When Helmut Kohl became chancellor in October 1982, he resolved to fulfill the CDU’s promise of turning a remigration law into reality. But given the potential backlash at home and abroad, he knew that achieving his goal – getting rid of half of the Turkish migrant population – would be difficult. How, after perpetrating the Holocaust forty years prior, could West Germans kick out the Turks without compromising their post-fascist values of liberalism and democracy? How could they do so while minimizing criticism from the Turkish government? The answer, codified in the 1983 Law for the Promotion of the Voluntary Return of Foreigners (Rückkehrförderungsgesetz), was to pay Turks to leave. The West German government offered unemployed former guest workers a “remigration premium” to take their families and leave by September 30, 1984, with no option to return. While the remigration law fell short of Kohl’s 50 percent goal, it sparked one of the largest mass remigrations in modern European history. Between November 1983 and September 1984, 15 percent of the Turkish migrant population – 250,000 people – returned to Turkey. Nearly half of those return migrants came to regret their decision, as they encountered difficulties “reintegrating” both socially and economically into their own homeland.