What role does religion play in the current conflict in the Middle East?
In the conflict in the Middle East – that is, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and the resulting tensions between Israel and the Muslim states in the region – religion plays only a minor role. First and foremost, it is about conflicting claims to territory and sovereignty between Israel and the Palestinians, particularly in the Israeli-occupied territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights. It is also about the consequences that are felt around the world – although it is the Palestinians who have to bear them first, especially the millions of refugees, some of them third generation and stateless, who also have a strong presence in the societies of neighbouring countries such as Lebanon and Jordan.
Religion becomes a factor in this conflict when it is necessary to give legitimacy to certain positions or to create solidarity. One example is when religious Jews derive claims to the whole of Palestine from the Torah and this rhetoric, as in the current Israeli government coalition, coincides with extreme nationalist positions. The rejection of Zionism by Orthodox Jews is also a religious factor, but it works in the opposite direction in that it rejects the nationalist claim to Israel. For Palestinians, Muslims and Christians alike, the issue is land and political rights, not religion. The fact that Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation is now most strongly expressed through militant Islamism – as in the case of Hamas – is the product of various factors, but above all the failure of secular Arab nationalism. Islamism is primarily a political project that labels its enemies – in this case Israel and the Western alliance that supports it – on the basis of religion, and cloaks and legitimises political resistance, including terrorist methods, in Islamic terms. Religion also plays a key role in the global Muslim solidarity with the Palestinians. The fate of the Palestinians is interpreted as the fate of their Muslim brothers and sisters in faith. In Islamism, this motif can overlap with an anti-Western discourse and the theory of a Western-Jewish conspiracy against Muslims. Religion therefore mainly plays a role in legitimising and motivating the conflict in the Middle East, but the conflict itself is not a religious conflict.
You have a strong focus on religion and politics in Turkey, but you also deal with religious minorities and minority discourses in the Middle East. Anti-Semitism is a big issue in this country right now, but so is Islamophobia. Are there similar trends in Turkey and countries in the Middle East region?
In the Ottoman Empire, hostility towards Jews in Palestine began with the settlement of Jews at the end of the 19th century. At the same time, European anti-Semitic tropes were imported. This anti-Semitism was initially considered marginal, as the Ottoman members of Judaism, unlike Armenian and Greek Orthodox members of Christianity, did not pursue nationalist and separatist aspirations and were therefore still referred to as the “loyal religious group” in the early Republic. Since Turkish nationalism in the Republic of Turkey, founded in 1923, defined national homogeneity, especially in terms of language and religion, as an important criterion for the continued existence of the – implicitly Muslim – nation, Jews were already discriminated against alongside Christians in the 1920s.
A specifically Turkish form of anti-Semitism developed in the 1930s. It was influenced by European anti-Semitism, but developed its own flavour in its nationalist and Islamist manifestations with reference to Ottoman-Turkish history. Anti-Jewish pogroms took place in several towns in Western Thrace as early as 1934. As in Germany, anti-Semitic elements can be found in Turkey from the right to the left and from the secular to the religious camps, but are particularly virulent in the extreme nationalist and Islamist camps. As far as I can see, Turkish nationalist anti-Semitism is fuelled more by racist motives, while Islamist anti-Semitism is fuelled by the conflict in the Middle East. Criticism of Israel by Erdoğan and the ruling AK Party is part of the Islamist discourse, and here too anti-Semitic motifs are regularly brought into play. However, religious arguments play only a secondary role, if any, in anti-Semitic discourse in Turkey. It is important to remember that although Jews and Christians, as bearers of the Abrahamic religious tradition, are portrayed in the Koran as falsifiers of scripture, they are nevertheless allowed to participate in the process of revelation, which is why they were legitimate members of Islamic states under Muslim rule as “protected persons”.
How should this be handled? What lessons, if any, can we learn from this in Germany, in terms of foreign policy, but also in terms of discourse and how we deal with protests here?
Thinking outside the box may help us to understand anti-Semitism – both Muslim and, perhaps, German anti-Semitism – a little better. In Germany, the first thing that comes to mind when we think of anti-Semitism is, of course, German history, and the term is associated with a certain form of anti-Jewish racism that combines Christian and secular conspiracy myths and seeks the extermination of Jews in general.
It is wrong to apply this perspective one-to-one to Muslim anti-Semitism, as this leads to misunderstandings. There is no question that anti-Semitic reactions have increased in Turkey in the wake of the Israeli attacks on Gaza, and there are anti-Semitic tendencies – especially, but not only, on the extreme right – that have repeatedly manifested themselves in violence against Jews in the country, for example in 1934. At the same time, however, people usually make a distinction between the Israeli state and Jews in their own country. In other words, someone who is against Israel, perhaps even going so far as to write off Israel’s right to exist as a state, is not necessarily against members of Judaism in their own country or anywhere else. Such general hostility towards Jews does exist, but the anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish discourses are not congruent.