4. Bölüm – Yusuf Özdemir: “Gidilen her yeni ülke bir üniversite” | #Tutunanlar

İltica ettikten sonra kısa sürede Almanya Augsburg Üniversitesi’nde akademisyen olarak göreve başladı. Bir çok ülke dolaştıktan sonra en son Almanya’da ikamet eden Yusuf Özdemir’in tutunma hikayesi.

I was born in 1974, Giresun, Yağlıdere, Hisarcık village. I completed my primary education at Village Primary School. I attended secondary and high school in Espiye. Towards the end of school, people around, students and teachers start asking questions: Will you go to school? Will you go to secondary school?

The teacher would ask me too. Yusuf, why don’t you raise your hand? I would say, “Sir, I don’t know.” Actually, I knew but I couldn’t say it. My father, we cannot give you away, my son, we cannot give you away. He would say that our situation is not good, it costs too much.

I was in Russia for nine years. Ten years in the Philippines. In Vietnam for about two years. I have visited thirty countries during this time. In twenty-five years. We applied to Germany and were accepted. I love Germany, the city of Ausburg, as if I was born here.

So I can say that I socialized with people. I saw Germany and met Germans. And all the clichés, walls and prejudices collapsed in my head. He said, “If you can’t speak German, you can speak English to me, no problem.”

That’s the way it is for me, I loved these people, I know they loved me too. In other words, there was a path from heart to heart. I am currently a full academician at the university in Augsburg, Germany.

It’s such a shame, it’s an unwelcome and unethical behavior for a professor at a university to write “Doctor” or “Professor” when sending an email to another professor. I had never thought about this question, but I would say let’s be human as soon as possible.

We are at Ausburg University, Germany. Today’s talk will be held with my academician Yusuf. Hello teacher Yusuf. Hello Mr. Ahmet, welcome.

Sir Yusuf, we will listen to the story of your coming here and your success. But first I want to get to know you. So where were you born? Where are you from? What did the parents do? What kind of childhood did you have? I was born in 1974 in Giresun, Yağlıdere, Hisarcık village.

I completed my primary education at Village Primary School. Subsequently, our district became Espiye, and then Yağlıdere later became a district. I attended secondary and high school in Espiye. We are four brothers. One girl and three boys. Giresun, the land of hazelnuts. What kind of family did you grow up in?

Yes, we were producing hazelnuts like everyone else. So we were a family of six, four siblings, a girl and three boys, mother and father. When you study in primary school, you are not aware of anything. Gradually, as school ends, towards the end of school, people around, students and teachers start asking questions.

Will you go to school? Will you attend secondary school? Because what is popular there is being able to go to secondary school after primary school. I remember at that time, many of my fellow students in our class would raise their hands. The teacher would say “I, me” and ask me too.

Yusuf, why don’t you raise your hand? I would say, “Sir, I don’t know.” Actually, I knew but I couldn’t say it. My brother started secondary school before me.

It is quite expensive, that is, dormitory money, food money, wood money, etc. The rent of a house or house is more than the burden our family can bear, so I could not say that I would go there, I could not say that I wanted to go, but deep down

I wanted to have a successful education life, that is, to go somewhere. for. As school opening time approaches, this issue is discussed at our house every evening. My father would say, ‘We can’t give you away, son, we can’t afford it, our situation is not good, it costs too much,’ etc.

I remember now how we did this when I was a child, I used to cry every morning. My grandmother used to tell me that the pillows were wet. Then,

With the consent of the people around me, the elders, my mother, my brother, etc., well, my father, one day he went to Espiye Imam Hatip High School for school registration,

And in the evening he brought me a small notepad like this. I was enrolled in class 6C, number 197. I loved it very much, it was one of the happiest days of my life. Well, can we briefly hear the story of your arrival in Germany?

Until January 1, 2018, I was working in a country in the Far East and I wanted a country where more English was spoken. Because I had English as a foreign language.

I had a visa for America, but I couldn’t get a visa for my wife. When we couldn’t get a visa for my wife, we were rejected twice. We got rejected from Australia.

We applied to Germany and were accepted. So I’m glad I came to Germany. I really liked the life, people, society and environment here. I love Germany, the city of Ausburg, as if I was born here. So I can say that I socialized with people.

