With the German-Turkish recruitment agreement, hundreds of thousands of workers from Turkey came to West Germany within a few years. Their labor was in demand, but they had to fight for their rights. Mohannad Lamees looks at the history of guest workers and their importance in the class struggle.

On October 30, 1961, the Federal Republic of Germany and Turkey signed a recruitment agreement that regulated the temporary employment of Turkish workers in West Germany. The background was the labor shortage during the economic boom in the Federal Republic. In 1960, there were around 650,000 job vacancies and only 150,000 job seekers. In Turkey, on the other hand, there was a severe economic crisis and high unemployment. There were also foreign policy interests, as Turkey, as a NATO member, secured the southeastern flank of the alliance.

The agreement was based on the German-Italian recruitment agreement of 1955 and initially provided for two-year fixed-term employment contracts as well as a rotation principle, according to which employees would return after their period of residence had expired and be replaced by new workers.

However, many companies soon abandoned rotation in order to be able to continue to employ workers who had already been trained. Until the recruitment stop in November 1973, around 870,000 people came to the Federal Republic from Türkiye, and around 500,000 returned during the same period. There were also many women among them. Their share only rose from 13 percent (1965) to just under a quarter (1973) and was therefore below the average for all foreign employees. In absolute numbers, the approximately 129,000 Turkish women in 1973 were the second largest group of female migrant workers after the Yugoslavians.

Shortage of skilled workers: Migrants are particularly often in shortage occupations with poor working conditions

After the recruitment stop, many of the workers stayed in Germany for economic and political reasons, such as the military coup in Turkey. In the following years, several hundred thousand family members followed, so that what was originally planned as temporary labor migration became permanent immigration.

Current surveys by the Federal Statistical Office show how this immigration has shaped German society. In 2025, around 2.6 million people with Turkish immigration backgrounds lived in Germany, which corresponded to 3.2 percent of the population. This included around 125,000 former guest workers from Turkey.

Migrant labor as a commodity

TheRecruitment agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and Turkeyis an impressive example of how labor as a commodity is dealt with in capitalism. As the economy grew in Germany, capitalist companies needed additional workers to continually expand their production and increase their profits. The state, as a common representative of the capitalist class, organized the import of workers abroad to meet this need.

The people who came to Germany from Turkey were viewed primarily as a “mass” whose labor could be exploited for the profits of German capitalists. The originally planned time limit for the stay made this logic clear: the workers should come, work and, if possible, leave again when demand fell.

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The agreement thus makes visible a fundamental contradiction in the capitalist economy. Companies need workers but want to keep their costs as low as possible. Recruiting from abroad increases the supply of workers and thereby increases competition among employees.

Division and racist violence

Turkish workers were not treated as equal employees in the Federal Republic, but often as people who did not belong to German society. Many of the workers lived in cramped collective accommodation or barracks and worked under significantly worse conditions and for worse wages than German colleagues. They had to during the recruiting processmedical examinationsendured trials that were reminiscent of military mustering.

These special conditions of exploitation and oppression were justified by rampant racism against the so-called guest workers. In this context, the racist division of the working class into “local” and “foreign” workers not only had the goal of depressing wages, but also represented a means of capitalism to dominate the workers.

The racism against people from Turkey was not limited to exclusion and discrimination and continues to this day. German fascists repeatedly made workers from Turkey the target of their racist agitation and committed acts of violence, which repeatedly spread fear and terror among migrants.

On the night of November 22nd to 23rd, 1992, neo-Nazis murdered three people with Turkish migration backgrounds in arson attacks in Mölln. In May 1993, five members of a family of Turkish origin were murdered in Solingen. Between 2000 and 2007, the NSU murdered nine people for racist motives, including several people from their country of origin, Türkiye.

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Appreciation as an excuse

The decades-long racist devaluation of workers from Turkey has, in turn, also given rise to a strong desire for social recognition of their life's work. Especially in the second and third generations, the children and grandchildren of the workers demanded that their work and their experiences be recognized as part of German history.

This appreciation has now even reached the social mainstream. In 2020, for example, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia initiated the campaign#IYouWeNRW, for which the rapper Eko Fresh, himself the grandson of a Turkish guest worker, released the song “1994”, which deals with the experiences and achievements of the first generation of immigrants.

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Also atceremonyOn the 65th anniversary of the recruitment agreement on October 20, 2026, Chancellor Friedrich Merz honored the contribution of guest workers from Turkey to German prosperity. However, in the same breath in which Merz described the agreement as a success, he also called for further limits on migration to Germany today and stated that society must pay attention to where it is being overwhelmed by immigration. Merz wants us to believe that the fight against so-called “irregular migration” is also done in order to be able to better integrate those who are already there.

The appreciation of the migrants from back then becomes a targeted distinction between desired and undesirable migrants - between those whose economic benefits and supposed integration are considered a success story and those whose benefits for German society are questioned.

In doing so, Merz is also fueling the division between different migrant groups, which has become more pronounced in recent years. While many descendants of former guest workers continue to be confronted with particularly poor working conditions and racist discrimination, others have experienced economic advancement and in some cases have also set up their own companies. Today there are capitalists with a Turkish migration background who themselves employ migrant workers and benefit from the increased exploitation of their labor.

At the same time, one's own experience of racist exclusion and discrimination does not make one immune from adopting racist thinking towards other migrants. In this context, migrant workers in particular who hope for rapid social advancement themselves often adopt the division into good and bad migrants, present themselves as “well integrated” and step down.

Migration as a driving force of resistance

It must be clear to everyone who does not want to accept today's capitalist exploitation and oppression that the division between workers must be broken. Last but not least, this includes the fight against racism and chauvinism within the working class. As long as non-migrant and migrant employees are played off against each other, companies can benefit from their competition and make common struggles more difficult.

However, the history of labor migration also shows that migrant workers did not only appear as particularly exploited employees, but also repeatedly took active roles in resistance against this exploitation. An example of this is the wildcat strikes of the early 1970s. In August 1973 they settledPierburg in Neussespecially migrant workers stopped working. Of the approximately 3,200 employees, around70 percent women, most of them from Greece and Turkey. They fought against discriminatory low-wage groups and for higher wages. After five days of strike, they achieved the abolition of a low wage group created especially for them and a wage increase.

Also atCologne Ford plantIn the same month, thousands of employees went on strike, most of them workers from Turkey. They protested against the dismissal of Turkish colleagues and demanded higher wages. The strike was ended violently by factory security and the police, but it made it clear what potential lies in joint resistance. In both industrial disputes, migrant political and trade union activists played an important role in the preparation and organization. The Cologne strike leader Baha Targün was also close to Turkish and German communist organizations.

50 years ago: wildcat strike at Ford Cologne

Migrants, that much is clear, are not a burden for the German working class. Rather, their experiences in the class struggle are important sources for common resistance here in Germany. The common struggle must not be limited to equal rights, better opportunities for advancement or the recognition of migrant achievements. Because these demands do not eliminate the basis of exploitation. As long as an entire class of people is forced to sell their labor in order to secure their livelihood, while another has the means of production and appropriates the wealth created, this exploitation will continue.

The goal must therefore be to overcome the capitalist conditions themselves. Migrant and non-migrant workers have a common enemy: the capitalists. Their union can form the basis for a struggle that goes beyond equality within the existing system and aims at a socialist society in which production serves not profit but the needs of the people.

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