Inside Outsiders: Comparing State Policies Towards Citizens of Palestinian and Kurdish Descent in Israel and Turkey

Abstract

This study compares state policies of Israel and Turkey regarding their citizens of Palestinian and Kurdish descent, respectively. It then explores the reasons for the differences and points at the consequences for Israel’s and Turkey’s democracy. Israel’s citizens of Palestinian descent and Turkey’s citizens of Kurdish descent have faced systematic discrimination. While Israel never considered assimilating its Palestinian citizens into mainstream Israeli national identity, considering Jewishness as its essential and indispensable element, Turkey engaged in assimilation policies vis-à-vis its Kurdish citizens, which met with limited success. While applying different methods in defining the boundaries of Israeli and Turkish ethnicity, both Israel and Turkey have refused to view members of these groups as equal citizens. Awarding full citizenship rights has been questioned on accounts of Jewish sovereignty-dilution fears in Israel and of Kurdish self-determination and partition in Turkey. Failing to distinguish their citizens from their trans-border ethnic kin groups and viewing them as part of a transnational community threatening Israeli and Turkish sovereignty, Israel’s citizens of Palestinian descent and Turkey’s citizens of Kurdish descent have been turned into ‘inside outsiders’. This has deprived them of fundamental constitutional rights and limited the prospects of democratic consolidation in both states.