Abstract
In “Entangled sovereignties: Turkish Jewish spaces in Israel”, Kerem Öktem introduces Israel’s complex Turkish Jewish community in the context of rising Jewish emigration from Turkey, exploring the impact of geopolitics and the competing sovereign projects of Turkey and Israel on Turkish Jews’ everyday life in Israel. The ‘Association for people from Turkey in Israel’ (Israil’deki Türkiyeliler Birliği, Itahdut Yotsey Turkiya Bel Israel) is examined as the foremost Turkish-Jewish space in Israel, where the sovereign projects of Turkey and Israel intersect, become entangled, and sometimes clash, and where the borders between Turkey and Israel, between ‘domestic’ and ‘external’ become permeable. Employing the notion of ‘sensitive spaces’, in which such entanglement and competition creates several insecurities, he discusses how individuals negotiate the complexities of a situation where—at least currently antagonistic—ideologies (Kemalism as well as Neo-Ottomanism in Turkey and Zionism in Israel) compete for authority over their subjects. Less geo-strategically overdetermined performances of Turkish Jewishness take place in more intimate spaces like Turkish synagogues and circles of friends.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Mehmet Oğuzhan Okumuş, “How Berlin Attracts the Turkish ‘New Wave’: Comparison of Economic and Socio-cultural Pull Factors for Highly Skilled Immigrants,” (working paper, no. 142/2020, Berlin Institute for International Political Economy (IPE), 2020), http://hdl.handle.net/10419/217223. Adem Yavuz Elveren and Gülay Toksöz, “Hidden Gender Dimensions of the Brain Drain: The Case of Turkey,” New Perspectives on Turkey 60 (2019): 33–59.
- 2.
Nazlı Cabadağ and Gülden Ediger, “We Disperse to Berlin: Transnational Entanglements of LGBTI Movement(s) in Turkey,” in Doing Tolerance: Urban Interventions and Forms of Participation, ed. María do Mar Castro Varela and Barış Ülker, (Opladen; Berlin; Toronto: Verlag Barbara Budrich 2020), 194–210. Özlem Savaş, “Affective Digital Media of New Migration from Turkey: Feelings, Affinities, and Politics,” International Journal of Communication (2019): 5405–5426.
- 3.
Gül Üret, “Between Lifestyle Migration and Comfortable Exit Strategies: Turkish Golden Visa Investors in Greece,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 21, no. 2 (2021): 166–187. muse.jhu.edu/article/812797.
- 4.
Berk Esen and Sebnem Gumuscu, “Rising Competitive Authoritarianism in Turkey,” Third World Quarterly 37, no. 9 (2016), 1581–1606. Berk Esen and Sebnem Gumuscu, “The Perils of ‘Turkish Presidentialism,” Review of Middle East Studies 52, no. 1 (2018), 43–53.
- 5.
Kerem Öktem and Karabekir Akkoyunlu, Exit from Democracy: Illiberal Governance in Turkey and Beyond (London: Routledge, 2018).
- 6.
According to TÜİK (2017, 2018 and 2019), the numbers of Turkish citizens emigrating were as follows: 69,326 in 2016; 113,026 in 2017; 136,740 in 2018; 84,863 in 2019.
- 7.
“Uluslararası Göç Istatistikleri, 2019,” TÜIK: Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu Haber Bülteni, https://tuikweb.tuik.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenleri.do?id=33709.
- 8.
Nella Geurts, Tine Davids and Niels Spierings, “The Lived Experience of an Integration Paradox: Why High-Skilled Migrants from Turkey Experience Little National Belonging in the Netherlands,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2020): https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1770062. Gülay Türkmen, “‘But You Don’t Look Turkish!’: The Changing Face of Turkish Immigration to Germany,” Reset Dialogues on Civilizations, May 27, 2019, https://www.resetdoc.org/story/dont-look-turkish-changing-face-turkish-immigration-germany/.
- 9.
Pinto Côrte-Real, Gabriela Anouck and Isabel David, “Choosing Second Citizenship in Troubled Times: The Jewish Minority in Turkey,” in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 46, no. 5 (2019): 781–796. Ceylan Yeginsu, “Sephardic Jews Feel Bigotry’s Sting in Turkey and a Pull Back to Spain,” New York Times, May 26, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/27/world/europe/sephardic-jews-feel-bigotrys-sting-in-turkey-and-a-pull-back-to-spain.html.
