Seyran Ates

Migration has been a major experience in Seyran Ateş’ life, as she herself acknowledges: “My character and personality have been shaped by the fact that I was born in Istanbul. But later, when we gain more freedoms, we also make decisions that change our identity.” Ates is a German lawyer, a women’s rights activist and a writer of Turkish-Kurdish origin with a powerful voice in Germany’s integration debate. She is a committed opponent of forced marriages, honour killings and violence in Turkish families.

The 45-year-old has also been the victim of violence herself – in 1984 she only narrowly survived an assassination attempt by a Turkish man, and in 2006 she temporarily stopped practising as a lawyer after another attack. “I have the courage to be afraid,” as she put it. Ateş knows what integration means and the obstacles and challenges involved in that process. Her most recent book, published in 2007, is Der Multikulti-Irrtum – Wie wir in Deutschland besser zusammenleben können – The Multicultural Fallacy – How We Can Live Together Better in Germany. It makes valuable suggestions for better integration in Germany. It provocatively argues the existence of a parallel society, identifies political errors, and criticises the political and intellectual laziness of many advocates of multiculturalism. Ateş calls for headscarf-free schools and the sexual self-determination of Muslim women. She sees herself as a “left-wing feminist”, a civil and human rights activist with her eyes firmly trained on both the Turkish community and the whole of German society.