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Contemporary Israeli–Turkish Relations in Comparative Perspective pp 11–38Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The New Jew and the New Turk: A Comparative Analysis of Israeli and Turkish Nation-Building Within the Framework of Religion, Modernity and Secularism

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Abstract

This study offers a comparison of Israeli and Turkish national identities and the role of religion in the construction of their respective nations. The new Turk and the new Israeli Jew had ambivalent relations toward religion, trying to jettison certain aspects of it while at the same time retaining elements of Islam and Judaism in the makeup of their respective national identities.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Michael Walzer, The Paradox of Liberation, p. x.

  2. 2.

    Sarfati, Mobilizing Religion, p. 2.

  3. 3.

    Belcim Tasçıoğlu, p. 3.

  4. 4.

    David Tal, pp. 351–353, 357.

  5. 5.

    Tal, p. 359.

  6. 6.

    Tal, p. 360.

  7. 7.

    Shafir and Peled, p. 75.

  8. 8.

    “Hamdullah Suphi’nin Romanya Büyükelçiliği ve Gagauz Türkleri”, http://www.atam.gov.tr/dergi/sayi-54/hamdullah-suphinin-romanya-buyukelciligi-ve-gagauz-turkleri.

  9. 9.

    Umut Uzer, An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism , p. 75.

  10. 10.

    Birinci Türk Tarih Kongresi: Maarif Vekaleti ve Türk Tarih tetkik Cemiyeti tarafından tertip edilmiştir. Konferanslar Müzakere Zabıtları (TC Maarif Vekaleti, no date), pp. v–vi.

  11. 11.

    Birinci Türk Tarih, p. 6.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., pp. 10–11.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., pp. 12–13.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., pp. 40–41.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., p. 595.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., p. 607. The quotes are from page 618.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., p. 617.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., p. 159.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., p. 617. The presentation on Islamic history was delivered by Şemsettin Günaltay, p. 297.

  20. 20.

    Arsal accused Togan of having divided the Turkic peoples in tsarist Russia with his selfish politics. Their rivalry went back to Russia and coupled with this Arsal was critical of Togan as the latter did not fully support the Turkish Historical Thesis on academic grounds.

  21. 21.

    Yitzhak Conforti, “The New Jew in Zionist Movement: Ideology and Historiography”, The Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, Vol. 25, 2011, p. 89.

  22. 22.

    I do not however share Friesel’s argument that Zionism is not a form of nationalism but rather is based on a traditional attachment to the land or in his words “an expression of traditional Jewish concepts and hopes, adapted to the conditions of modernity”, pp. 293, 297, 305. While Zionist politicians and ideologues used ancient Jewish concepts, they nationalized them at the service of the nationalist movement, i.e. Zionism. His analysis however, presents a better explanation for figures such as Baron Edmond de Rothschild whose attachment was more to the Jewish peoplehood than to the creation of a state, p. 300.

  23. 23.

    Uri Ram, Israeli Nationalism , pp. 4, 7.

  24. 24.

    Ram, pp. 12, 17.

  25. 25.

    Ram, pp. 19–20.

  26. 26.

    Ram, pp. 21–23.

  27. 27.

    Almog, pp. 24, 26, 27, 257.

  28. 28.

    Yadgar, p. 467.

  29. 29.

    http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/twersky080598.html. David Twersky, “The Strange Case of Brother Daniel”, Jewish World Review, August 5, 1988, https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/books/meet-brother-daniel-a-jew-converted-christian-turned-monk-1.379291; Shalom Goldman, “Meet Brother Daniel: A Jew Converted Christian Turned Monk”, Haaretz, August 18, 2011.

  30. 30.

    Joseph Agassi, Liberal Nationalism for Israel, p. 208.

  31. 31.

    Conforti, “The New Jew”, p. 104.

  32. 32.

    Kedar, pp. 393–395, 399.

  33. 33.

    Ram, p. 50.

  34. 34.

    Waxman, p. 2.

  35. 35.

    Oz Almog, The Sabra : The Creation of the New Jew (Berkeley: University of California Press), 1.

  36. 36.

    Almog, p. 4.

  37. 37.

    Almog, pp. 18–19.

  38. 38.

    Almog, p. 76.

  39. 39.

    Almog, pp. 78–79.

  40. 40.

    Almog, p. 87.

  41. 41.

    Almog, p. 80.

  42. 42.

    Almog, p. 81.

  43. 43.

    Almog, pp. 82–84.

  44. 44.

    Almog, p. 87.

  45. 45.

    Conforti, “The New Jew”, p. 97.

  46. 46.

    Almog, p. 85.

  47. 47.

    Almog, pp. 226, 258.

  48. 48.

    Almog, pp. 145, 186–188, 198–199. Dugri is actually derived from the Turkish word doğru.

  49. 49.

    Almog, p. 99.

  50. 50.

    Almog, pp. 100, 188.

  51. 51.

    Almog, p. 193.

  52. 52.

    Almog, pp. 112, 212, 216.

  53. 53.

    Almog, pp. 217–218.

  54. 54.

    Almog, p. 218.

  55. 55.

    Almog, p. 219.

  56. 56.

    Almog, pp. 90–91.

  57. 57.

    Seyla Benhabib, “Of Jews, Turks and Armenians: Entangled Memories—A Personal Recollection”, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2015, p. 370.

