'Jewish-Kurds' or the new frontiers of Turkishness

Patterns of Prejudice

Volumn 41, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 1-20

  Yeǧen, Mesut ^a  

^a MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY   (Turkey)

Author keywords

Barzani; Jewish Kurds; Kurds; Nationalism; Turkey; Turkish nationalism; Turkishness

Indexed keywords

EID: 33847084054     PISSN: 0031322X     EISSN: 14617331     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00313220601118736     Document Type: Review

References (62)

1. The term 'mainstream Turkish nationalism' is used in this study to refer to a particular version of Turkish nationalism that built the modern Turkish state and a secular civil society, and that has mostly been the ideology of the Turkish establishment. This version of Turkish nationalism has been in general the guiding spirit that has animated, in different forms and degrees of course, the shaping of such disparate elements as notions of citizenship, the Turkish constitutions, national education and the mass media, as well as, of course, the attitudes of ordinary people. As such, it needs to be distinguished from the 'extreme' nationalism of the Nationalist Action Party, left-wing Turkish nationalism and 'Islamist nationalism'.
2. Nevertheless, one has to note that there have been some 'slips of the tongue' or 'exceptions' that belie the political definition of Turkishness, occurring especially at times of Kurdish rebellion against the authority of the state. At such times Turkish nationalism loses confidence in the idea that assimilation will solve the 'Kurdish question'. In this respect, the report written in 1930 by then Chief of Staff Fevzi Çakmak is exemplary. This report was produced at a time when the Turkish Republic was attempting to gain military control of the Kurdish regions. Having suppressed two large-scale Kurdish rebellions in 1925 and 1930, the Turkish Republic targeted the mountainous Dersim region, which had been left intact by the Turkish administrative and military authorities and was the only region in which Kurdish tribes were still strong enough to stage a revolt. New gendarme stations were built in Dersim and a law of compulsory settlement was enacted in order to seize military control. In the end, a revolt occurred in Dersim in 1937, which government forces had suppressed by the following year. This would be the last act of Kurdish resistance until the 1970s. In his report, Çakmak writes: 'During my visits to Erzincan I became convinced that villages named Aşkirik, Gürk, Daǧbey, and Haryi . . . have to be punished and repressed. . . . To make the state authority sovereign and to give a warning to all the Kurdish villages in the region, I am of the view that it is proper to destroy these villages by means of the air force'; Reşat Halli, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nde Ayaklanmalar 1924-1938 (Ankara: Genelkurmay Harp Tarihi Bşk. Yay. 1972), 351 (translations from the Turkish are by the author unless otherwise stated).
3. Another striking example in this regard is the symbolism used in military maps during the upheavals of the 1930s: Kurdish resisters were represented as red forces, and Turkish army units as blue forces; see Halli, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nde Ayaklanmalar. As these 'exceptions' demonstrate, Kurds have sometimes been regarded as 'them', the enemy, suggesting that the political definition of Turkishness constructed by mainstream Turkish nationalism has sometimes broken down.
4. For instance, in a meeting with a US official, Cemil Çiçek, the Turkish Minister of Justice, stated that the friendship between Turkey and the United States must not be sacrificed to two 'tribal chieftains'; see the daily newspaper Hurriyet, 21 August 2003.
