“Inside outsiders:” comparing state policies towards citizens of Palestinian and Kurdish descent in Israel and Turkey
Author(s)
Advisor
Grigoriadis, Ioannis N.Date
2021-10Publisher
Bilkent University
Language
English
Type
ThesisItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
Israel and Turkey have been regarded as ethnically divided societies where
ethnicity represented a fundamental political cleavage between a national
majority and ethnic minority. The formation of Israeli and Turkish nation-states
simultaneously led to the “minoritization” of those Palestinians and Kurds who
constituted the biggest ethnic and linguistic minority by a wide margin in their
respective countries. While Israel never considered assimilating its Palestinian
citizens into mainstream Israeli national identity, considering Jewishness as its
essential and indispensable element, Turkey engaged in assimilation policies visà-
vis its Kurdish citizens, which met with limited success. Although the two countries applied different methods of ethnic diversity management, they have
converged in maintaining exclusive state identities, Jewish and Turkish, and
excluded their Palestinian and Kurdish minorities from political and economic
power. Especially in recent decades, both states have been challenged by their
Palestinian and Kurdish minorities seeking equal treatment with the Jewish and
Turkish majority. Minority demands share common elements: the recognition of
their status as a national minority entitled to collective rights and effective
inclusion into the political system. However, awarding full citizenship rights has
been questioned on accounts of Jewish sovereignty dilution fears in Israel and
Kurdish self-determination and partition in Turkey. Failing to distinguish their
citizens from their trans-border ethnic kin groups and viewing them as part of
trans-national community threatening Israeli and Turkish sovereignty, Israel’s
citizens of Palestinian descent and Turkey’s citizens of Kurdish descent have
been turned into “inside outsiders.”