  58. 58.

    Umut Uzer, “Turkish-Israeli Relations: Their Rise and Fall”, Middle East Policy, Vol. 20, No. 1, Spring 2013, p. 97.

  59. 59.

    Oren Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/ Palestine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylavania Press, 2006).

  60. 60.

    Sarfati, p. 33.

  61. 61.

    Mesut Erşan, “Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’ün Batılılaşma Hakkındaki Düşünceleri”, Sosyal bilimler Dergisi, Afyon Kocatepe Üniversitesi, Vol. VIII, No. 3, December 2006, pp. 42–43.

  62. 62.

    Sarfati, p. 44.

  63. 63.

    Porat, pp. 63–66, 102, 108–109.

  64. 64.

    Sarfati, p. 29. This point was brought to my attention in Professor Asher Susser’s class at Tel Aviv University’s Middle Eastern History master’s program in the 1995–1996 academic year.

  65. 65.

    Sarfati, pp. 18, 20.

  66. 66.

    Waxman, pp. 49, 81.

  67. 67.

    Jaspal quotes Bar Tal for this concept, p. 179, in Rusi Jaspal, Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism: Representation, Cognition and Everyday Talk (Surrey: Ashgate, 2014).

  68. 68.

    Ram, p. 100.

  69. 69.

    Umut Uzer, “Lo rak islamit. Yesh Turkia aheret, chilonit”, http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0%2c7340%2cL-4682397%2c00.html, July 21, 2015.

  70. 70.

    Likud Member of Knesset Benny Begin criticized Tel Aviv for not being Jewish even though he also referred to the possibilities of different ways of being Jewish. ‘Begin: Tel Aviv is not a Jewish city’, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4242524,00.html. For the Turkish case, prime minister Recep T. Erdoğan implied the characterization of İzmir as infidel (gavur), even though he later denied this claiming that he was referring to Izmir being associated with the left, http://www.gazetevatan.com/basbakanlik-tan--gavur-izmir--aciklamasi-66852-gundem/.

  71. 71.

    Guy Ben Porat, Between State and Synagogue: The Secularization of Contemporary Israel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. xii).

  72. 72.

    Ohana, pp. 16, 19.

  73. 73.

    Ohana, p. 21.

  74. 74.

    Ohana, pp. 82, 88.

  75. 75.

    Ohana, p. 88.

  76. 76.

    For a similar argument appropriating Homer see Merhaba Anadolu by Halikarnas Balıkçısı, p. 122.

  77. 77.

    Erhat, p. 93.

  78. 78.

    Erhat, pp. 181, 184.

  79. 79.

    Halikarnas Balıkçısı, Anadolu’nun Sesi, p. 13.

  80. 80.

    Hey Koca Yurt, p. 148 and Anadolu’nun Sesi, p. 19.

  81. 81.

    Anadolu’nun sesi, p. 17.

  82. 82.

    Anadolu’nun, p. 18.

  83. 83.

    Anadolu’nun, pp. 68–69, 85, 87, 105.

  84. 84.

    Anadolu’nun, p. 207.

  85. 85.

    Anadolu’nun, pp. 213, 215.

  86. 86.

    Ohana, pp. 34, 182, 195.

  87. 87.

    Ohana, p. 186.

  88. 88.

    Ohana, p. 197.

  89. 89.

    Michael Feige Review of The Place of the Mediterranean in Modern Israeli Identity by Aleandra Nocke, pp. 366–367, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2013. Tragically, Michael Feige (1957–2016) lost his life at Sarona Market in Tel Aviv during a terrorist attack.

  90. 90.

    Michael Feige, “The City That Is Not White: The Celestial Tel Aviv and the Earthly Tel Aviv”, The Journal of Israeli History, Vol. 27, No. 1, March 2008, pp. 87–88, the last quote is from Maoz Azaryahu, Tel Aviv ha-ir ha-amitit: Mitografiyah historit. Sde Boker: Ben Gurion Research Center, 2005, pp. 339–340, quoted Feige, p. 89.

  91. 91.

    Sharon Rotbard, Ir Levanah, ir shehorah [White City, Black City] (Tel Aviv: Babel Press, 2005), 85, quoted Feige, p. 89.

  92. 92.

    Ohana, p. 9.

  93. 93.

    Ram, pp. 113, 115, 125. A term similar to post Zionism was coined by Menachem Brinker in 1986, namely the period after Zionism (tekufa betar Zionit), in Ram, p. 112.

  94. 94.

    Shafir and Peled, pp. 2, 17, 73. The Hebrew term is on, p. 37.

  95. 95.

    Shafir and Peled, pp. 48, 68.

  96. 96.

    Ram, pp. 34–35.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Umut Uzer

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Correspondence to Umut Uzer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Political Science and International Relations, Marmara University, Anadoluhisarı, Istanbul, Turkey

    Ayşegül Sever

  2. London School of Economics LSE Ideas, London, UK

    Orna Almog

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Uzer, U. (2019). The New Jew and the New Turk: A Comparative Analysis of Israeli and Turkish Nation-Building Within the Framework of Religion, Modernity and Secularism. In: Sever, A., Almog, O. (eds) Contemporary Israeli–Turkish Relations in Comparative Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05786-2_2

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