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Abdullah Öcalan’s Anti-Zionism
Abstract
Anti-Zionism has been a salient component of rightwing and leftwing movements in Turkey. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, PKK) that took its cue from the Turkish Left has become a topic of discussion since its founding in 1978. Yet little effort has been devoted to analysing the political thought of the PKK’s leader, Abdullah Öcalan. Using an interpretative-textual method, this article seeks to fill this lacuna by discussing the role of anti-Zionism in Öcalan’s thought.
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What are the political roots of anti-Jewish rhetoric? To address this ever-important query, this study analyses perceptions of Jews in Turkish politics. Building on group position theory and the historical background of Turkish-Jewish relations, the research proposes that right-wing ideological orientation and perceived threats can predict negative perceptions of Jews. It scrutinises the Turkish parliamentary proceedings using quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The findings support the premise. The study concludes that discussing perceived threats tends to evoke negative rhetoric while right-wing ideological orientation seems to be a predictive factor for the expression of such views. This implies that an effective management of perceived threats would reduce the frequency of anti-Jewish statements in Turkish politics.
While various studies suggest that anti-Semitism is almost non-existent in Turkish society, the popularity of the conspiratorial rhetoric about Jews raises question marks about this view. This article probes into contemporary anti-Semitism in Turkey by scrutinizing conspiracy theories about a crypto-Judaic society called Dönme. It explores the influence of the paranoid style in Turkish politics, known as the Sèvres syndrome, on the popular conspiracy theories with anti-Semitic themes. The research relies on an analysis of the content of conspiracy accounts and interviews with their authors. It concludes that the influence of the Sèvres syndrome is imperative to understand the rationale of anti-Semitic conspiracy rhetoric in Turkey.
Turkey's rising leftist student movement in the late 1960s admired the Palestinian Fedayeen movement and considered it as a school for their own future struggle. In the late 1960s young Turkish-Kurdish leftist students went to Palestinian guerrilla camps in Lebanon to be trained in preparation for armed struggle in Turkey. That relationship gained new momentum following the 1980 military coup in Turkey, which heavily impacted Turkish and Kurdish radical movements. The Palestinian camps turned out to be a major retreat for these Turkish-Kurdish groups, among whom the PKK was a primary beneficiary. The PKK seized this opportunity not only for military training but also for organisational recovery which almost no other Turkish or Kurdish movement managed. This article aims to trace the relationship between Turkish-Kurdish radical movements and Palestinian organisations, focusing mainly on the PKK. I argue that the PKK has made use of this relationship in realising the so-called "Palestinian Dream" within the Kurdish context.
The Jewish community in Turkey today is very diverse with extremely different views as to whether Jews are reluctant or enthusiastic about living in Turkey. Many see themselves primarily as Turks and only then as Jews, while some believe quite the opposite. Some deny there are any expressions of antisemitism in Turkey while others would call it xenophobia and would claim that the other non-Muslim communities in Turkey share the same antagonism. ‘Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Turkey’ provides a comprehensive history of the extent of antisemitism in Turkey, from the time of the Ottomans, through the establishing of the Turkish Republic, and up to recent times and the AK Party. It also provides an in-depth analysis of the effect of Israeli military operations on antisemitism, from the Second Lebanon War in 2006 to Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Much emphasis is given to the last decade, as scholars and local Jews assert that antisemitism has increased during this period. An illustrated overview of antisemitism in Turkish media, covering newspapers, books, entertainment, and education, is provided. The book also analyses Turkish society’s attitude towards Jews in contrast with other minorities, and examines how the other minorities see the Jews according to their experience with Turkish society and government. A unique poll, data collected from personal interviews and the use of both Turkish and Israeli research resources, all help to provide a fresh insight into antisemitism in Turkey. This book will therefore be a key resource for students and scholars of antisemitism and anti-zionism studies, Turkish Studies and Middle East Studies.
The main focal point in Ottoman and Turkish antisemitism is the figure of the Dönme—the descendants of Jews who converted to Islam along with their messiah Shabbatai Tzevi. The focus on the Dönme arises from the perception of the Salonikan-based Young Turks as a cabal of Dönme, or secret Jews. It was immediately in the wake of the 1908 constitutional revolution—which culminated in the dethronement of Abdülhamid II, and ultimately led to the construction of the secular Turkish republic—that antisemitic conspiracy theories centering on the Dönme were first voiced. These arguments were expanded after 1923 to claim that the man who abolished the caliphate and established the secular state, the Salonikan Atatürk, was a Dönme. Turkish antisemitism was fed by Nazism and Turkish anti-Zionism from the mid 1920s to 1945, and was more openly articulated after the creation of Israel, but it remained a retelling of the events of 1908.
From 1908 to today, the Dönme character—a secret Jew hiding in the guise of the nation’s leader who surreptitiously aims to destroy Turkey on behalf of world Jewry—has been the stock figure in anti-government conspiracy theories promoted by Islamists dispossessed of their authority, extreme rightists, and secularists divested of their power. Antisemitic conspiracy theories gain traction among all elements of Turkish society based on the racist assumption that only a Turkish Muslim can have Turkey’s interests at heart, while a Jew—here the false convert, the secret Jew Dönme—can only serve foreign interests at odds with those of the Turks.
The dönmes (converts) are a community descended from the disciples and adherents of Sabbatai Tsevi, who abandoned Judaism and adopted Islam in the late seventeenth century. Wary of their Muslim neighbors, they kept to themselves, maintaining strict secrecy in all their religious practices and general behavior. Our knowledge of the dönmes is therefore rather limited. The main dönme center was in Salonica, where they had a real impact on social and economic life until 1924, when, as a result of the population transfer, the dönmes moved to Turkey, chiefly to Istanbul and Izmir. This migration caused their communal institutions to break down, and growing assimilation into the Muslim Turkish environment (including intermarriages) diminished the dönme population considerably. The hostility of sections of Turkish ultranationalists and extreme Islamists also affected the community.
Present-day anti-semitism in Turkey
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