{"id":362204,"date":"2025-08-21T14:03:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T14:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/362204\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T14:03:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T14:03:10","slug":"proxy-war-turkish-tiktok-makeup-row-exposes-tensions-with-german-diaspora-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/362204\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Proxy war\u2019 \u2013 Turkish TikTok makeup row exposes tensions with German diaspora | Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

It all began when Meri, a TikTok influencer from Turkey, mocked the makeup of Turkish women living in Germany<\/a>. They were, she claimed, instantly recognisable by their bronzer, thick blush, false eyelashes and plumped lips. And the look favoured by the diaspora, she added, waspishly, had \u201cnothing to do with how real Turkish women look\u201d.<\/p>\n

Reaction from the diaspora was swift and stinging. \u201cYou\u2019re just jealous because we live in Germany,\u201d one said. \u201cIf we stop coming (to Turkey<\/a> from Germany), your economy will collapse.\u201d Soon a full-blown social media feud had erupted, with insults and mutual mockery flowing. And, although it started with makeup, the row has gone far deeper, exposing old and bitter rifts over gender, class, politics, nationalism and economic power.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was soon clear a proxy war had broken out: a symbolic conflict actually dealing with something else, something deeper \u2013 which offered insights into Turkish society,\u201d wrote the prominent Turkish German writer Hatice Aky\u00fcn in Stern magazine.<\/p>\n

Turks make up the largest single ethnic minority in Germany \u2013 1.54 million<\/a> in addition to 1.4 million German citizens who are of Turkish descent \u2013 as well as forming the biggest Turkish diaspora.<\/p>\n

Turkish Gastarbeiter (guest workers) in Germany in 1984. Photograph: Ullstein Bild\/Getty<\/p>\n

Most Turkish Germans trace their ancestry to the <\/a>Gastarbeiter<\/a> (guest worker) movement of the 1960s and 70s<\/a>, when West Germany invited Turkish people, many of them from poor rural villages in Anatolia, to help fill a labour gap.<\/p>\n

Aky\u00fcn said educated elite women in Turkish cities still tended to look down on the daughters and granddaughters of the guest workers. She noted that the party of Turkey\u2019s authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip <\/strong>Erdo\u011fan, had come to rely on Germany\u2019s Turks as part of its base, with more than 60% of the electorate living in Europe\u2019s top economy voting for AKP even as it cracks down on media freedom<\/a> and locks up its opponents<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One such dissident, Can D\u00fcndar, a Turkish journalist living in exile in Germany, sees the social media spat as a useful barometer of longstanding as well as current tensions. \u201cIt\u2019s obvious this is about a lot more than style and taste \u2013 it\u2019s an old conflict,\u201d he said in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit.<\/p>\n

The guest workers who had unexpectedly stayed in Germany and brought their families over \u201cdon\u2019t fit in the classic categories \u2018German\u2019 or \u2018Turkish\u2019. They\u2019ve spent four generations trying to make themselves understood in Germany as well as in Turkey and suffer because they\u2019re not really understood in either,\u201d D\u00fcndar said.<\/p>\n

Many of the comments directed at the diaspora have a classist overtone: \u201cThey clean toilets and spend their money on makeup,\u201d wrote one commenter denouncing the Almanc\u0131, a derogatory word for Turkish Germans.<\/p>\n

The beauty influencer Meri. The row was about much more than style and taste, say experts. Photograph: tiktok.com\/@merileee<\/p>\n

The journalist Ay\u015fe Y\u0131ld\u0131z said the spat also had a racist component, noting that in some cases Turkish German women were being dismissively called \u2018Afghans\u2019or \u2018Arabs\u2019 \u2013 intended as an insult targeting their darker complexions highlighted by dramatic makeup.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a way of denying their cultural identity,\u201d she wrote in Berlin\u2019s Tageszeitung.<\/p>\n

Sexism is also in the mix, Y\u0131ld\u0131z said, with crass judgments about appearance reflecting \u201cinternalised misogyny\u201d in both groups and often attracting men to the online chats who liberally shared their views on the attractiveness of the women.<\/p>\n

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The Turkish German writer \u00c7i\u011fdem Toprak said the tendency of Turkish Germans to opt for heavy cosmetics was a form of \u201cresistance\u201d against marginalisation, and in some cases against strong social and sexual control by their families. \u201cTheir makeup is a statement drawn with strong contours: I am here,\u201d she said on the online platform Aposto.<\/p>\n

Turkish Gastarbeiter at a car factory in K\u00f6ln, Germany, in 1964. Photograph: Pictures from History\/Universal Images Group\/Getty<\/p>\n

At the same time, said Aky\u00fcn, liberal Turkish women felt increasingly under threat and might well envy the freedoms in Germany. \u201cGrowing numbers of Turks are applying for asylum in Germany to escape the hand of the president,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Germany received nearly 30,000 asylum applications<\/a> from Turkey, putting it in third place among asylum seekers after Syria and Afghanistan, on top of the skilled labourers who arrived to work.<\/p>\n

Naika Foroutan, a professor for integration research at Berlin\u2019s Humboldt University, said there had been a global trend toward \u201cethnisation\u201d among younger migrants in recent years, partly driven by the rising far right and widening anti-Muslim sentiment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They had watched their parents fight to fit into German society only to feel rejected. \u201cSo they try another strategy: to make themselves more visible and recognisable as of Turkish origin, Muslim or Arab,\u201d she told the Stuttgarter Zeitung.<\/p>\n

\u201cYouth culture is now very much influenced by the desire not to be \u2018Alman\u2019 [German],\u201d she said. \u201cInstead, young people with a migration background today consciously present themselves as \u2018foreigners\u2019 \u2013 and do so with confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n