Anti-Semites on Zionism: From Indifference to Obsession
This article compares European and Middle Eastern anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the 1870s through the 1930s, in parallel fashion anti-Semitism became a mobilizing, all-embracing ideology in Europe, while the Arab world witnessed an eruption of anticolonial and nationalist sentiment, often directed against the Zionist project. Arab anti-Semitism featured the irrational and fantastic qualities of its European counterpart, but it took form against the reality of the Zionist project. The article draws a distinction between the realms of systemic intolerance, aggravated by socio-economic crisis, and political strife, driven by discrete events and policies. Its main sources are fin-de-siècle European anti-Semites' writings on Zionism, which are shown to be fundamentally different from the anti-Zionist rhetoric emanating from the Middle East at that time.
The Image of Israel and Postcolonial Discourse in the Early 21st Century: A View from Britain
The essay looks at three spheres in which ideological bias and political activism work to delegitimize the State of Israel by maligning Israel and Zionism in mainstream British public discourse. Postcolonial theory is one weight against any objective treatment of the Jewish state. The demonization of Israel in the press draws on conspiracy theories and stereotypes familiar from anti-Semitic tropes. British Jews are fairly supportive of Israel, though divided on solutions to the Arab-Israel conflict, however a small group of anti-Zionist Jews assert their moral stance "as Jews" by defaming Israel's allegedly criminal activities. The analysis of public discourse in Britain in the first decade of the twenty-first century raises disturbing questions about the complex relationship between the anti-Israel campaign and latent anti-Semitism on the left and the right, and draws attention to the local context of race relations as well as the global Jihad against Israel and the West.
Turkish Political Culture and Civil Society : an Unsettling Coupling?
This paper attempts to analyze Turkish politics in the post-1980 period with a special reference to the relationship among the state elites, political elites and societal actors and its impact on the constitution of civil society in Turkey. After the 1980 military intervention, the political and economic realms of Turkey witnessed a relative degree of liberalization through Uzal's neo-liberal policies. The January 24 economic decisions paved the way for economic liberalization as well as letting new economic and societal actors emerge. These new economic actors were different from the prevailing economic actors which used to enjoy having a considerable amount of opportunity spaces in the economic sphere. Together with the Uzal governments, Islamic segments started to become powerful in both political and economic realms. This paper analyses the chief traits of Turkish politics and economics and their impact upon civil society aftermath the 1980 coup in general, and the relationship and/or interaction among the state elites, political elites and societal actors in particular. The engagements of newly-emerging societal and economic actors into Turkish political scene and the challenge of these actors against the so-called 'Kemalist-Republican' elites are also illustrated in the paper. Moreover, state-Islam interaction, politics-Islam interaction as well as Kemalism-newly-emerging societal and economic actors interaction will be studied with a special emphasis to the post-1980 period. The major argument of the paper is that, in Turkey, both civil society issues and political issues reveal outcomes which are primarily shaped by the nature of the relationship between state elites and political elites in general and by Turkish political culture in particular.