"Demokrasilerde çareler tükenmez" (meaning: democracies always offer a solution) was once said by former Turkish president Süleyman Demirel. At least in Demirel's career as a political watchdog, this saying has been true more than once.  But what does democracy actually mean? From a post-structuralist-constructivist perspective, democracy is considered to be fundamentally only a linguistic object, the content of which is determined by discursive processes within specific temporal and spatial contexts. What does this imply for the democratic understanding of people who exist within several spatial, i.e. national or even transnational, contexts? This is a question that seems more relevant today than ever before, especially if one considers recent cross-border debates between Germany and Turkey.

As a political scientist, I therefore ask the question - following the self-conception of my discipline as democracy studies - which substantive understanding of democracy do people of Turkish origin in the Federal Republic of Germany have? Due to the urban context of the research institute within the Ruhr region, I have the opportunity to take a specific look at Duisburg as a well-known case study of Turkish life in Germany.