Entangled Sovereignties: Turkish Jewish Spaces in Israel

In this chapter, I explore Turkish-Jewish spaces in Israel as ones of intersecting, entangled, and sometimes clashing sovereign projects of Turkey and Israel, where the borders between Turkey and Israel, between ‘domestic’ and ‘external’ become increasingly permeable, and Turkish state authority as palpable in Israel as Israeli sovereignty is present in Turkish Jewish spaces in Turkey. Turkish Jews and others negotiate and perform the ideological frames and political discourses that are embedded in the sovereign projects and their geopolitical narratives when moving in and between these spaces, and when travelling to Turkey. Arriving from Ben Gurion airport in Istanbul, the customs officer or taxi driver’s obligatory question regarding the place of departure requires a cautiously measured response that allows the speaker to disassociate themselves from what are seen as the atrocities of Zionism and Israel without giving too much insight into one’s own business there. As I explore these intersections of Turkish and Israeli sovereignties in Israel, I also engage with different perspectives in the Turkish Jewish community in Israel and discuss how Jewish-Turkish lives in Israel interact with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.