non-Jewish communities and contemporary diasporas:

1. 
   Dispersal from an original homeland, often traumatically, to two or more foreign regions
   
2. 
   Alternatively, the expansion from a homeland in search of work, in pursuit of trade or to further colonial ambitions
   
3. 
   A collective memory and myth about the homeland, including its location, history and achievements
   
4. 
   An idealisation of the putative ancestral home and a collective commitment to its maintenance, restoration, safety and prosperity, even its creation
   
5. 
   The development of a return movement that gains collective approbation
   
6. 
   A strong ethnic group consciousness sustained over a long time and based on a sense of distinctiveness, a common history and the belief in a common fate
   
7. 
   A troubled relationship with host societies, suggesting a lack of acceptance at the least or the possibility that another calamity might befall the group
   
8. 
   A sense of empathy and solidarity with co-ethnic members in other countries of settlement
   
9. 
   The possibility of a distinctive creative, enriching life in host countries with a tolerance for pluralism. (Cohen 2003: 26)
   

As clearly seen in the expanded definition, Cohen argues that the departure from homeland does not need to be traumatic; instead one can merely leave one’s country for pragmatic reasons and a better future. He also suggests that even if the idealisation of the homeland is sustained, diasporic communities stand a chance of overcoming their troubled relationships with host societies. This is clearly a more positive approach to the conceptualisation of diaspora.

Nonetheless, in spite of the rather inclusive nature of Cohen’s definition, neither of the lists is universally applicable to all diasporic communities, and one should not expect all of the criteria listed to apply to all diasporas, either. Even the Jewish diaspora, which is generally addressed as the “ideal type”, does not precisely correspond to all of the features enumerated. Gabriel Sheffer asserts that:
the vast majority of Jews no longer regard themselves as being in Galut (exile) in their host countries. Jews permanently reside in host countries of their own free will … and there is both a much greater self and collective legitimatization to refrain from making serious plans concerning return to Israel. (Sheffer 2002: 4)

Even so, the list primarily created by Safran and subsequently developed by Cohen still seems to be the amplest one to refer to when constructing a framework that helps to determine whether specific dispersed groups of people constitute a diaspora or not.

In light of given definitions, it is possible to identify the common characteristics of diasporic groups as: displacement and deterritorialisation; longing for a homeland (although it is an idealised construction of the homeland in most cases); a strong desire to return to this homeland, which is seen as almost impossible but the longing for which serves to cement the members of diasporic community; a resulting nostalgia; a sense of pain and trauma; an endless struggle to succeed in the host country; and solidarity anchored in a distinctive group identity. This last feature also gives the term “diaspora” its collective characteristic distinct from “exile” or “migration”, neither of which necessarily requires a group connection. Since the other elements of the provided lists such as displacement (as in the case of exile) or longing for homeland (as for both exile and migration) might be applied to exiles and migrants, the sense of collectivity, of all these characteristics, seems to be the most important for the differentiation of a diaspora. As asserted by Boyarin and Boyarin, “Jewish resistance to assimilation and annihilation within conditions of diaspora generated such practices as communal charity in the areas of education, feeding, providing for the sick, and the caring for Jewish prisoners, to the virtual exclusion of others” (1993: 712-13). Despite the exclusiveness indicated, it is this communal spirit which goes beyond the boundaries of the states and connects diasporic groups in different countries to each other. “Members of the diaspora mobilise politically to defend or protest against injustices and human right abuses suffered by co-diasporics elsewhere. They raise money, ambulances, medicines and blankets for them … In this respect, diasporas are fraternities” (Werbner 2002: 126). Yet it still requires a further investigation into why exile, migration and diaspora are classified as different categories, especially when it is considered that throughout history people have tended to migrate in groups rather than individually.
The matter is immensely complicated by the interchangeable use of the terms diaspora, migration or migrant and exile. The vagueness of available definitions results in ambiguities and confusion. The most important reason for this indistinctness is probably the expansion in the meaning of diaspora: “The term that once described Jewish, Greek and Armenian dispersion now shares meaning with a larger semantic domain that includes words like immigrant, expatriate, refugee, guest-worker, exile community, overseas community, ethnic community” (Tölölyan 1996: 428). In as much as the term signifies displacement, transnationality, and solidarity, it is applied to many minority groups that have had to live in countries other than their countries of origin for various reasons. Here, in order to clarify the relationship between diasporas and minorities it should be briefly mentioned how they are connected. Intrinsically, being in a diaspora means to be in another country rather than one’s country of origin. It also means, by its very definition, to establish a community within a host society, which automatically gives diasporas the status of being a minority. In addition, like minorities, who tend to identify themselves as distinctive entities, maintaining boundaries with other social bodies (Brah 1996: 163), diasporas form a distinguishing group identity via social processes. This is why some scholars use the term diaspora to define diverse minority groups. Robin Cohen’s attempt to divide diaspora into types can be given as a widely acclaimed example of the inclination to expand the comprehensiveness of the term diaspora:
When considering the most prevalent concept of diaspora, the Jews have been selected to illustrate the argument. Africans and Armenians are shown to be analogous victim diasporas. The British have been represented as an imperial diaspora, the Indians as a labour diaspora, while the trading diasporas have been typified by the Chinese and Lebanese. Finally the peoples of the Caribbean abroad are, I suggest, usefully characterised as a cultural diaspora. (Cohen 2003: x)

