Whenever I think about Israel’s relationship with Turkey, I think of Jabotinsky‘s book Taryag Millim: An Introduction to Spoken Hebrew (In Latin Characters). Though he was careful to say that he wasn’t using the book to advocate for a Latinized letter system for Hebrew like Mustafa Kemal did with Turkish, the book reflects an interesting symbiosis of the Turkish and Jewish secular-liberal-nationalist movements.
Of course, after generations of a pretty strong outsiders’ alliance, Israel and Turkey do not have a strong relationship now. Many Israelis feel that we can’t even recognize our former regional allies after they’ve reoriented themselves in the Iran-Hezballah-Syria-Hamas axis. In these days of being spat upon, Israelis should read Claire Berlinski’s amusing essay about Turkey, Smile and Smile: Turkey’s Feel-Good Foreign Policy. Her descriptions of Turks and Turkey are so familiar of descriptions of Israelis and Israel that I tried reading large sections of it as describing Israel and was pleased that it worked.
What does this say about us? Oh, not much of anything that I haven’t pointed out earlier: Israel is not a western country – we’re Levantine; we have a whole lot more in common with our neighbors that we’d like to admit; and they have a whole lot more in common with us than they’d like to admit.
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At first, I saw no connection between Thanksgiving and Turkey and Israel, but then I remembered the connection between Thanksgiving and turkey. A bit of inadvertent humour, thanks to tags.
It makes sense, of course, that next to Turkey is Greece. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Hahaha. I love that in Hebrew, the word for a Turkish person sounds like “turkey.” Every year on Thanksgiving, I don’t fail to ask in Hebrew if we’ll eat a Turkish person that day.
Ha! You must get some funny looks, coupled with backing away slowly…
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