A summary of a meeting between Polish Minister Naszkowski and Brazilian Ambassador Valente.

In the early 1960s, Kurds from Turkey began migrating to postwar Western European countries. Many went to West Germany. Some were students, many of whom self-identified as Kurds, while the great majority was so-called Gastarbeiter (guest workers), most of who then identified as Turks. They formed part of a broader movement dating to 1955, when the West German government signed the first bilateral labor migration treaty, with Italy.

Gastarbeiter were supposed to eventually return to their home country. Most did not. Moreover, some self-organized. First was the Italian Unione Emigrati in Germania, in 1964, and in 1966 there were 60 Turkish workers associations counting 20,000 members, as shown in “Wir sind alle Fremdarbeiter!” Gewerkschaften, migrantische Kämpfe und soziale Bewegungen in Westdeutschland 1960-1980 (2020) by Simon Goeke—who also details the complex relationship between foreign workers and the powerful German labor unions, including the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB). The DGB’s core concern was to protect the rights of German workers and improve their professional and financial positioning. Whenever it believed that a specific foreign workers’ issue or demand seriously undermined this so-called Inländerprimat, it took an oppositional stance.

At the same time, by the 1960s the DGB understood that most Ausländer (foreigners) would not leave, indeed were a considerable part of the work force, and could hurt unions if they were not integrated in some way—which unions started to do. These steps, however, were insufficient to many Gastarbeiter. Hence, their self-organized social, professional, and municipal-political demands expanded from the late 1960s. They did so despite and against the 1965 Ausländergesetz (Aliens Act), which limited foreigners’ political activity. In some cases, foreign workers worked (and lived) together with German and foreign students, influencing each other. This influence was distinct in the case of Kurdish Turkish laborers.

By the 1970s, their political and cultural identity became more squarely Kurdish. Kurdish students in West Germany and elsewhere played a role in this process; so did developments in Turkey, including the foundation of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in 1978. The PKK is one of the most powerful Kurdish organizations that has sought to address and right the issue of the Kurds lacking a state of their own—the issue for modern Kurds, as discussed by David McDowall’s A History of the Modern Kurds (2004). In this process, countries other than Turkey, including Western European countries like Sweden and West Germany, became key transnational diaspora arenas for the Kurdish struggle for statehood. And as Omar Sheikhmous’ Crystallization of a New Diaspora: Migration and Political Culture among the Kurds in Europe (2000) shows, they saw struggles for greater cultural and political rights in Europe, too. The latter questions mattered greatly to Kurdish organizations in West Germany, of which there were about 30 by 1979. One was the Föderation der Arbeitervereine Kurdistans in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the Federation of the Workers Associations of Kurdistan in the Federal Republic of Germany (KOMKAR). Founded in Frankfurt am Main in 1979, it sought to coordinate and unite Kurdish organizations. Although it had limited success and although the PKK sometimes violently fought it, it played a role in making Kurds more visible, linking them to (also German) leftists, and improving their cultural and professional situation.

The text printed here, an English translation from the German original, is an excerpt from an article in its organ, KOMKAR Publikation.

In West Germany as in other capitalist democratic countries in what now is called the Global North, an increasing number of students were more and more radicalized in the 1960s. They were not exceptional: in some countries—think for instance of Italy—some workers underwent a similar evolution. Moreover, some students and workers met and communicated in various forms and place like cafés, dorms, or factories, where some students had to work. And both students’ and workers’ radicalization led them in various ways away from established social democrat, socialist, and communist parties.

But there were differences, too. In West Germany, so-called “new leftist” German students like Rudi Dutschke (1940-1979) were from the early 1960s most distinctly influenced by texts by decolonizing actors-intellectuals like Ernesto “Che” Guevara (1928-1967) and Frantz Fanon (1925-1961). Their worldview was shaped by fellow students from recently decolonized and postcolonial countries, as Quinn Slobodian’s Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany (2012) shows. Among these students were Iranians, for many Iranians wishing to study abroad opted for West Germany following World War II. This pattern built on sturdy modern political, economic and cultural Iranian-German relations from the nineteenth century to the early Second World War. Hence, in the 1960s, West Germany became a key arena for Iranian exile politics. In the university town of Heidelberg, Iranian students with France- and Britain-based colleagues in 1960 founded a body that would be known as the Confederation of Iranian Students, National Union (CISNU) from 1962, when US-based Iranian student bodies joined and Tehran students were associated. CISNU was in the 1960s-70s a leading force outside Iran opposing Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1919-1980; r. 1941-1979)—a story told by Afshin Matin-Asgari’s The Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah (2002). In parallel, in the 1960s the shah was able to become the autocratic ruler he had wanted to be from the 1940s.

