not to mention a genocide denier engaged in a prolonged process* of brutal ethnic cleansing of his own.
Netanyahu and Erdogan make an astonishing pair: two ethnic cleansers, each pointing the finger at the other for ethnic cleansing. And Genocide Joe is holding Bibi’s hand.
*: This is actually a source focused on the Kurdish resistance in Turkey and the early part of the evolution of its national aspirations rather than one focused on Turkey’s perspective or activity per se. I chose it because it quickly came to mind for me and covers the ethnic cleansing and cultural erasure of Turkey’s Kurds but was written long before the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, in which the Kurds of the Ocalanist PYD became ‘good, sympathetic rebels’ for American media consumption. I want to highlight a good source on the PKK as a revolutionary leftist/progressive nationalist party— an older source relatively uncontaminated by American opportunism in the Syrian Civil War, which I knew I wouldn’t quickly find on the first page of Google.
I like how the first article mentions the Native American genocide as being done by “European settlers.” It’s true, but I find that Americans have this habit of saying the genocide was done by Europeans and downplay what the Americans did. Erdogan still sucks btw.
Totally. For Americans, the European nationality of their ancestors is nowadays distancing, if not exculpatory. And then for so many Israelis, the European nationalities of their ancestors must be erased in order to ‘root’ them in the land.
In both cases, continuity and distinctness are both present in that history of evolving identities. And in both cases, the continuity is severed in favor of the distinctness so that whichever details are favorable can be retained/emphasized and the others can be discarded/minimized, in both cases to create a self-serving myth of national innocence and right.
