'Jewish-Kurds' or the new frontiers of Turkishness

2007-02-01
Yegen, Mesut
Yegen analyses the sudden appearance of the uncanny term 'Jewish-Kurds' in the language of Turkish nationalism. He sees the term as a symptom of a new idea of 'we-ness' (Turkishness) in Turkish politics. Analysing citizenship texts and practices in Turkey, he argues that the frontiers of Turkishness as designated by Turkish citizenship have always been precarious, and that Jewishness and Kurdishness played fundamental roles in their formation after the foundation of the Turkish Republic. Based on this analysis, he attempts to show that the recent emergence of the term 'Jewish-Kurds' has to do with Turkish nationalism's desire to reconstruct the frontiers of Turkishness, and that this rather bizarre term indicates that today's Turkish nationalism is determined to put a decisive end to the longstanding ambiguity of Turkishness.
PATTERNS OF PREJUDICE

Suggestions

The changing image of the Kurds in Turkish cities: middle-class perceptions of Kurdish migrants in Izmir
Saraçoğlu, Cenk (Informa UK Limited, 2010-01-01)
Saracolu deals with the ways in which the Kurdish migrants living in the western cities of Turkey have been identified in middle-class discourse by certain pejorative labels and stereotypes. He argues that this new Kurdish image demonstrates the ethnicization of longstanding anti-migrant sentiments in Turkey. He develops and substantiates the argument by means of qualitative data gathered in a field study in Izmir between June 2006 and July 2007. The study involved ninety in-depth interviews with middle-cla...
The press and the palace: the two-way relationship between Abdulhamid II and the press, 1876-1908
Boyar, Ebru (Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2006-01-01)
While Abdulhamid is usually represented as an extreme example of a 'censorship sultan', this article seeks to redress the balance and to present a more nuanced picture of Abdulhamid's relationship with the press. Based largely on archival material from Istanbul, the article investigates how press magnates sought to use their relationship with the palace in order to ensure their survival and to gain the concessions they wanted, and how, in turn, the sultan manipulated the press and used it to cultivate his o...
The Commission for the Preservation of Antiquities and its role in the appropriation of İstanbul’s diverse heritage as national heritage (1939–1953)
Aykaç Leıdholm, Pınar (Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2020-04-01)
This paper argues that the early Republican attempts to reintegrate the Ottoman past into nationalist narratives later found their reflections in discussions regarding the preservation of İstanbul’s diverse heritage, coinciding with the redefinition of Turkish nationalism in the 1940s, incorporating Islam and marking a departure from the foundation ideology of the Republic of Turkey. In 1939, the Republican authorities decided to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1...
'Complete Neutrality' or 'Controlled Enmity'? The Role of the Turkish Press during the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935-36
Dogar, Mehmet (Brill, 2020-03-01)
This article examines the relationship between the Turkish government and the Turkish press by taking the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935-36 as a case study. The Turkish press attached much importance to the conflict and covered two main issues: the increasingly insecure environment in world politics and how Turkey should position itself in the face of these changing dynamics. Emphasising the divergences between the rhetoric of the government and the coverage of the press about these issues, this article argues...
The Military and Europeanization Reforms in Turkey
Ünlü Bilgiç, Tuba (Informa UK Limited, 2009-01-01)
The Europeanization reforms in Turkey are partly designed to bring about the demilitarization of Turkish politics. However, up to now reforms have not been free from the military's impact. The democracy game is still played in a field whose borders have been delimited by the Turkish armed forces (TAF) and its interpretation of Kemalism. Even when the boundaries of these borders were extended, it was more due to the TAF's self-restraint, motivated by the prospect of membership in the EU, rather than the rest...
Citation Formats
M. Yegen, “‘Jewish-Kurds’ or the new frontiers of Turkishness,” PATTERNS OF PREJUDICE, pp. 1–20, 2007, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/63622.