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" Picturing the Past: The Formation of Turkish Jewish Heritage in Turkey and Israel (1948-2018) "
Hepkaner, Ilker
Shohat, Ella
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Latin Dissertation
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English
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| Record Number
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1051783
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TL50900
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| Main Entry
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Hepkaner, Ilker
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| Title & Author
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Picturing the Past: The Formation of Turkish Jewish Heritage in Turkey and Israel (1948-2018)\ Hepkaner, IlkerShohat, Ella
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| College
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New York University
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| Date
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2019
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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2019
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| Note
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244 p.
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| Abstract
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Visual representation of the past and heritage places for contemporary usage and political advantage are two central strategies that Türkiyeli Yahudiler have adopted vis-à-vis the Turkish and Israeli political contexts. Highlighting the active mobilization of certain visual archives and the absence and erasure of other visual archives in representation and space-making, Picturing the Past analyzes the aesthetic conventions and political contexts in which heritage places, such as the Atatürk Forest in Israel or the Quincentennial Foundation Museum of Turkish Jews in İstanbul, have emerged. Because the visual heritage of Türkiyeli Yahudiler operates within a complicated network of actors located in between Turkey, Israel, European countries, and North America, Picturing the Past employs a multi-sited analysis of heritage politics, and builds on archival work in Israel, Turkey, and the USA and interviews in Turkey and Israel. The central inquiry of this dissertation is: What is Turkish Jewish heritage politics? Picturing the Past identifies four main actors as creators of the official versions of Turkish Jewish heritage: Türkiyeli Yahudiler in Turkey, immigrants from Turkey in Israel, the Turkish state and the Israeli state. The multi-sited analysis of the heritage politics of these four actors reveals the aesthetic and visual conventions of Turkish Jewish heritage. Through spatial analysis, I elaborate the political goals and gains of these actors' cooperation with each other in creating Turkish Jewish heritage places in Turkey and Israel. In this endeavor, each chapter shows how various policy, discourse, and aesthetic conventions overlap between Turkish and Israeli nationalisms. Against the background of the politics of heritage of both the Turkish and Israeli nation-states, Picturing the Past analyzes heritage places in Israel and Turkey and answers these following questions: How has Turkish-Jewish visual heritage been shaped? What role do heritage places play in this construction of visual heritage as physical, material, and visual spaces? How have representations of different heritage places have become a vital component, if not central body, of Turkish Jewish heritage practices by making visual connections with Israeli and Turkish nationalist representations of homeland? Following the answers of these questions in Turkey and Israel, Picturing the Past argues that Turkish Jewish heritage politics is shaped by the restraints of the political context within which it is articulated and visualized. The overlap between Turkish and Israeli nationalisms provides a fertile ground for this heritage politics to flourish. Meanwhile, Türkiyeli Yahudiler in both countries collaborate with each other and with the Turkish and Israeli states in articulating their versions of Turkish Jewish heritage. However, in the official discourses and aesthetic conventions of Turkish Jewish heritage, the states' take on history takes precedence over communal understandings of Turkish Jewish heritage and their representations. The "Introduction" argues that the realm of culture has always been a constructive component of the Israeli-Turkish relations. It also lays out the dissertation's engagement with heritage and spatial studies theory and reviews the history of Jews in the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. The first two chapters bring the states to front of the analysis and investigates how Turkish and Israeli governments and their various agencies have created heritage places that take on board the visual components of these spaces, for example in the ways they utilize images for their political agendas and interests. The first chapter, "The Forest to See: Natural Visuality of the Atatürk Forest in Northern Israel," more specifically, looks at the Atatürk Forest, and how it was created due to the fact that it photographed well and covered up the Palestinian memory in situ. The second chapter, "Seeing an Urban Past: The Turkish Heritage Cluster in Be'er Sheva and Urban Visibility," looks at what I call "the Turkish heritage cluster" in Be'er Sheva, analyzing this heritage place's optics from the perspective of urban politics and diplomacy. The second chapter also shows how Turkish heritage places are used to deepen the exclusion of Palestinians of the interior from urban lives in Israel. The first two chapters are organized in relation with each other, designed to show how visual culture and its conventions have impacted the two governments' decisions about creating these heritage places. In these two chapters, I show multiple examples of the ways in which Turkish and Israeli states use Turkish Jewish heritage politics in the service of their cultural diplomatic policies. The chapters also show what different non-governmental organizations and communities, with a special attention to Turkish Jews in these cases, politically benefit from the mobilization of visual components of these heritage places. These two chapters, furthermore, analyze the position of being a Jew from Turkey and participating in both Turkish and Israeli projects of creating heritage places that celebrate the possibility of being a Turkish Jew. The following chapters explain how Turkish Jewish heritage is visually created and maintained in both Israel and Turkey. To this end, I shift focus from the states to the immigrants from Turkey in Israel and Türkiyeli Yahudiler and how these communities officially articulate Turkish Jewish heritage in their communal spaces. Chapter three, "If These Walls Could Talk: Intimate Landscapes of Immigrants from Turkey in Israel as 'Heritage Paratexts,'" looks at the interiors of Turkish Jewish spaces in Israel and demonstrates how the visual components of a cultural center's interiors impacts the reception of heritage events. Chapter four, "Heritage at Display: The Quincentennial Foundation Museum of Turkish Jews in İstanbul as a Flagship Cultural Institution," meanwhile, analyzes the content and activities of the museum, and shows how and why the Jewish community in Turkey today tends to represent Jewish-Muslim relations within the visual medium rather than within narrative form. Drawing on the findings of the four chapters, the "Conclusion" chapter argues that an analysis of Turkish Jewish heritage politics and its official articulation by four main actors reveal the political goals and gains of these actors' cooperation with each other in creating Turkish Jewish heritage places in Turkey and Israel, and various policy, discourse, and aesthetic overlaps between Turkish and Israeli nationalisms. The concluding chapter provides additional examples which could hopefully help future scholarship to further study Turkish Jewish heritage outside its official articulations.
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| Descriptor
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International relations
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Judaic studies
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Middle Eastern studies
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Social structure
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Shohat, Ella
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New York University
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