5. The 'tribal chieftains' in the minister's mind were, of course, Kurdish leaders Barzani and Talabani. In a similar vein, it was said that the policies pursued by the Iraqi Kurds were beyond the capacity of two 'tribal' leaders, and that these policies were designed by Israel; see Sedat Laçiner, 'Ortadoǧu'nun geleceǧi Türk-İsrail model çatişmasina baǧl', Zaman, 24 June 2004.
6. Barzani and Talabani have also been described as 'tribal chieftains' in documents of the Turkish parliament; see a petition by twenty-one deputies for a special session of the Assembly to discuss developments in Northern Iraq, 10 August 1999, available at www.tbmm.gov.tr/tutanak/donem21/yil1/bas/ b048m.htm (viewed 10 October 2006).
7. The first serious work mentioning hahams (rabbis) with the surname 'Barzani' living in Israel is Yona Sabar, The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews: An Anthology (New Haven: Yale University Press 1982). The reports claiming that all Barzanis were Jews relied on Sabar's book, despite the fact that it makes no such assertion. In this respect, an article in the mainstream daily Hurriyet is interesting; see Sefa Kaplan, 'Barzani Ailesi'nin
8. Yahudi olduǧu ortaya çikti', Hurriyet, 18 February 2003, available online at http:// webarsiv.hurriyet.com.tr/2003/02/18/250197.asp (viewed 1 November 2006). While Kaplan noted Sabar's statement that not all individuals with the surname 'Barzani' were Jewish, he still claimed, without of course providing any evidence, that the Barzani 'family' was Jewish.
9. Another work about Jews in Israel who once lived among the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq and Iran is Erich Brauer, The Jews of Kurdistan (Detroit: Wayne University Press 1993). Both Sabar's and Brauer's works concern those Jews in Israel who lived with the Kurds of Mesopotamia for hundreds of years before they settled in the state of Israel after 1948. In other words, as their titles suggest, both works are on the Jews of Kurdistan, not on Jewish Kurds. Nevertheless, relying almost solely on these two books, many Turkish articles and books have posited a closer relationship between Kurds and Jews than that of merely having once lived on the same land.
10. For works 'revealing' this 'closer' relationship, see Eşref Günaydin, Yahudi Kürtler: Babil'in Kayip Çocuklari (Istanbul: Karakutu Yayinlari 2003);
11. Yalçin Küçük, Tekeliyet, vol. 2 (Istanbul: İstanbul 2003);
12. Ahmet Uçar, 'Hahamlann Torunlari Barzaniler', Tarih ve Düşünce, no. 34, December 2002, 16-24;
13. Ahmet Uçar 'Barzanilerin Yahudiliǧiyle ilgili bir Osmanli Belgesi', Tarih ve Düşünce, no. 36, February 2003;
14. and Harun Yahya, İsrail'in Kürt Karti (Istanbul: Vural Yayincilik 1997).
15. See Küçük, Tekeliyet.
16. See Güler Kömürcü, 'Gizli Gelişmeler', Akşam, 28 October 2003; Hasan T. Kösebalaban, 'Irak Üzerindeki İsrail Planlari ve Kürt Yahudileri', 8 November 2005, available at www. netpano.com/newsdetail.asp?NewsID = 353 (viewed 13 November 2006).
17. Küçük, Tekeliyet, 285-301;
18. Zeynep Tugrul, 'İsrail Kerkük'te Toprak Aliyor', Sabah, 23 June 2004.
19. This allegation was made in numerous daily or weekly papers. See, for example, Türk Solu, no. 63, 23 August 2004, and Yeni Mesaj, 27 February 2002.
20. Taha Kivanç, 'Aklim Pek Yatmadi Ama', Yeni Şafak, 10 March 2003.
21. cud Barzani, Barzani ve Kürt Ulusal Özgürlük Hareketi (Istanbul: Doz Yayinlari 2003).
22. See Sabar, The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews,
23. and Brauer, The Jews of Kurdistan.
24. Taha Kivanç, who formerly alleged a crypto-Jewish community living in Urfa, writes that a previous governor of Urfa informed him that there was no such community in this Kurdish-populated city; see Taha Kivanç, 'Zaten Aklima Yatmamişti', Yeni Şafak, 13 March 2003. It is of course necessary to note that this claim was bizarre from the outset, for there has always been an open Jewish community in Istanbul.
25. The Directorate of Land Registry Affairs has recently (7 July 2006) published the figures indicating the number of foreigners who own real estate in Turkey. As these show, there is no large-scale land acquisition by Israelis in Turkey. See www.tkgm.gov.tr/turkce/dosyalar/diger/icerikdetaydh205.rtf (viewed 11 November 2006).
26. Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso 1989), 124-9. Reading ideology as fantasy, Žižek argues that 'the last support of the ideological effect is the non-sensical, pre-ideological kernel of enjoyment' (124). In ideology, in other words, everything is not ideology; rather, every ideology needs, in the last instance, the support of enjoyment, a pre-ideological element. Accordingly, Žižek argues that any criticism of ideology needs to involve two complementary procedures. 'One is discursive, the "symptomal reading" of the ideological text', whereas the other 'aims at extracting the kernel of enjoyment, at articulating the way in which an ideology implies, manipulates, produces a pre-ideological enjoyment structured in fantasy' (124-5). Arguing that every society is split by an inherent antagonism, Žižek pursues Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's now famous claim that 'society doesn't exist'. The particular 'function' of fantasy at the societal level, according to Žižek, 'is to construct a vision of society which does exist, a society which is not split by an antagonistic division' (126). In other words, instead of coping with this fundamental impossibility, fantasy functions to hide it, to conceal the fact that society is fundamentally split by a constitutive antagonism. In brief, fantasy allows us to evade the following thought: 'We wish we did not have Jews (Kurds, Westerners, Muslims etc.).' Accordingly, going beyond a rational critique and trying to traverse the fantasy amounts to showing not only that those responsible for the antagonism are not Jews, Kurds or 'them', but also that antagonism is inherent. As Žižek argues, 'the proper answer to anti-Semitism is not "Jews are really not like that" but "the anti-Semitic idea of Jew has got nothing to do with Jews; the ideological figure of a Jew is a way to stitch up the inconsistency of our own ideological system' (48). If we are to follow Žižek, the proper answer to claims such as that all (or many or some) Kurds are converted Jews would not be to prove that those who are 'blamed' are not actually Jews, but to reveal that what lies behind the allegation is the failure to cope with the antagonism inherent in (Turkish) society, the fact that (Turkish) society without a split is impossible. The nationalist ideology/fantasy, which nowadays blames Kurds for the antagonism splitting (Turkish) society, may not be traversed simply by showing that Kurds are not Jews or even by 'proving' that Kurds are not responsible for the antagonism in question. Traversing the nationalist fantasy requires showing that antagonism is inherent in (Turkish) society and there is no way but to cope with the fact that a society without a split, a homogeneous society, is impossible.
27. See, for example, Tanil Bora, 'İnşa Döneminde Türk Milli Kimliǧi', Toplum ve Bilim, no. 71, Winter 1996, 168-92;
28. Ayşe Kadioǧlu, Cumhuriyet İradesi Demokrasi Muhakemesi (Istanbul: Metis 1999).
29. For this view, see Nalan Soyarik, 'The Citizen of the State and the State of the Citizen: An Analysis of the Citizenization Process in Turkey', Ph.D. thesis, Economics and Social Sciences Institute, Bilkent University, Ankara, 2000,
30. and Kemal Kirişçi, 'Disaggregating Turkish citizenship and immigration practices', Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 36, no. 3, July 2000, 1-22. In her examination of Turkish citizenship, Soyarik argues that 'the actual practices deviate from the abstract definition of Turkish citizenship' (114). According to her, 'in the first instance, Turkish citizenship was close to the French model. . . . However, later a shift can be depicted . . . This shift is parallel with the German type of citizenship based on descent and unity in culture' (130). Furthermore, 'while the legal definition was inclusive, the policies implemented towards the minorities were exclusionary' (131). Likewise, Kirişçi also argues (1-2) that, against 'a formal definition of citizenship and national identity that emphasizes territoriality rather than ethnicity, actual state practice has been very different. . . . the government increasingly resorted to policies that emphasized a preference for Turkish ethnicity and language. The initial civic or territorial conceptualization of Turkish national identity and citizenship became eroded.'
