reduce the number of Turks in Germany by 50 percent — but he could not say this publicly yet [. . .]. It was impossible for Germany to assimilate the Turks in their present numbers. [. . .] Germany had no problems with the Portuguese, the Italians, even the Southeast Asians, because these communities integrated well. But the Turks came from a very distinctive culture and did not integrate well. [. . .] Germany had integrated some 11 million Germans from East European countries. But they were European and therefore presented no problem.

High unemployment in Germany at the time and Turks’ propensity to black market work and forced marriages were just some of the problems cited. The Turkish population in Germany at the time numbered 1.5 million, whichKohl’s [Christian-Democrats], but rather “penetrated deep into the SPD,” he added, referring to the center-left Social Democratic Party.

It would be more accurate to say that German society, including the center-left, was still-imbued with traditional, adaptive, and indeed common sense views on ethnicity and culture. They had not yet been “penetrated” by blank-slatist and multiculturalist propaganda.

Kohl, unlike Schmidt, later changed his views, as the article notes:

In 1993 he went against many in his own party and came out in support of giving automatic German citizenship to third-generation “foreigners” — children born in Germany whose grandparents had immigrated. Immigrants contributed “enormously to the well-being of Germans” and helped secure their retirement, said the chancellor later in his career. In 2000, Kohl travelled to Istanbul to attend the wedding of his