If there’s a new “grammar of migration” in Germany and the “Turkish turn” is the Anlass (according to Leslie Adelson[1]), then surely there is a place for some apocryphal literature to that new rulebook. And by that I don’t mean spurious writing but rather non-canonical, constitutional stories.
Like this one: Turkish and Jewish were not separate sociological categories as they might be seen today. They were overlapping concepts in the calculus of Nazi deportations and genocide. Because there were Turks in Germany who came prior to WWII and who were seen as Germany’s Jews and treated accordingly, never mind their Ottoman origins. Those Jews who were Turkish citizens during the Nazis were considered to be immune from the persecution as citizens of a neutral country. That is, until Turkey pulled the metaphorical rug from underneath them. Turkey was not interesting in welcoming their Jews back with open arms. Instead, Turkey began to strip Turkish Jews in Germany of their citizenship. [2]
So let’s clear this Überbleibsel from the table: there is no “new Jew” in contemporary Turks. Nor is there any need to be nostalgic toward the “old (middle-class) Jews” in comparison to “today’s Turks” as Sarrazin (pfui, pfui, pfui) wasted our time with in his book of 2010. Turks have been immigrating to Germany since the interwar years and surprise! there were Jews among them.
The idea that no Turk could be Jewish is also due to the lack of acceptance among the Turkish population in Germany that there ever was a group (historical or present-day) of Turkish Jews in Germany. Or that there are Turkish Jews in Turkey!
Sure, the myth of Turkish “tolerance” of Jews is still alive in literature, as if the Ottoman system of justice were still in play. Jews always did well under larger empires because in that pre-modern climate they were allowed to administer their own forms of community justice and prove their usefulness to imperial leaders who issued tolerance edicts to ensure their rights. But that Turkish Ottoman Empire is a dead doornail, just like its Austro-Hungarian counterpart. Yes, the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian Empires had similar (though different) relations with their Jewish peoples. The myth that the East was kinder to its Jews may simply be a misrecognition that the Jews fared poorly during the nationalization process in the later days of Austro-Hungary. In essence, when the rules of empire were in place, Jews in both empires had similar protections. With some brief interludes of neutrality and asylum granting, once the nation state was established, things got hairy for the Jews.[3] Turkey ≠ Ottoman Empire just like Austria + Hungary ≠ Austro-Hungary.
Turkish groups in Germany mirrored some of the growing anti-Semitism in Turkey itself. In 1935, for example, the Turkish chamber of commerce in Berlin flew the Nazi flag next to the Turkish one and in 1936 announced its support of the regime.
So the reports from this past year about how Erdoğan is cynically targeting the Turkish Jews as a way to secure his political power demonstrate the predicable result, namely that Jewish youth are leaving Turkey because of the tensions. Need I mention that there’s been no official acknowledgement of Turkish complicity in the Holocaust? No. But if you ask me the question: Can Turks in Germany today share in the Jewish past in Germany and also the German recent past in Germany? I will answer: Yes. Of course they can. And they do.
[1] Lesie A. Adelson, The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005.
[2] Marc David Baer, “Turk and Jew in Berlin: The First Turkish Migration to Germany and the Shoah,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 2013; 55(2): 330–355.
[3] Dan Diner, “Residues of Empire: The Paradigmatic Meaning of Jewish Trans-territorial Experience for an Integrated European History,” The New German Jewry and the European Context: The Return of the European Jewish Diaspora. Ed. Y. Michal Bodemann. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008, p. 41.