In one man’s commitments the bridges are transcended

German, but with a heart that "lies in Turkey", sportsman, journalist and pedagogue, Harald Aumeier’s multiple vocations combine two countries whose identities have been intertwined for decades. Aumeier, who goes only by ’Haki’ in Turkey where people have difficulty pronouncing his name, talked about his long involvement with German-Turkish football team, Türkiyemspor. Since sprouting up spontaneously in 1978, the football club has remained faithful to its immigrant Kreuzberg origins, the soulful West-Berlin neighborhood where pick-up games have been around as long as some of the historic buildings.

With wispy graying hair and silver jewelry, Aumeier speaks from downturned eyes that seem lit from within by of belief in the intrinsic good in people. He first came as a fan to the neighborhood games, drawn to the foreign players’ "singing, not shouting, drinking Rakı and not beer". His involvement has lasted and, while still technically a hobby, he pours his heart - and money - into his work as the Club’s representative in Turkey. Faced with constant assertions that the were inferior and second-class citizens, Aumeier said, the football pitch provided an outlet quite literally evened the playing field; Turks could do just as well as native Germans. They often did better, in fact, and in only a few years rose to a 3rd division team, thrice winners of the Berlin Cup.

Now the weekend refuge for newly arriving immigrants has ballooned into a massive enterprise with 16 teams - four of them female - and multiple European imitations, under the proud international umbrella. The semi-professional team is composed of students, unemployed folks and professional athletes, boasting of citizens from around the world. "Türkiyemspor is not just Turkish. Foreigners are a reality and a part of Berlin, just as much as the wall, the Brandenburg Gate and its Nazi history," Aumeier explained. He speaks rapidly but measures his words and tone, careful to share what he believes, expressing ideas with confidence and little reservation.

The team fits in well in Germany’s mixed historical relationship with its eastern neighbor. With a shortage of men, an influx of money and a determination to build a new country on the devastating ashes of war, Germany imported foreign labor using hundreds of thousands of Turkish workers under the "Gastarbeiter" programs of the 1960s. The country grew and recovered, and the foreign workers who had helped it heal did not go home, giving rise to a new generation of "Turk-chen" youth who make up the largest group of foreigners in 21st century Berlin.

Understanding immigrant kids

In his other incarnation as pedagogue, Aumeier came into close contact with this generation from another angle, working for years for the local government as a family counselor to predominantly Arab and Turkish families. Immigrant children Ğ who are too German for their parents at home and too Turkish for their friends at school Ğ have a history of causing trouble in public schools, a reputation that is often exaggerated. Children are thrown into a system divided between stagnated public service professors unaccustomed to change and unthreatened by job instability, and frustrated remnants of the May’68 generation whose liberal, anti-authoritarian approach to teaching did not resonate with Turkish youth accustomed to strictly imposed patriarchy. By harping on their linguistic errors and cultural differences, Aumeier criticized teachers for "trying to build good German on a broken Turkish structure," as far as language and identity are concerned. His philosophy on education is thus justifiably similar to his ideas on assimilation: Change must be "freiwillig", conscious and decidedly voluntary.

Unfortunately, problems of racism and prejudice are neither limited to the classroom nor restrained on the football pitch. A famously political 1986 match against Hertha BSC turned violent. Players still suffer occasional harassment from far-right groups, and anti-Turkish propaganda reaches a frenzy before national and local elections. Still, Aumeier can now happily describe his excitement upon seeing young, blond, blue-eyed Germans cheering for Türkiyemspor against a team not from Berlin. "If it’s normal to root for Türkiyemspor over a purely German team, then it’s normal to see Turkish Germans on the street," he said.

But there is ground to be covered, still, and Aumeier believes old Europe must open up to the Turkish nation only 60 years its junior. "Turkey is Europe’s only chance to open the closed, Christian club of theirs," Aumeier said. For him, welcoming a majority Muslim country is not a matter of religious affiliation, but the kind of open-minded, democratic values the European Union claims to uphold. Attuned to Turkish sensitivities since living in Turkey on and off over the last two decades, Aumeier says he understands the ever diminishing excitement of people in Turkey at the prospect of being officially labeled European. "If I knock on your door, and you say ’no’ to me for ten years, one day I won’t knock anymore. I’ll look next door," he said.

Aumeier produces the Türkiyemspor journal "Bizim takimimiz", or Our Team, published for each game, writes for the monthly bilingual "Türkei-Kurier" distributed in both countries, and co-hosts the inter-cultural talk show "Avrokökler/Eurowurzeln". Alongside Dr. Hüseyin Nazlikulwhich, the program, currently on hiatus, seats Turkish professionals alongside their German counterparts to discuss their shared vocations in depth. But it’s clear that his passion is the team.

Türkiyemspor’s logo shows the standing Berlin Bear reaching eagerly toward the Turkish Star and Crescent, although they stand divided. Perhaps his liaison-like persona is in his make up, where the blood runs proud from his government employee father who taught himself Turkish to help new immigrants navigate the infamous German bureaucracy. Or perhaps it is in his slow smile and mild manner. Or, to borrow a phrase from one of his players, perhaps it is yet another example of the world "remixing", of blurring identities in our nomadic world, but Aumeier has no desire to categorize himself. His affiliation with the team might be a search for ’Heimat’, that untranslatable elusive German concept of belonging, but it could be that the search need not come to fruition.

Aumeier explained, "In Berlin I know who I am, but in Istanbul I can find myself anew each day."