- 10.
Sibel Ekin, “More Turkish Jews Seek New Life in Israel,” Ahval, March 3, 2018, https://ahvalnews.com/turkey/more-turkish-jews-seek-new-life-israel. Sedat Ergin, “Yeni yıla beyin göçüyle girmek,” Hürriyet, Dec. 30, 2017. https://www.hurriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/sedat-ergin/yeni-yila-beyin-gocuyle-girmek-40694667. Ilan Ben Zion, “Young Turkish Jews Trickling Away from Shrinking Community,” The Times of Israel, June 6, 2015. https://www.timesofisrael.com/young-turkish-jews-trickling-away-from-shrinking-community/.
- 11.
Ibrahim Sirkeci and Jeffrey H. Cohen, “Cultures of Migration and Conflict in Contemporary Human Mobility in Turkey,” European Review 24, no. 3 (2016): 381–396.
- 12.
See Ahmet Içduygu, Şule Toktas and B. Ali Soner, “The Politics of Population in a Nation-Building Process: Emigration of Non-Muslims from Turkey” in Ethnic and Racial Studies 31, no. 2 (2008): 358–389.
- 13.
One of the few exceptions is the Şule Toktaş’ work that covers both Turkish-Jewish migration, as well as issues of cultural belonging and identity. For more, see: Şule Toktaş, “Turkey’s Jews and Their Immigration to Israel,” Middle Eastern Studies 42, no. 3 (2006). Şule Toktaş, “Perceptions of anti-Semitism among Turkish Jews,” Turkish Studies 7, no. 2 (2006): 203–223. Sule Toktas, “The Conduct of Citizenship in the Case of Turkey’s Jewish Minority: Legal Status, Identity, and Civic Virtue Aspects,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 26, no. 1 (2006): 121–133. Şule Toktaş, “Cultural Identity, Minority Position and Immigration: Turkey’s Jewish Minority vs. Turkish-Jewish Immigrants in Israel,” Middle Eastern Studies 44, no. 3 (2008): 511–525.
- 14.
The ‘golden age’ was triggered inter alia by the Oslo Peace Process between Palestinians and Israel and led to a series of high-profile visits, including a visit by President Ezer Weizman to Ankara––the first ever President of Israel to officially visit Turkey––in 1994, and President Süleyman Demirel’s reciprocity visit to Israel in 1996. Ilker Hepkaner, “Picturing the Past: The Formation of Turkish Jewish Heritage in Turkey and Israel (1948–2018)” (doctoral thesis, New York University, 2020), 34.
- 15.
During my fieldwork, I came across many references to the ‘Antalya years,’ not only among Turkish Jews, but also members of the general public. As a recent immigrant from Turkey suggested: ‘Many people here still have a positive image of Turkey. They don’t like Erdoğan of course, but they respect him as politician. But for them, Turkey is still Antalya. They loved their holidays in Antalya.’
- 16.
Amy Mills, Streets of Memory: Landscape, Tolerance, and National Identity in Istanbul (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010).
- 17.
The subsequent questions, if Israel was mentioned, are manifold: Are you Jewish? Do you support the Israeli government? Were you there on business? Did you go to Jerusalem? Have you seen the Al Aqsa mosque? The anxiety of arriving in Istanbul and facing airport staff or cab drivers comes up regularly in online discussions.
- 18.
John Agnew, Geopolitics: Re-Visioning World Politics (London: Routledge, 1998).
- 19.
Gearóid Ó Tuathail, “De-Territorialised Threats and Global Dangers: Geopolitics and Risk Society,” Geopolitics 3, no. 1 (1998): 17.
- 20.
John Agnew, “Sovereignty Regimes: Territoriality and State Authority in Contemporary World Politics,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95, no. 2 (2005), 438.
- 21.
Ó Tuathail, “De-Territorialised Threats,” 17.
- 22.
Cynthia Weber, “Performative States,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 27, no. 1 (1998): 90.
- 23.
Ibid., 78.
- 24.
Joe Painter, “Prosaic Geographies of Stateness,” Political Geography 25, no. 7 (2006): 752.
- 25.
