Likely, due to the childhood abuses in Turkey inflicted upon her parents, Balci's father determined that his own children must try to become as multicultural as possible--even though early on, he and his wife had been interested in returning to and living in Turkey. Balci noted, " As a child I was often angered by my father's decision to send me to a Catholic Kindergarten in Berlin. My father was always too friendly and too quick with a good or complimentary word for the Germans. That kindergarten became a place for dread and fear for me. As would happen to me in German public schools and universities, I would be seen immediately as Turkish--although then I hardly spoke a word of Turkish. My mother tongue was German."
http://www.kuechenradio.org/wp/?p=394
Balci's parents had been among the first waive of Turkish immigrant labor in the early 1960s. So, unlike many of the Middle Eastern arrivals of later years, not many of her parents generation had seen themselves as political victims or exiles from their homeland. These first generation of settlers had seen themselves (as had the German government) as temporary or "guest workers" who would return to their homeland one day. This is in contrast with many later German refugees--and characters created by Balci in ARABBOY. For example, Rashid A.'s household had come from a Palestinian refugee family from Lebanon via Turkey to Germany in the 1980s.
http://www.anstageslicht.de/index.php?M_STORY_ID=189&STORY_ID=27&UP_ID=3&NAVZU_ID=46
Balci definitely benefitted from her father's push to have all his children make as many friends from different cultures as possible. By the time she entered primary school, Balci was doing quite well academically, and, of course, her German skills were much better than in many other Turkish households in Neukoelln. Otherwise, Balci noted, she would have ended up in the so-called "Turkish classes" of her local public schools in Berlin. Balci explained, "[Turkish classes] were seen by her and her peers as a sort of Losers Club. For such a class, a Turkish born teacher was hired--this person, often, could hardly speak any better German than his own students. This teacher also treated his classroom dictatorially and further broke down the self-confidence of many would-be students [and new-Germans]."
Balci noted, "Apparently, this entire "Turkish class' was intended as a program of Turkish immersion, so that the Turkish-German youth could be assisted in eventually becoming resettled back into their parents Turkish homeland some day. However, these [second generation] Turkish kids simply stayed in Germany. When I see these same "Turkish class' students today, I find them selling vegetables in the market or working at corner kebab stands around the city." Obviously, they had not been prepared to do anything else than that in German society. In short, the bar had been set too low for them.
It was onto such a situation that the later-comers, Arabs from the Middle East would also find themselves upon their arrival in Neukoelln over recent decades. Many had initially been housed together in big groups, whereby soon Arab ghettos were born. As in many marginalized neighborhoods around the globe, where the stakeholders gain little from the richer and more powerful local and national system of governance, the heroes of the day for Neukoelln boys were often either sports stars, rap stars, or gangsters.
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