A German national of Turkish descent on Saturday became the target of a verbal and physical racist attack.
Celal Kaya, a taxi driver for 20 years in Cologne, was first targeted verbally by a German customer, who then proceeded to physically assault Kaya.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), 44-year-old Kaya said that he picked up three people in the Porz district on Saturday night, and was attacked by one of them afterwards. The taxi driver received a three-days incapacity report after the attack and said that he will file a lawsuit as well.
"I picked them up around 2.30 a.m. and they wanted me to turn up the music volume. I turned the volume up, but a customer in the backseat wanted it higher. I kindly refused his request and said that it may disturb people around. After I drove them to their house, the customer in the backseat shouted racist words including ‘cockroach,' ‘dirty foreigner,' and ‘go to your home, leave Germany.' He then started to punch me and I tried to defend myself," Kaya said.
Kaya drew attention to the recent rise of xenophobia in Germany, saying that severe anger exists in the country especially against Turks and Muslims.
Recent studies have confirmed that anti-Muslim and anti-Turkish sentiment is on the rise in the country.
A recent study by the German University of Mannheim illustrated how Turkish students may face discrimination by prospective teachers. In the study, released in late July, 204 people studying teaching were asked to grade two identical exam papers, penned by an eighth-grader. The difference was the name of the student on the paper. The teaching students invariably assigned poorer marks to the paper by "Murat" (a common Turkish name) while "Max" received higher marks.
Meike Bonefeld, co-author of the survey, told Germany's Spiegel that the results surprised them and would provide a new perspective for the training of teachers to be more objective. The survey's authors also note that more than 80 percent of participants can correctly identify the child's name to his migrant background.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas acknowledged that Turks in Germany still faced hostility and discrimination while speaking at the 25th anniversary in May of a neo-Nazi arson attack that killed five Turks.
The three million Turks in Germany are largely descended from the country's "guest workers" who arrived to aid the post-World War II development boom; they often complain of racist attacks and discrimination.