Rebecca Bryant, “Sovereignty in Drag: On Fakes, Foreclosure, and Unbecoming States,” Cultural Anthropology 36 (2021): 52–82.
- 26.
Michael Bobick, “Sovereignty and the Vicissitudes of Recognition: Peoplehood and Performance in a De Facto State,” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 40, no. 1 (2017): 159.
- 27.
Agnew, “Sovereignty Regimes,” 441.
- 28.
Latha Varadarajan, The Domestic Abroad: Diasporas in International Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
- 29.
Ayşe Zarakol, “Ontological (In)security and State Denial of Historical Crimes: Turkey and Japan,” International Relations 24, no. 1 (2010), 3–23. Ayşe Zarakol, “States and Ontological Security: A Historical Rethinking,” Cooperation and Conflict 52, no. 1 (2017): 48–68.
- 30.
Kerem Öktem, “Ruling Ideologies in Modern Turkey” in The Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics ed. Güneş Murat Tezcür. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190064891.013.1.
- 31.
The AKP’s foreign policy vision is now indeed based on the vision of an Islamic umma headed by Turkey as a leader vested with caliphal powers. See Bilge Yabanci, “Work for the Nation, Obey the State, Praise the Ummah: Turkey’s Government-Oriented Youth Organizations in Cultivating a New Nation,” Ethnopolitics (2019). https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2019.1676536. See Senem Aydın-Düzgit, ‘De-Europeanisation through Discourse: A Critical Discourse” in South European Society and Politics 21, no. 1 (2016): 45–58. Yohanan Benhaïm and Kerem Öktem, “The Rise and Fall of Turkey’s Soft Power Discourse: Discourse in Foreign Policy Under Davutoğlu and Erdoğan,” European Journal of Turkish Studies 21 (2015). https://doi.org/10.4000/ejts.5275. Ugur Cevdet Panayirci,and Emre Iseri, “A Content Analysis of the AKP’s ‘Honorable’ Foreign Policy Discourse: The Nexus of Domestic–International Politics,” Turkish Studies 15, no. 1 (2014): 62–80. Burhanettin Duran, “Understanding the AK Party’s Identity Politics: A Civilizational Discourse and its Limitations,” Insight Turkey 15, no. 1 (2013): 91–109.
- 32.
Noga Kadman and Oren Yiftachel, Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948 (Bloomington, IN: Ebook Central, 2015). Ilan Pappé, The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories (London: Oneworld, 2017). Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People (London; New York: Verso 2010). Oren Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
- 33.
Whether the current establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and some Gulf Emirates will change this challenge to Israel’s sovereignty remains to be seen.
- 34.
Yiftachel, Ethnocracy (2006).
- 35.
Elya L. Milner and Haim Yacobi, “Spaces of Sovereignty: A Tale of an Unrecognized Palestinian Village in Israel,” Planning Theory 17, no. 1 (2018): 117–133.
- 36.
Milner and Yacobi, “Spaces of Sovereignty,” (2018).
- 37.
Elizabeth Cullen Dunn and Jason Cons, “Aleatory Sovereignty and the Rule of Sensitive Spaces,” Antipode 46 (2014): 92–109.
- 38.
Ibid., 95.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Ibid., 99.
- 41.
Diana Tietjens Meyers, “Two Victim Paradigms and the Problem of ‘Impure’ Victims,” Humanity 2, no. 2 (2011): 268.
- 42.
The Chair of the Association of Immigrants from Turkey, for instance, responds to criticism from some Turkish Jews who question why the Association flies the Turkish flag and hosts a bust of Atatürk: If they ask me today if I am Atatürkçü (i.e. a follower of Atatürk), then yes, I’d say of course I am Atatürkçü, because of his social reforms, because of his statesmanship. As for the flag, there sure will be the Turkish flag. All immigrant associations have it. Those who are coming from Columbia also have it.’
- 43.
Jagdish Bhagwati, “Borders Beyond Control,” Foreign Affairs 82, no. 1 (2003): 101.
- 44.
Yabanci, Bilge. “Home State Oriented Diaspora Organizations and the Making of Partisan Citizens Abroad: Motivations, Discursive Frames, and Actions Towards Co-Opting the Turkish Diaspora in Europe,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 21, no. 2 (2021): 139–165. muse.jhu.edu/article/812796.
- 45.