In West Germany, one analysis of the shah’s state was the ironically titled Persien, Modell eines Entwicklungslandes [Persia: Model Development Country], publishedin spring 1967 by Bahman Nirumand. Born in 1936, Nirumand was a high school and then university student in Germany from 1950 to 1960, then moved back to Iran to work as an academic and journalist, and in 1965 escaped back to Germany fearing arrest for co-leading the underground Marxist-Leninist group Goruh-e Kaderha. In his book Persien, he argued that changes like the land reform of 1963 are a reformist façade hiding an anti-democratic repressive capitalist regime, which is backed by equally repressive capitalist Western states led by imperialist Washington. In fact, to him, Iran illustrated how Third-World and First-World elites together repress their people—a truly global pattern.

To be sure, Vietnam constituted the key anti-imperialist cause for organizations like the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS), which in 1961 had been evicted by the mainstream Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) and by 1966 was part of West Germany’s ausser- (i.e. extra-) parlamentarische Opposition. Even so, when the German government announced a visit by the shah for early June 1967, the SDS soon decided to support Iranian student protests. These were legally “problematic” because West Germany’s 1965 Aliens Act drastically limited foreigners’ right to political activism. What began as a teach-in about Iran in West Berlin on June 1 and as a protest against the shah on June 2 became aturning point in postwar German history. On June 2, the police did not only condone pro-shah loyalists’ violence against the demonstrators. It also shot dead a demonstrator, Benno Ohnesorg, intensifying students’ fears about a fascist rebirth and causing the student movement to grow swiftly and become more radical.

The text printed here is a translated excerpt from the German-language audio file of the teach-in on Iran of June 1 at the Freie Universität (FU) Berlin. Opened by Gabriele Kuby (born 1944), a member of the FU’s General Students Committee, the teach-in featured Nirumand, who spoke for about an hour and a half on the world’s current economic-political condition for which Iran was a case in point, and Hans-Heinz Heldmann (1929-1995), a German lawyer representing Iranian and other foreign students politically active in Germany. Followed by a few notes on other political matters, these two lectures were then discussed by the students; Dutschke, since 1965 a leading SDS member, drew a parallel between Vietnam and Iran. Attended by about 2,000 students, the teach-in had a strongly mobilizing effect on the protests the next day, June 2.

A Stasi intelligence report on the potential for terrorist activity in Berlin.

Documents related to East Germany's protest against the intended establishment of a Chinese trade representation in West Berlin. The East German Ministry of Foreign Affairs stresses that West Berlin cannot be regarded as part of West Germany. Therefore, by initiating diplomatic relations with West Berlin without considering the existence of the internationally acknowledged Four Power Agreement on Berlin between the US, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, China is deliberately acting against the interests of East Germany.

Documents related to East Germany's protest against the intended establishment of a Chinese trade representation in West Berlin. The East German Ministry of Foreign Affairs stresses that West Berlin cannot be regarded as part of West Germany. Therefore, by initiating diplomatic relations with West Berlin without considering the existence of the internationally acknowledged Four Power Agreement on Berlin between the US, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, China is deliberately acting against the interests of East Germany.

Khrushchev remembers the signing of peace agreement with Japan and the exclusion of the Soviet Union from it. He criticizes the politics of Adenauer and warns about the destructive effects of potential world war. Khrushchev suggests signing the peace agreement to avoid the possibility of a nuclear war against the US and its allies

Chen asks Khrushchev to go over the pressing international issues and he presents the USSR's stances on the situation in Laos, South Korea, and Cuba. Khrushchev also raises problems in GDR and difficulties in negotiations with Western powers with regards to the German question. Khrushchev also mentions Soviet plans to launch a spaceship and resume nuclear testing. The two leaders also discuss the challenges of agricultural development.

The two parties discuss the national exhibitions in Moscow and London, and opportunities for trade between England and the Soviet Union. Khrushchev puts forth his intentions to sign the peace agreement with Germany as soon as possible and to declare Berlin a free city. Roberts is worried that the peace agreement will limit the rights of Western nations in Western Germany and Western Berlin.

Kroll remarks that trade between the USSR and Western Germany is improving and that he hopes they can continue to trade on good terms. The two discuss the Soviet exhibition in FRG, and Kroll suggests to Khrushchev that the USSR should try and reach an agreement with the GDR soon. Khrushchev also mentions that he will not prevent West German citizens (with FRG passports) to enter FRG from Soviet-controlled Berlin, since population control is too difficult. However, he does mention the possibility of building a wall and quickly says that it would be "impossible".