As Europe copes with its largest flood of migrants since World War II, the modern history of German refugees taking refuge in Istanbul and of Turks in Berlin offers unique insights that could help guide policymakers, according to scholars at a Harvard conference.

Using the Berlin-Istanbul connection as a focus, speakers at “Finding Refuge: Istanbul-Berlin” on Saturday at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES), a colloquium jointly organized by the Harvard-Mellon Urban Initiative and the Özyeğin Forum on Modern Turkey, highlighted the devastation experienced by populations subject to forced migration, as well as the positives that can occur when refugee and host cultures mix.