DJ: The US has relatively open borders. Nevertheless, you have to endorse some essential values before you are allowed in and to become part of the society. The same is true for France. But not for Germany, which doesn't insist on values so much. Why is that?

KH: I suppose it has to do with Germany's historical trauma. Believe it or not, the Nazi experience has made us humble. We find it not so straightforward to state our values and insist on them as conditions of citizenship. Who are we, after all? Who are we to tell other people how they are supposed to live? As an attitude of tolerance, I think this is excellent. But it also makes us a little too shy and passive. There is simply no way around determining the core values of our community, and we also cannot escape defining the entry conditions. The first necessary step for us would be to grow more acutely aware of the essentials of our culture, to work out the values according to which we want to live, to strive for consensus, and to protect it.

NK: It is a pity that this attitude of tolerance and humility is being abused politically. Tolerance and openness are wonderful things in the cultural realm. All countries benefit from a cultural mix in their society, it broadens people's horizons. Just think of Turkey with its 77 million people, of whom 99.8 per cent are Muslims and just 0.1 per cent Christians. That's a catastrophe when you remember that the proportion of Christians in Turkey was once between 30 and 40 per cent. There has been a campaign to turn the country into a pure Turkish nation that virtually amounts to genocide. Instead of viewing this as a catastrophe and cherishing the more open, mixed German society as the better option, many Turks now come here and try to repeat the experiment in Germany. I just hope that Germany will never fall prey to this policy. Germany thrives on its openness and mixed culture. When we talk about the labour market, I'm not even sure Germany needed all the Turkish workers that have come in. But the immigration of workers is not so important today. For Turks to migrate to Germany nowadays, there are essentially two channels: either they seek political asylum, or they marry Germans or join their families here. This latter group consists mainly of people who have completely failed in their home country: they have succeeded neither at school nor in their profession. They have no training or qualifications, they stay entirely dependent on their families. Not only women, men as well are kept almost as slaves. They just get a little bit of pocket money. These people are not grateful for the free and democratic country that they have come to. They cannot be. They don't have any contact with it. They don't mix with Germans. They are confined to the old traditions that their families replicate in their hermetic parallel worlds. They live exactly as they lived in Turkey. There are also many who have liberated themselves from their narrow Turkish or Muslim identities. Perhaps half of those who live here want to integrate.

KH: How can we break this vicious circle that you describe? How can we raise the awareness of the value of individual liberty of these immigrants who are treated as slaves?