Once Cohen’s evaluation is taken as the reference point and the meaning is expanded to include disparate communities, it is clear that the traditional definition of the term diaspora and the restrictive approaches to the concept should also be transcended. Evidently, “diaspora is both a structural and subjective condition determined by historical forces and by the prevailing structure of power relations” (Davies 2007: 61). Following this reasoning, the Jewish example would be surpassed even if it were to retain its privileged status as an ideal type.

If minorities, as argued above, count as diasporas, then what of exiles? It is necessary to demarcate the conceptual boundaries and understand the differences as well as the similarities between such interchangeably used terms in order to sharpen our focus on the issue. For John Durham Peters, exile refers to a painful or punitive banishment from homeland implying trauma, and imminent danger, thus invoking a home, and homeland, creating fantasies and longings; whereas diaspora suggests networks among expatriates, and is necessarily collective, in contrast to exile which can be solitary (Peters 1999: 19-21). Hamid Naficy takes a similar approach and argues that people in diaspora, like exiles, have an identity by virtue of the personal and cultural values in their homeland, but unlike exiles, diaspora is necessarily collective. Plurality, multiplicity and hybridity are dominant among diasporas, while binarism and duality are to the fore among other political exiles (Naficy 2001: 14). James Clifford, too, emphasises the difference between diaspora and exile on the basis of collectivity. “Diaspora is different from travel (though it works through travel practices) in that it is not temporary. It involves dwelling, maintaining communities, having collective homes away from home, and in this it is different from exile, with its frequently individualistic focus” (Clifford 1994: 308). Like Clifford, Shain and Ahram also accentuate temporality as a distinctive feature of exile experience. “What distinguishes political exiles from other diaspora members is not only the exiles’ continuous struggle to facilitate the conditions for their return, but also their determination not to establish life abroad as a comfortable option, even temporarily” (Shain and Ahram 2003: 663). Hence, the main differences between diaspora and exile can be avowed as collectivity/solitude and permanency/temporality, at least in principle – because depending on the particular circumstances exiles can settle in the new country of domicile, even if involuntarily. To be able to use the term diaspora in order to define a community, then, there should be a group of people with the same ethnic and/or cultural background, living together, aiming for long-lasting dwelling in the host country, and supporting each other with a distinctive awareness of their collective identity.
When it comes to distinguishing diasporas from migrants, drawing a clear and distinctive boundary seems much more challenging. In its simplest definition, a migrant is: “1) a person who moves temporarily or seasonally from place to place; a person on a journey, and 2) a person who moves permanently to live in a new country, town, etc. especially to look for work or to take up a post” (Oxford English Dictionary 2007: online). Apparently, a migrant can either be temporary or permanent. At this point, it is helpful to return to Robin Cohen to elucidate the strong connection between the two terms. For Cohen, time has to pass before we can know that any community that has migrated is really a diaspora (Cohen 2003: 25). That is to say, migration is the starting point for the formation of a diasporic community. A leading diaspora theorist, Khachig Tölölyan, in agreement with Cohen’s approach, states that “in fact, migrations have led to a proliferation of diasporas and to a redefinition of their importance and roles” (1996: 427). Furthermore, Avtar Brah (1996: 186) provides a comprehensive definition of diaspora underlining its relation with migration and depicts diaspora as an interpretive frame referencing the economic, political and cultural dimensions of contemporary forms of migrancy.
However, establishing migration as a commencement or a precondition for the formation of diaspora is not sufficient either to make a clear distinction or to demonstrate the correlation between the two notions. There are many diverse forms of migration, and not all result in diaspora. What gives each term its distinctness requires further elaboration. In this respect, the changing characteristics of migration over the course of time should be taken into account. The volume, speed and route of contemporary migrations are not the same as the ones of mass migration in the past.
Earlier patterns of movement, such as the transatlantic slave trade, or the international labor migration in the first phase of industrialisation, could be coherently plotted on a map. However, the pattern of migration associated with globalisation has been further complicated … There has been a fundamental shift away from the traditional destinations, an expansion in the types of people who embark on migration, and the imposition of more restrictions on the conditions of entry settlement … Nor can the general flows of global migration be plotted according to the binary coordinates of the colonial center and the colonised periphery, or the developed First World versus the underdeveloped Third World. (Papastergiadis 2000: 23-24)


