In the past 20 years, the political geography of the Middle East has changed profoundly, and with it the role of Turkey. Once regarded as a bridge between East and West, the country has transformed under Recep Tayyip Erdogan into an ideologically charged center of Islamist power.
Turkish foreign policy is no longer guided by pragmatism but by theology. Israel, once a strategic ally, has been turned into an object of hatred. Antisemitic rhetoric now saturates political speeches, government media, and public discourse.
When Erdogan proclaims that “Hamas is not a terrorist organization” or when he compares Israeli leaders to Hitler, it is not mere provocation but a deliberate act of political myth-making. In this myth, the West represents moral decay, Israel symbolizes evil, and Islam stands as the final bastion of virtue.
This transformation is not limited to the ruling elite. When AKP parliamentary leader Özlem Zengin recently called for a ban on Holocaust films in Turkey, she was not acting spontaneously but echoing a broader ideological framework. By equating Israel with Nazi Germany, trivializing the Shoah, and inverting victim and perpetrator, Turkish politics desecrates the memory of the Holocaust and undermines the universal idea of moral responsibility.
The antisemitism of the 21st century in Turkey wears the cloak of piety, yet beneath it lies the same ancient impulse – to project collective failure onto an imagined enemy.
A shared fate
The same state that now fuels hostility against Israel has a long history of violence against the Kurds. From Dersim and Zilan to Roboski, entire Kurdish communities have faced annihilation, displacement, and cultural erasure. In Iraq and Syria, this history continued through the genocidal campaigns of Anfal and Halabja, the massacres of Shengal, and the destruction of Kobane.
These names are not merely historical events; they are moral landmarks in the collective memory of a people who have endured the systematic destruction of their identity, language, and faith. Just as the Shoah has shaped Jewish consciousness, these tragedies have shaped the Kurdish understanding of survival and dignity. Both peoples know that every attempt at annihilation begins with dehumanization and is completed through silence.
While antisemitism has become a shared political language in Turkey and the Arab world, many Kurds are now rejecting it. Across the diaspora and on social media, Kurdish voices are openly challenging the narrative that equates solidarity with Islamism to moral virtue. They understand that demonizing Israel does not liberate the Kurds; it strengthens the very regimes that deny their existence.
For an increasing number of Kurds, Israel represents not an enemy but a mirror: a nation born from persecution, surviving amid hostility, and preserving democracy despite existential threats.
The historical parallels between the two peoples are undeniable. Jews and Kurds are nations without imperial pasts, their histories written not through conquest but through endurance. Both have been victims of colonial borders, religious intolerance, and geopolitical manipulation. Both carry the weight of memory, forced to defend their humanity again and again in a hostile world. Yet this shared burden also reveals a shared strength: the moral capacity to place ethics before ideology, conscience before obedience, and remembrance before revenge.
By weaponizing religion, the Turkish state has built a political system that silences dissent and sanctifies power. Its portrayal of Hamas as a liberation force and Israel as a colonial oppressor is not an act of solidarity with Palestinians but a method of deflecting from domestic decay: the erosion of justice, the collapse of the economy, and the ongoing persecution of the Kurds.
The projection of Israel as an existential enemy serves to create a false unity within Turkey, one sustained by hatred and fear. However, such unity cannot endure because it contradicts historical truth and moral coherence.
The moral memory of our time teaches that suffering cannot be divided into categories of worthiness. The Holocaust, Anfal, Halabja, Shengal, Kobane, and the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, all bear witness to the same catastrophe of ideology: the transformation of belief into violence.
Jewish pain, Kurdish pain, and the pain of all persecuted minorities are not separate stories but chapters in one shared narrative – the fragility of civilization itself. Whoever relativizes one form of suffering to justify another destroys the moral foundations of humanity.
The future of Kurdish-Jewish relations
The future of Kurdish-Jewish relations depends not only on diplomacy but on a shared ethical horizon. Israel can be for the Kurds what the Kurds already are for Israel: a partner of conscience in a region poisoned by fanaticism. This alliance is not directed against other peoples but against systems that weaponize faith, history, and identity.
It is also a call to the West, which has too often traded its moral responsibility for geopolitical convenience. If the international community truly seeks stability in the Middle East, it must recognize Kurds and Israelis as complementary pillars of a single civilizational idea: the defense of humanity against totalitarianism.
Kurds and Jews stand today before a historic task. Their shared experience demands that they speak out against the return of barbarism, whether Islamist, nationalist, or revisionist. The lesson of history is clear: Memory without responsibility is hollow, and responsibility without courage is meaningless. Only through the union of both can a just future emerge.
In an age when antisemitism and anti-Kurdish racism are used by states as political tools, solidarity and truth remain the final acts of resistance. Both peoples have learned that dignity is never granted but must always be defended. If Kurds and Jews hold fast to that dignity together, then from the tragedies of the past may arise the foundation of a more humane future.
The writer is a Kurdish exiled journalist, political analyst, and Middle East observer focusing on Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Kurdish affairs. a.mardin@icloud.com