Lamentations of Germany

Although death comes first to mind when it's called lamentation, it is seen that lamentations are sang on many subjects and situations, especially homesickness and craving. Homeisckness appears as an event related to migration. Migrations from village to city in the 1950s were followed by international migrations that happening with the labor demand of Western Europe in the 1960s. With labor migration, many Turks had gone to Western European countries, especially Germany. Although in the early times the migration of the Turkish labor force, consisting mainly of men, was considered, it later evolved into permanent, and as a result, many Turkish workers took their families with them, and the number of Turks in European countries increased. When this is the case, many Turkish workers had taken their families and the number of Turks had increased in European countries. Turks who had been qualified as foreingners in European countries, had been expressed as Alamancı in Turkey and they had marginalized due to their differences in many issues. –Turks who work and live in European countries are called "Alamancı" in our country and we can also call them as German Turks.- German Turks who fell into a diffirent culture leaving their loved ones behind, worked in heavy working conditions, were exposed to racist attack and their craving for their loved ones left behind is increasing every minute had expressed their distress, craving, sadness through lamentations. Not only those in Germany, but also the parents, husbands-wifes and children who stayed at home had expressed their sadness and craving through lamentations. While Germany lamentations intially expressed only homesickness and craving, over time, deaths in Germany and Turkey had became one of the main causes of lamentations. In this study that titled "Lamentations of Germany" which we use to cover the lamentations of Turks in all European countries and their loved ones had prepared on the basis of the fact that no comprehensive study had been done on the subject so far. For this study written sources had been scanned, oral sources had been interviewed, records about Germany had been listened to on YouTube and total of one hundred and sixty six (166) lamentations texts had been reached. The lamentation texts had been examined in terms of form, meaning, language and wording. In this study, it had also been studied to give information about the region of the lamentations, to whom the lamentations are sung, the gender of the lamenters, the naming of the lamentations and collocutor of the lamentations. Keywords: Lamentation, Germany, homesickness, labor migration.