BERLIN Barbara John, this city's veteran commissioner for foreigner affairs, is a much loved figure among Berlin's large Turkish community, DPA reported.

In the crowded districts of Kreuzberg, Wedding and Neukoelln where tens of thousands of Turkish worker families have settled in the past 25 years, she's known as "abla" (big sister) and "Tuerken-Baerbel" (Turkish-Barbara).

Although touched by such sentiment, John remains a government official first and one whose chief task it is to ensure that Berlin's various minority groups integrate into city life and get along with their German neighbors.

However, with the Turks that's sometimes easier said than done. Although Turks are the capital's largest minority group they have remained notoriously slow to integrate, with many of them making little or no attempt to learn German.

The result is that a considerable percentage of Turks in the German capital leave school without graduation certificates and possess no skills they can offer the currently tense city labor market.

Disillusioned and lacking work prospects, some teenage Turks drift into crime, joining gangs and pushing drugs. A far higher percentage of Turkish youngsters land in jail than do their German counterparts.

Some 43-percent of working-age Turks in Berlin are unemployed - a figure that worries city officials. "We want Turkish citizens to carve out a future for themselves in Berlin.

The commissioner, born in 1938 and named "German woman of the year" two years ago, points out that in many Turkish households little or no effort is made to speak German.

"Days go by very often without a word of German being heard or spoken in some neighborhoods where you find dozens of Turkish-run shops and businesses, even cinemas.

During the 20 years she's been this city's first-appointed commissioner for foreigner affairs, John has devoted a lot of time to the city's Turkish community, praising the Turkish work ethic and cultural activities.

But lately she has adopted a sharper tone, saying the time has come when all Turkish citizens in Berlin should be compelled to take German language courses - a proposal that has riled powerful Turkish organizations.

One of the chief problems is that many among Berlin's 170,000 Turks-40,000 of them now with German citizenship-lead largely isolated lives in districts dominated by Turkish-run shops and businesses, where even the streets signs get written in Turkish.

Every year Turks in Germany send two to three billion marks (around l.43 billion U.S. dollars), back home to Turkey, most of which gets invested in property, because many harbor the thought of returning home eventually.

Otto Schily, Germany's interior minister, agrees with her. "It's not so unreasonable to expect that foreigners who enter a country with the intention of working and living there learn the language," he says.

"If they don't make any effort they can't complain when they remain on the edge of society."

Michael-Andreas Butz, the Berlin government spokesman, says foreigners living permanently here, should have an interest in becoming properly integrated. "It's up to them to make an effort and get a command of the language.

In 1999, a German-financed language course scheme for Turkish mothers was started in Berlin, since when 2,000 women have participated. Butz says such schemes have proved useful, but ultimately the Turks must make a bigger effort to learn German.

Demands for compulsory German classes has stirred controversy in Berlin. Sabri Adak, Berlin's Turkish community chairman, says: "We Turks want to be integrated in Germany. But the problem is this city's politics get played out above our heads, never with us."

Eren Uensal, a spokeswoman of Berlin's "Turkish alliance," concedes Turks should make an effort to learn the language, but says many of the courses offered are unsuitable, and anyway, "education is a state responsibility."

Today 2.1 million Turkish citizens live in Germany. They were first invited as so-called "guest workers" in the early 1960s after the communist wall went up and West Berlin found itself deprived of a large slice of its labor force.

The idea was that they would return to Turkey after three or four years, but most remained, turning Berlin into the third largest Turkish-flavored city after Istanbul and Ankara.