Silenzio del trauma; nazionalismo turco, ebrei e politiche di turchificazione

Abstract

This article focuses on the problematic silence which characterizes the existence of the Jews in the Turkish public sphere. This silence permeates the period of the transition from the Empire to the Republic: under the latter, it becomes instrumental in the construction of a narrative of a long and unproblematic coexistence with the Turkish nation, producing an image of the Jews as the only non-Muslim population to have serenely traversed the transition and settled into the nation. This article starts from a reflection on the few literary traces, such as the works of Sevim Burak and Mario Levi, which emerged during the last decades of the 20th century. Consequently, through a re-reading of the historical formation of Turkish nationalism, the silence of the Jews is understood as the effect of the traumatic exclusion inflicted by the assimilatory character of this nationalism.