BERLIN—Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday immigrants who settle in Germany are German even if they have foreign-sounding names, making a subtle dig at a widespread habit among white Germans of asking Turks born on German soil where they come from.
“Integration cannot be a seven-generation endeavor that never ends just because one isn’t called Klaus or Erika,” Merkel said with a wry smile during a ceremony to mark 60 years since Germany signed a treaty with Turkey to bring in hundreds of thousands of Turkish men to fill labor shortages in the 1960s.