Zalman Shoval, “Why Israel Lost the Hasbara War,” Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 1, no. 2 (2007): 15.
Miriyam Aouragh, “Hasbara 2.0: Israel’s Public Diplomacy in the Digital Age,” Middle East Critique 25, no. 3 (2016): 271–297.
- 46.
The expectation to support public diplomacy efforts to secure the interests of a nation-state is a familiar one for members of the Turkish Jewish elite in Turkey, too. From the 1980s and on, the Turkish-Jewish community was enlisted in the denial of the Armenian Genocide, while leading members of the community exerted pressure on Israel and the Israeli Lobby in the United States to prevent genocide recognition by Israel and the United States. Eldad Ben Aharon, “A Unique Denial: Israel’s Foreign Policy and the Armenian Genocide,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42, no. 4 (2015): 638–654. cf. Louis Fishman and March Baer’s chapter in this volume).
- 47.
The website had quite a following in Turkey in the 2010s, as its name, Hastürk (‘Pure Turk’) suggested a nationalist outlook and acted on the premise that the producers of the website were better Turks than the anti-Semitic AKP . One of the key contributors, Rafael Sadi, emphasized, however, that the word ‘has’ (pure) was used because of the first three letters of the term Hasbara. Sadi described the website as a non-governmental effort to explain Israel to the Turks in the Turkish language ‘and to correct anti-Israel and anti-Jewish publications … There was a great number of well-researched papers available there, including on the Mavi Marmara affair.’ Sadi was particularly frustrated by what he called ‘the lack of support from the state, from private people … We had to pay for this from our pockets and at some point, we couldn’t go on anymore. The community didn’t even notice when we closed down’ (Sadi 2018). The original website (http://www.hasturktv.com) is not accessible anymore, but pages can be retrieved through internet archives.
- 48.
Walter F. Weiker, The Unseen Israelis: The Jews from Turkey in Israel (Lanham, MD: Jerusalem: University Press of America, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs/Center for Jewish Community Studies, 1988).
- 49.
Ella Shohat “The Narrative of the Nation and the Discourse of Modernization: The Case of the Mizrahim,” Critique: Journal for Critical Studies of the Middle East 6, no. 10 (1997): 3–18. Ella Shohat, “The Invention of the Mizrahim,” Journal of Palestine Studies 29, no. 1 (1999): 5–20.
- 50.
The number of around 100,000 Turkish Jews is used regularly within the community and the Itahdut, but this figure is probably more meaningful as an indicator of how community leaders would like to see the Turkish Jewish community’s relative importance. It is impossible to know how many of these 100,000 would actively identify as Turkish Jews or Turkish immigrants. The chair of the Itahdut assumes that probably two-thirds would identify as ‘Turkish Jews’ (Gülerşen 2018).
- 51.
Marcy Brink-Danan, Jewish Life in 21st-century Turkey: The Other Side of Tolerance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012). Marcy Brink-Danan, “Dangerous Cosmopolitanism: Erasing Difference in Istanbul,” Anthropological Quarterly 84, no. 2 (2011): 439–473.
- 52.
An elderly lady from Izmir and graduate of Ben Gurion University suggested in Ladino: “No mos karışeyamoz a les meseleses de hükumet”, i.e. “We do not interfere with the issues of government.” Işın Demirel, “No mos Karişiyamos En Los Meseles Del Hukumet,” Avlaremoz, Jan. 23, 2017. https://www.avlaremoz.com/2017/01/23/no-mos-karisiyamos-en-los-meseles-del-hukumet-isil-demirel/.
- 53.
Ilker Hepkaner’s work on Turkish memory spaces in Israel is noteworthy. He argues that these places have to be understood not only in the context of negotiations between Turkish and Israeli sovereignties, but also in the context of the dispossession of Palestinians, as, for example,
the Atatürk forest was established on the land of former Palestinian villages, and every ceremony there attended by a Turkish representative becomes an affirmation of Israeli sovereignty over Palestinian rights. Ilker Hepkaner, “Jews from Turkey in Israel and Cultural Diplomacy (1996–2006)” in A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy, ed. H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Hepkaner, Picturing the Past, 2019. - 54.