31. The following argument concerning the ambiguity of Turkishness and citizenship practices in Turkey is largely drawn from an earlier essay; see Mesut Yeǧen, 'Citizenship and ethnicity in Turkey', Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 40, no. 6, November 2004, 51-66.
32. A. Şeref Gözübüyük and Zeki Sezgin, 1924 Anayasasi Hakkindaki Meclis Görüşmeleri (Ankara: AÜSBF İdari İlimler Enstitüsü1957), 441.
33. Suna Kili and A. Şeref Gözübüyük, Türk Anayasa Metinleri (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankasi Yayinlari 2000), 44.
34. Kili and Gözübüyük, Türk Anayasa Metinleri, 188.
35. Gözübüyük and Sezgin, 1924 Anayasasi Hakkindaki Meclis Görüşmeleri, 436.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid., 437.
38. Ibid., 441.
39. Kili and Gözübüyük, Türk Anayasa Metinleri, 188-93.
40. Ibid., 282-7.
41. See Ayhan Aktar, 'Cumhuriyetin ilk yillarinda uygulanan "türkleştirme" politikalari', Tarih ve Toplum, no. 156, December 1996, 4-18 (11).
42. All these announcements were published in the daily paper Cumhuriyet. In a very useful study of the construction of Turkishness, Ahmet Yildiz examines official announcements between 1936 and 1938 and suggests that there are five categories: those that do not mention citizenship or nationality; those that only mention citizenship; those that only mention nationality; those that mention race and descent; and those that mention both nationality and citizenship. See Ahmet Yildiz, Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyebilene: Türk Ulusal Kimliǧinin Etno-Seküler Sinirlari (1919-1938) (Istanbul: İletişim 2001).
43. For an examination of the Settlement Law of 1934, see İsmail Beşikçi, Kürtlerin Mecburi İskani (Istanbul: Komal Yayinevi 1978), and İlhan Tekeli, 'Osmanli İmparatorluǧ u'ndan Günümüze Nüfusun Zorunlu Yer Deǧiş tirmesi ve İskan Sorunu', Toplum ve Bilim, no. 50, 1990, 49-71.
44. See Resmi Gazete, no. 2733, 21 June 1934, 4003-9.
45. Tur̈kiye Buÿuk̈ Millet Meclisi zabit ceridesi, Period IV, vols 23-4, 27 May 1934, 8.
46. For the population exchange implemented after the foundation of the Turkish Republic, see Kirişçi, 'Disaggregating Turkish citizenship and immigration practices', and Ahmet Akgündüz, 'Migration to and from Turkey, 1783-1960: types, numbers and ethno-religious dimension', Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 24 , no. 1, January 1998, 97-120.
47. For the role of Muslimhood in the constitution of Turkishness, see Sevan Nişanyan, 'Kemalist düşüncede "Türk milleti"', Türkiye Günlüǧü, no. 33, 1995;
48. Selçuk Akşin-Somel, 'Osmanli'dan cumhuriyete Türk kimliǧi', in Nuri Bilgin (ed.), Cumhuriyet, Demokrasi, Kimlik (Istanbul: Baǧlam 1997);
49. and Yildiz, Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyebilene.
50. However, it has to be noted that the identification of Turkishness with Muslimhood was not first exposed or spelled out after the foundation of the Turkish Republic. It was registered long before by Namik Kemal, a champion of Ottomanism, which may be considered as a proto-nationalism preceding Turkish nationalism. As early as 1878, Namik Kemal boldly put forward the view that, while it was difficult to provide for the assimilation of such non-Muslim peoples of the Ottoman empire as Bulgarians and Greeks, the assimilation of Muslim peoples was achievable. See Masami Arai, Jön Türk Dönemi Türk Milliyetçiliǧi (Istanbul: İletişim 1994).