So, what was the main thing that made you love Germany so much? Or rather, what did you like the most?

I found order in Germany, there is no complexity, no chaos, that is, there is no chaotic environment. Everything is clearly arranged. If you have such a peaceful soul in your soul, what we call “peaceful” in English,

You may have to be very pleased with such a society rather than disturbed by it. In other words , Germany is a country that has demonstrated the ability to live together with different social groups, which we call mutual understanding, co-existence and “coexistence” . I am extremely happy to stay and live here.

City life is very orderly here. Streets, traffic etc. connect people to the city, connect people to nature, connect people to society, these are the positive beauties we see here. For example, is there such a cosmopolitical environment at your university? Do academics from different countries come from different countries?

Actually, I work as an internationalization specialist in my job at the university.

I have three batches of work. I attend classes, I do research here. I am working as an associate professor. There is also a project developed by our universities regarding foreign students, foreign faculty members or opening up universities to the outside world.

I am here as part of that project. Currently, there are a large number of foreign students in our university. There are people who came within the scope of Erasmus or came here from other countries to study at the university and study here.

In this context, our university’s website is in English and the course modules are translated into English. I took on a task, we translated the modules of both the teaching and science and literature departments courses from German to English and uploaded them to the system, now they are available online.

Original stones and components unearthed from various archaeological excavations and rocks at our university are exhibited here. We have around 20,000 students here from many different nationalities. So, when you came to Germany, were there certain things that you liked so much that you found difficult?

Since I grew up in different cultures and spent nearly 25 years in different languages ​​and cultures, Germany was not difficult at all. It was very easy, even easier than all the geographies I have traveled to.

You live with the feeling that nothing will happen to your life or property in the country because there is security, that is, you are free, people are respectful towards you. I didn’t have any problems with the language because the first day I arrived, I started speaking English to everyone and everyone answered me.

I was sometimes asked how many days, months or years I had been in Germany by people I talked to. They welcome me after a few months or so. After a short time, haven’t I learned the language yet? He can ask questions like:

I said yes, I need to improve my English. In fact, I have to finish it completely. I need to speak German. I have never had any difficulties in this country since the day I came. Which countries have you been to before?

I was in Russia for nine years. Ten years in the Philippines and about two years in Vietnam. In ’94, I went to Russia to study at university, I went abroad. I stayed in Russia for nine years. I both studied and worked there.

Then I went to the Philippines. I stayed in the Philippines for about ten years. I started my academic studies there. I did a master’s degree in communication and education.

At a university we call Trinity University of Asia. Subsequently, I started my doctorate at the same university. Then I enrolled in a university that was closer in terms of distance. I left the Philippines in 2013, so I stayed there for ten years and started academic studies there.

But in the meantime, I had many different trips, educational and cultural trips. I have traveled to 30 countries in 25 years. As my last stop, I came to Germany in January 2018. Could you briefly describe your success process, from coming to Germany to becoming an academician at the university?

After coming to Germany in 2018, one of the most important things in Germany is integration and language learning. We start learning German. I learned German, got my documents. Then, I had to do something to integrate into the academic world here.

First, I applied for a few scholarships, the number of people who applied here, known as Philip Schwarz, was very high, around 20-30 people were accepted.

Therefore, like many people, I could not get the scholarship, but I made it my concern. I mean, it’s not a scholarship, but I pushed myself a little because I needed to do something academic in Germany.

My friend asked me, teacher, what do you want to do? So, he said, “What are you going to do next?” I said, “Sir, English is a foreign language. By the way, I know it in Russia.”

I said maybe there is academics. I said I could work as a manager in an organization or in any field in an international institution. He said, “Sir, there is a job posting, let me send it to you.” He sent me an old job posting from a year ago.

So I looked, clicked and went to the website. There is also a new one there, international project management coordinator. I applied there and was accepted, they found my language level etc. sufficient. After that, I did online classes there for three months, just as Corona had started.

With the encouragement of a friend of ours during the internship period, Munich Maximilian University is one of the important universities in Germany. I worked as an education mentor there. I worked on a project at university for a while and wrote modules for the project.

Subsequently, a professor at the university where I worked told me that if you want to work at my university in the future, if you come to us after doing something related to academic integration, you will have a stronger hand and you will be luckier.