Süleyman Şanlı, “Recalling a Forgotten Community: Jews of Diyarbakır, Folklor/Edebiyat 26 (2020): 103, 545–558. Süleyman Şanlı, ‘An Overview of Historical Background of Unknown Eastern Jews of Turkey,’ Mukaddime 8, no. 1 (2017), 67–82. Süleyman Şanlı, Jews of Turkey: Migration, Culture and Memory (London: Routledge, 2018).
- 55.
My interlocutors, without exception, appeared to experience great pleasure in speaking Turkish with me. I had expected that at least some would prefer English or French, or that, after thirty or fifty years in Israel, their Turkish would have become rusty. This, however, was not the case. An elderly lady from Istanbul, whom I met in the Elderly People’s Home for Sephardi Jews from Greece and Turkey, the Beit Avod Leon Recanati in Petach Tikva, was delighted to speak Turkish with me. My interlocutor, who was passionate about a number of Turkish TV series emphasized how her peers in the home, some of whom had not spoken Turkish in decades, have reverted to speaking Turkish with each other. They now watch news and TV series like ‘Payitaht Abdülhamit’ regularly, despite their frequently anti-Semitic subtexts.
- 56.
All research participants cited in this text are given a pseudonym. The only two exceptions are the Chair of the Itahdut, who conducted the first interview in his official function as the representative of the Association and Rafael Sadi, who is a journalist present in the Turkish public sphere. All citations were translated from Turkish by the author.
- 57.
There are several Facebook groups catering to Turkish-Jewish interests from different angles. The following are those with the largest memberships or the largest numbers of followers:
-
Israil Türkiye’de (Israel in Turkey), a group in Turkish maintained by the Israeli government with 30,000 followers [https://www.facebook.com/IsraelinTurkey].
-
Turkiye (Turkia) Israil’de (Turkey in Israel), A group dedicated to Turkish-Israeli relations and mostly frequented by Turkish Jews in Israel with a membership over 3000 members [https://www.facebook.com/groups/381034845370605].
-
Israel Türkiye Dostluk Köprüsü (Israel-Turkey Friendship Bridge), a group dedicated to Turkish-Israeli friendship which counts many non-Jewish Turks among its 2500 members [https://www.facebook.com/groups/1618521731794780].
-
Itahdut Yotsey Turkia BeIsrael—İsrail’deki Türkiyeliler Birliği (Union of immigrants from Turkey in Israel), the Itahdut Facebook page with 4500 followers [https://www.facebook.com/itahdut].
-
- 58.
We can also mention the labourers of Turkish construction companies, who come to Israel for a couple of years to work on the companies’ projects. Many of them live in the Arab town Kafr Qasim at a distance of twenty kilometres from Tel Aviv. A significant majority of them eventually returns to Turkey, but some marry in Israel and remain. Many Turkish Jews refer to them as pro-AKP, pro-Palestinian, and anti-Israel.
- 59.
A case in point is the owner of a well-known Turkish fast food store specialising in kebabs, who came to Israel as a construction worker and married a local Jewish woman. In our initial meeting, he asked me indirectly if I was Jewish (‘Kimlerdensin?’, i.e. from whose (family) are you?). When I told him that I was from Turkey and not of Jewish origin, he responded: ‘I am not one of them, I am not Jewish. I am not an Israeli. My heart lies with Turkey and Erdoğan’. He spoke with great admiration for Erdoğan, but then, he also proudly referred to his two daughters: ‘They are both in very good positions in the army here. One of them is a fighter pilot’. When I asked him whether his family back home knows that his two daughters are in the IDF, he responded: ‘Of course they do. They know that you have to serve in the army. But the girls don’t go to Turkey that often anyway; they went twice. But they love Turkey, they really want to learn the language too. But you can’t push the young people too much’. He then went on to criticise Turkish Jews for leaving Turkey: ‘They had it well in Turkey; they came for nothing, and now they can’t even enter Jaffa at night, because they are scared of the Arabs’.
- 60.
‘İsraildeki Türkiyeliler Birliği: Kısa Tarihçe,’ Itahdut (2020): https://www.turkisrael.org.il/single-post/2017/11/09/KISA-TARİHÇETürkçe.
- 61.
Ovi Roditi Gülerşen, Chair of the Itahdut, February 20, 2018.
- 62.
Ibid.
- 63.
Hepkaner “Jews from Turkey in Israel,” 2020; Hepkaner Picturing the Past, 2019.
- 64.