51. For the nature of the relationship between Jewish citizens and the Turkish state, and the Turkification policies these citizens faced, see Rifat N. Bali, Cumhuriyet Yillarinda Türkiye Yahudileri. Bir Türkleştirme Serüveni (1923-1945) (Istanbul: İletişim 1999), and Rifat N. Bali, Devletin Yahudileri ve Öteki Yahudi (Istanbul: İletişim 2004).
52. For this law, see Ayhan Aktar, Varlik Vergisi ve 'Türkleş tirme' Politikalari (Istanbul: İletişim 2000).
53. For this law, see Aktar, 'Cumhuriyetin ilk yillarinda uygulanan "türkleştirme" politikalari'.
54. A notorious example of such policies was the 'Citizen, speak Turkish!' campaign launched by the Turkish Hearth and the Society of Law Faculty Students. The objective of the campaign was to impel the Jews and other non-Muslim citizens to speak Turkish in public places. In the same vein, some courses in schools run by the minority communities were required to be taught in Turkish and by Turkish teachers. For a comprehensive examination of Turkification policies towards Jews in Turkey, see Bali, Cumhuriyet Yillarinda Türkiye Yahudileri.
55. In other words, Turkish nationalism did not invoke, let us say, an ethnic definition of Turkishness at one time, and a political definition at another. Instead, it appears that both definitions have been invoked within the same period. This indicates that the oscillation of Turkish nationalism has been event-, rather than time-based.
56. The term 'thief of enjoyment' is adapted from Slavoj Žiž ek's term 'theft of enjoyment' in 'Enjoy your nation as yourself', in Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham: Duke University Press 1993). Here, Žižek argues: 'The element which holds together a given community cannot be reduced to the point of symbolic identification' (201); rather, the bond linking together the members of a community 'always implies a shared relationship toward a Thing, toward Enjoyment incarnated' (201). 'This Nation-Thing', Žižek continues, 'is determined by a series of contradictory practices. It appears to us as "our Thing", as something accessible only to us, as something "they", the other, cannot grasp; nonetheless it is something consistently menaced by "them". . . . The national Cause is ultimately nothing but the way subjects of a given ethnic community organize their enjoyment through national myths. What is therefore at stake in ethnic tensions is always the possession of the national Thing. We always impute to the "other" an excessive enjoyment: he wants to steal our way of life (by ruining our way of life) and/or he has some access to some secret, perverse enjoyment' (201-3). Following Žižek, I suggest that Kurds are today about to become the (new) thieves of the enjoyment of Turkish nationalism. It is the Kurds who are likely to ruin our harmonious and peaceful lives. Besides, as they hide the fact that they are actually Jewish, is it not evident that Kurds have access to some secret, perverse enjoyment?
57. Kaplan, 'Barzani Ailesi'nin Yahudi olduǧu ortaya çikti'.
58. These responses were published on the Hurriyet website for a time, but are no longer available online.
59. See 'Ecevit: Toprak satişi savaş çikarir', Radikal, 25 February 2005, available at www.radikal.com.tr/haber.php? haberno=/144704&tarih=/25/02/2005 (viewed 1 November 2006).
60. The best example of these books is Küçük's Tekeliyet, which has been a bestseller in many bookshops.
61. Likewise, Soner Yalçin's book Efendi (Istanbul: Doǧan Kitap 2004), concerning the history of a 'Sabbatean' family in Turkey, sold thousands of copy. According to the figures given by IDéEFIXE, the largest e-book store in Turkey, Efendi was the fourth bestselling book in 2004; see www.ideefixe.com/vitrin/bestof2004.asp (viewed 1 November 2006).
62. Quoted in 'Gül: Türk bayraǧina saldiranlar bedhahtir', Hurriyet, 22 March 2005, available at http://webarsiv.hurriyet.com.tr/ 2005/03/22/617112.asp (viewed 1 November 2006)