FROM THE MOMENT Fatih Akın began to garner substantial public acclaim for his work as a filmmaker, cultural commentators and academic studies have drawn attention to the symbolic and cultural capital his films have brought the Turkish German community within Germany, as well as the ways in which his work has boosted the cultural profile of both Germany and Turkey on an international level. On the occasion of Akın's victory at the Berlin Film Festival, the Berlinale, in 2004, when his film Gegen die Wand (Head On) won the prestigious Golden Bear award, for example, the author, playwright, and cultural commentator Feridun Zaimoglu described scenes of Turkish German celebration engaged in by individuals from across the political and religious spectrum. In Zaimoglu's account these ranged from retired Turkish men toasting each other in Berlin's bars to young orthodox Muslim bachelors getting carried away in the excitement of Akın's win. The rapper and singer Sengul Boral's reaction articulated the cultural political implications of this moment of artistic recognition very clearly in an interview for the tageszeitung: “Ich freue mich. Ich finde es ziemlich geil—für uns, die türkische Community. Das ist definitiv etwas Politisches: Ein Türke holt einen Preis für Deutschland” (I’m delighted. I find it pretty cool—for us, the Turkish community. It's definitely something political: a Turk bags a prize for Germany).

The success of the film was widely interpreted as signaling the arrival of Turkish German culture in the mainstream of German society, and the acceptance of cultural production by Turkish German artists as part of the culture of the Berlin Republic. As Daniela Berghahn summarizes, the public success of the film functioned “to move Turkish-German cinema out the niche assigned to the culture of migrants and guest workers and to make it an integral part of German culture.” This cultural political moment became an assertion of belonging that simultaneously refused the demands of assimilation and celebrated the Turkish presence in Germany. The film itself provided a widely-circulated image of contemporary life which refused to be bound by a political discourse predicated on binary views of identity and citizenship, “imagin[ing] a complicated condition of community in which alterity itself is a principle of belonging within the community.Moreover, as Ayşe Çağlar highlights, in the film's reception, “contrary to the hegemonic discourse in the 1970s and 1980s, his [Akın’s] German ‘Turkishness’ was not conceived of as a problem, or a pathology to be explained, but taken as one of the sources of his creativity.” The decision to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the Berlinale in February 2020 with a special screening of Gegen die Wand attests to the lasting effects this cultural political moment is considered to have had in the film world and on the profile of German national cinema. At the same time, Akın's profile as a director whose biography, practices, and aesthetics actively connect between “location Germany” and the rest of the world would seem to fit providentially with the assertion that “[t]he 70th Berlinale should be the beginning of an increased exchange with other cultural locations and institutions.”

As this chapter will argue, the “cultural capital” that Akın's work has won for Turkish German cultural production in particular also extends beyond the film world and has had a role to play in the development and recognition of Turkish German production in the other arts in Germany. This is a role that, as this essay will show, can at times be traced very materially. In 2008, for example, Akın became the patron of a new forum for postmigrant theater, the Ballhaus Naunynstrase in Berlin.