14 hours 8 min ago - HURRIYET DAILY NEWS
Turkish minister seeks to offset brain drain to Germany
Turkey is no longer willing to lose its qualified labour to Germany and is instead calling for a reverse "brain gain", Turkish Industry Minister Nihat Ergün has said. Approximately three million people of Turkish origin live in Germany.


Turkey, one of the historic human-resources providers for Germany, is no longer willing to transfer its qualified labor to the European powerhouse despite new incentives, but is instead calling for a reverse brain gain, Industry Minister Nihat Ergün has said.
Turkey made the call at the German Economic Council, a business group founded by Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU), during a recent meeting in Berlin, Ergün said.
“In their speeches [at the meeting], they recalled a deal made in the 1960s. A migration and workforce deal. This had largely supported the German economy. How about making a new labor force deal with Turkey, they asked, but this time suggesting some incentives such as easing the residency of their families in Germany,” Ergün told the Hürriyet Daily News, adding that Turkey had said no to the suggestion.
Germany and Turkey are closely linked by the approximately 3 million people of Turkish origin living in Germany – the largest immigrant population in the country – most of them descendants of the millions who arrived under a “guest workers” program launched in the 1960s.