So I wrote him an e-mail. Sir, you said this to me, I found your words very valuable.

In this context, I also did some work and filled out a CV saying “I did this and that job” and sent it. He was very pleased. This is it, he said send it to such and such a department at our university and I sent it.

34 days later, I received an email from the university asking me if I could work with them. It was a very positive e-mail. After our first meeting, everything developed positively. I have been working as a full academician since April 1.

They call Germans such cold people. But it seems that your temperature is not like that. So, for example, how are your relations with your German colleagues? So, the German stories of us Turks are a bit cliché.

He mostly came to Germany as a worker, most people grew up as workers, retired here, and returned to Turkey

. In other words, he tells us about the Germans through the eyes of the atmosphere in which he worked and came from. However, Germany is not that; there are people in every social class and at every level in Germany.

I came to Germany, I saw Germany, I met Germans and all the clichés and prejudices in my mind collapsed. Everything I heard collapsed and I came to university. I received kindness and positive attitudes from everyone I met at the university, be they civil servants, supervisors or academicians.

In fact, such a senior manager, our academic teacher Yusuf, said that if he can’t speak German, you can talk to me in English, there is no problem, he said to me. Well, I loved these people, I know that I loved them, so there was a path from heart to heart.

I had a mathematics teacher, I had a friend in the past. We had a teacher named Adnan. Yusuf told me: “Every new country you visit is like a university.” So now, I truly consider myself as if I had completed my primary and secondary education in Turkey.

I started my higher education university in Russia and my academic studies in the Philippines, so it’s like I’m doing my doctorate here. I am also pleased to be here in Germany and to see the German understanding, German discipline, and German perspective on events.

It’s nice to have the positive aspects for ourselves. Because I have come to be very satisfied in that respect as well. There is another very important thing, I love you very much. There is a perfect situation. I love it very much, it’s an excellent thing:

We don’t have a textbook for our course, we have to teach a course related to the same field under 15 headings in 15 weeks. We select one or two articles per week from among the highest quality articles written in the field and analyze them to teach lessons with our students.

Therefore, the level of understanding and understanding of the students is very high because students come to class every week by reading the highest quality, most respected articles like books. I mean, let me not say this is a top view of the academics in Turkey, but this is not disrespectful to our teachers.

In other words, a professor or an associate professor makes himself felt, makes you feel when you meet him, makes him feel in your social life. Is this the same here as the attitudes of academics in the university community?

No way. It is very shameful, it is an unwelcome and unethical behavior for a professor at a university to send an e-mail to another professor and write doctor or professor. There is something like this in the German e-society. There is a Z form, you, and there is a Du form, you.

In Germany, if there is sincerity in an environment and people know someone, in the same environment, they leave the zi forum or the you forum and switch to the you form and offer this to each other.

They say you can call me you from now on. There is such an understanding and you do not see any privilege towards humans among academics. Many professors of our university commute to the university by bicycle or by tram, so they are not people who show off their wealth.

Just because information-centered work is done at the university and intellectual property is the center of production of such things, people want to be known for it. So, for example, do students address you personally or by name?

Students generally address you. Some teachers tell their students, “You can call me Alex, you can call me Nikolay.” So there are things like this. Here, people’s place is not ahead of humanity.

You worked at a university in Turkey. Is there a chance to make such a comparison between the students here and the students in Turkey? Students who study at the university go through a very long process and come to study at the university. It is not easy to study at the university in Germany.

Therefore, a very high percentage of students graduate from high school at the Science High School level and come here. They have received very good training. They come to university with a very mature family, school and moral education.

For example, when I start the lesson, when I go up to the board or at the podium and say hello, friends, the sound in the classroom is automatically silenced, no one speaks, they just listen.

They even open the PowerPoint or files you have shared before, take notes on their tablets or computers, write them down, etc. and ask questions.

We are very respectful students. When I was a university professor in Turkey, like a high school teacher, I would attend classes four times a week, sometimes three times a week. Here at our faculty, our lesson is one time and we attend that lesson for 90 minutes.

Apart from this, there is another very important thing, I love it very much, it is a perfect situation, I love it very much, it is a perfect thing, and that is this.