See also, Hepkaner, Picturing the Past.
- 65.
The other conversation, where harsh criticism of Turkey was expressed and Arabs were depicted as ‘full of hatred … ready to kill Jews’ took place in a family home in Givatayim. The couple, in their early thirties
,had arrived in Israel a few years before, were both working in highly paid jobs, and just had a baby. Both of them spoke to their baby boy exclusively in Turkish. The woman’s parents, who live in Istanbul, were visiting. When their daughter began to voice strongly critical views about Turkey and its anti-Semitic atmosphere, the father became nervous and addressed me directly: “You know, they are here in Israel; they can say what they like, nobody cares. For them, anti-Semitism is history, it doesn’t happen in their lives. But we have to return to Istanbul. We have to live there. Can you guarantee that what we say here won’t be used against us, that we won’t face any hardships in the future?” - 66.
This booklet was in English and Hebrew, and richly illustrated with drawings depicting men and women in uniform performing the seder ritual.
- 67.
There is a total of six war cemeteries (Şehitlik) of Ottoman soldiers in Israel and Palestine (Ramle, Beer Sheva, Jerusalem, Eria, Tulkarem and Gaza. Cengiz Dönmez, “1. Dünya Savaşıyla İlgili Yurt dışındaki Türk Şehitlikleri,” Gazi Akademik Bakış 7, no. 14 (2014): 137–162.
- 68.
Rafael Sadi, ‘Çanakkale Şehitleri İsrail’de anıldı,’ ODATV March 18, 2018. https://odatv4.com/canakkale-sehitleri-yurt-disinda-anildi-1803171200.html.
- 69.
BETAR is a Zionist youth organisation that was influential among Turkish Jews in the 1960s and 70s. In Turkey, BETAR never acquired legal status. Rifat Bali suggests that the lack of legal recognition limited its space for activities, with most of its members leaving for Israel in the 1970s. Rıfat Bali, Betar Türkiye. Bir Siyonist Gençlik Hareketinin Hikayesi. 1933–1971 (Istanbul: Libra Kitap, 2020).
- 70.
Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics and the Real Life of States, Societies, and Institutions (London: Routledge, 2016).
- 71.
A middle-aged woman from Izmir relayed an experience from high school when her teacher in a class on national security (at the time often active or retired military personnel) arrived in class, found it to be messy, and scolded students for having turned the class into ‘a synagogue’ (‘burasını havraya çevirmişsiniz’). She talked back to the retired colonel: ‘Have you ever seen a synagogue from inside?’. After a series of such incidents, her parents decided to send her to Israel to keep her out of trouble. Following this account, another guest responded matter-of-factly: ‘And we do the same things to the Arabs here. We are racist. Here and in Turkey. We say Hair of an Arab.’ The latter (Arap saçı) is a term for messy situations and is used widely in everyday parlance, where, until recently, ‘Arap’ was used to designate both Arabs and black people, as well as dogs with a dark skin.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Additional information
This title is inspired in parts by an article on the entangled sovereignties in the life of the Osage nation (Dennison 2017). I would like to thank my co-editor İpek K. Yosmaoǧlu, Cenk Özbay (Sabancı University Istanbul), Stella Ovadya (Istanbul and Paris), Karel Bensusan (Istanbul), Anna Zadrożna (University of Oslo) and Hazal Özdemir (Northwestern University) for their intellectual stimulation, their insights, comments, and critique. Tsameret Levi (Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem) and Marcy Brink-Danan (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) supported me during my initial fieldwork in Israel. Orit Abuhav (Beit Berl College) generously opened a very significant door for me. Eldad Urfali Ron and his circle in Tel Aviv were wonderful friends during a challenging time, and so were Duygu Atlas, a contributor to this volume, and Ümit Kurt, a resident of the Van Leer Institute at the time of research. I am especially indebted to my research participants in Israel, who not only bared their souls during often several hour-long interview sessions, but whose feelings of loss and belonging, of warmth and anger, and of occasional sadness about the world’s affairs I found intimately familiar.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Öktem, K. (2022). Entangled Sovereignties: Turkish Jewish Spaces in Israel. In: Öktem, K., Yosmaoğlu, I.K. (eds) Turkish Jews and their Diasporas. Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87798-9_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87798-9_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-87797-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-87798-9
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)