Today it is possible to observe an increasing number of educated and qualified people from so-called First World countries heading for developing countries with growing job opportunities by virtue of mounting industrialisation projects. This can readily be described as a voluntary and individual trajectory. The pattern of contemporary migration seems much more multi-dimensional. In accordance with this, to some extent, the tendency to associate migrants with helpless, pitiful underdogs has been gradually changing. “The need for a huge pool of skilled workers creates a transnational class of professionals who can live and travel globally while freely conversing with their colleagues in English, the lingua franca of the era of Transnational Corporations” (Miyoshi 1993: 741-42). The mobility occurring in the age of globalisation provides people with more flexibility so that they can simultaneously live in one country and work in another, to be able to present their children with better educational, social or occupational opportunities and prosperity. This dynamic sense of mobility effaces the discourse of victimhood, giving migrants the chance of leading multicultural, transnational lives. They are not confined within one nation state since “migrancy commonly flows back and forth across state boundaries” (Harney and Baldassar 2007: 191). They are what Pnina Werbner calls “transmigrants”, who are constantly flowing “between the West and the Rest” (2004: 896). As modern nomads, they can travel a lot, resulting in a focus on temporality and also rapidity. This is not to deny the fact that this type of migration as yet concerns an elite and privileged group of people rather than being the norm, but to simply point to the changing dimensions of the phenomenon.⁴ Thus migration, especially in the contemporary world, evokes provisionality and individuality, more like exile, in contrast with diaspora which is still supposed to be permanent in terms of settlement and requires collectivity. In this frame, current migration patterns, as they suggest a disjunction between ordinary people and elite, should be thought in conjunction with cosmopolitanism on the basis of its immediate reference to world citizenship.⁵ In this sense, “cosmopolitanism is attached to egalitarianism through universalism that purportedly evades cultural differences and is detached from any particular group affiliation” (Mani 2007: 26-27). This leads to the most common understanding and subsequent criticism of the concept for being exclusive to elites who can entertain their privileged position in the current global condition (Huyssen 2003; Calhoun 2002; Elsaesser 2005). Accordingly, it seems implausible to think of contemporary migrants, who are potentially cosmopolitans, alongside diasporas, who maintain their strong ethnic and cultural associations. Nevertheless, suggestions have already been made to consider the changing status of diasporas with particular emphasis on their heterogeneity and hybridity (Mani 2007; Hall 2002). And more celebratory readings of cosmopolitanism interpret the concept as “a greater involvement with a plurality of contrasting cultures and a willingness to engage with the other” (Hannerz 1996: 103). In this context, the more integrated – though not necessarily assimilated – diasporic subjects are in their host countries, and the more mobility they acquire, the more likely they are to be considered cosmopolitan. Particularly the second and third generation diasporic artists and filmmakers, with their significant social and transnational mobility, can be subsumed under this category. Overall, with its emphasis on plurality of communities and identities, cosmopolitanism might be the lens through which contemporary diasporic communities can be reexamined. There is no doubt that the possibility of multiple belongings demands, to some extent, renouncing essentialist definitions and celebrating the proliferation of terms.
The conceptual and practical boundaries of diaspora have become increasingly blurred, but one last term that is deemed important in terms of its relation to diaspora should be mentioned briefly, namely “refugee”. Even though refugee/asylum seeker is often set aside as an entirely different category due to its strong political orientations, recent studies have started to suggest a link between this specific form of migrancy and diaspora, drawing on complex relations that have been developing between the two (van Hear 2007; Koser 2007; Al-Ali et al. 2001). In the longer term, refugees are likely to become a part of a diaspora “as refugee migration transmutes into economic migration and thus the refugee might become an established resident and eventually a citizen of the country of asylum” (van Hear 2007: 10-11). Kurds fleeing from their hometowns in Turkey due to ethnic clashes during the late 1980s and 1990s illustrate the case, since they have become a part of the existing Turkish community in Germany despite commencing their journey as asylum seekers in most cases. Similarly, the displacement of Bosnians in the 1990s can be given as another striking example as “in reality, ‘temporary protection’ for Bosnians evolved quite differently. In most EU countries, most Bosnians eventually were granted permanent resident rights” (Koser 2007: 239). Yet much needs to be done to establish a clear relationship between the two concepts and to demonstrate to what extent they overlap.
In brief, it does not seem possible to neatly draw the boundaries of the term diaspora, or clearly separate it from its fellow terms migrants, minorities, exiles, asylum seekers, refugees. Existing formulations appear to fall short in addressing the complexities with regard to the definition of diaspora. The changing characteristics and multiplicity of diasporas have challenged scholars and continue to require reconceptualisation or even some new conceptualisations. I have pointed above to some of the crucial elements that can be considered to distinguish diaspora from exiles, or migrants, or asylum seekers: the collective nature of diaspora, the long-standing presence and the settled nature of it. However, it is clear that in many ways these terms and processes overlap and link to each other, and rather than seeking to make ever more refined analytical distinction, it could be argued that it is the very complexity and richness of the term as it has developed in the literature that makes it useful for examining a complex cultural phenomenon. Thus I would seek not to pin down or restrict the boundaries of the term but rather to embrace its promiscuity, because the connections and complexity of it can provide useful insights into the situation I analyse in this dissertation. Henceforth, then, the term diaspora will be used bearing its multiple and complex meanings in mind to explore further and more relevant implications of the concept for the specific purposes of this study.