There is no book for our course. We have to teach a course related to the same field under fifteen headings in fifteen weeks. We select one or two articles per week from among the highest quality articles written in the field and analyze them to teach lessons with our students.

Therefore, the students’ understanding and comprehension level is very high. Because students come to class every week by reading the highest quality articles and the most respected articles like books. What has life including migration taught you? I have spent the last twenty-five years, almost even twenty-eight years, as a nomad.

So I traveled from country to country. I mean, migrating and going from one place to another seems like something that comes easily to me. I can say that it has helped us increase our feelings of more cooperation, more solidarity, and more empathy.

I had been traveling around different countries for 25, 20 years before and I had never heard anything about integration like this. We came here. The book of integration has been written here. There are centers of integration here.

As an institutionalized structure. You remain who you are, no matter what religion, race or language you are, but you are involved in the integration process in Germany in order to understand Germany and not to behave like a stranger with people there, or for the sake of mutual empathy.

You learn a language, go to a course, do a job, etc. For example, I found this very useful and valuable here. Have you had an unforgettable moment after coming to Germany?

Yes, something like this happened: I was talking about my integration process with an academician, a professor, a German teacher from the Free University of Berlin. He was helping me. How to prepare a CV, how to write a project in Germany, etc.

I started working at the university and wrote to this person. He sent me an Email. Joseph said. “It’s the best news I’ve received in recent years,” he said. Well, this made me very happy. I was extremely happy that a German was happy about me being successful and getting a job.

Throughout my life, I was a person who wanted to study like this, to educate others, and to be in communication with people and social life like this.

In other words, I was a person who wanted to read, study, research, be a social being with an environment, that is, to be among people who influenced, learned and taught people around him.

When I came to Germany, I did not speak German. I guess I said it’s the end of the road because when I say the end of the road, I mean in the name of an academic career.

But I set a goal for myself that I needed to learn German at a level that would enable me to do my academic work and daily work.

I set a goal and I can say that I achieved it, but we are still in the learning process. I use German for communication, but I currently use English for teaching and academic purposes at university.

It appears from your speeches that you have no regrets. So, is there anything in your past life that you regret leaving behind?

I mean, I have no regrets, but I mean, I don’t have any regrets as a business or profession. But I do regret that I wish I had spent more time with my family. I feel a little upset about him. So what do you miss most in your country?

I miss my family, my siblings and my mother. We lost my father two years ago. Rest in peace. The village we live in, the roads, the streets, those fruit trees we eat and drink from…

When I look at today’s Turkey, it is of course impossible not to feel sad. There is a slight decline both culturally, economically and socially.

I wish there would be a society in unity, solidarity, peace, and respect for human rights and law, as in the past. And I wish this could come back. This is actually my biggest sadness.

I wish people were brothers, we could talk about the values ​​that unite us, not about our differences, and we could come together with mutual understanding without conflict. Sir Yusuf, I saw it somewhere. A very good question. I ask everyone because I like it.

I want to ask you too. If you wanted to write something where everyone could see it, what would you write? That’s a nice tough question, I’ve never thought about that. I had never thought about this question, I mean, I had never thought of such a question or answer. But I would say let’s be human as soon as possible. What kind of environment do you have in your social life here in Ausburg?

In Ausburg. It is said that there are around 30,000 Turks. It is possible to find the most important products from Turkey here. We can even eat and find Turkish products of quality here that we cannot find in Turkey.

There are many different people in Ausburg. There are nations. And you see these come together very often in organizations.

Historically, Ausburg is known as the city of Peace and one day a year, Ausburg is also there. I think there is a Peace Holiday in July. In Germany, there is only one day of public holiday in Ausburg. Isn’t there a holiday in other parts of Germany?

The holiday only takes place here, there is no such holiday in other parts of Germany. The church agreements signed by Martin Luther, the peace, etc. were made in this city. Martin Luther carried out serious work here during the period of turmoil between the church and the state and among the people.

The people signed agreements between the church and the state. In fact, when a tourist guide took me, he told me that the office on the corner you see is Martin Luther’s office. So, is there anything you would like to add lastly?

We should not be afraid of change. Since I stayed abroad for many years, living with different people has become the nature of life for me. I would like to say that we can help people who cannot find themselves there, to look for a door to a new world in a new life.