88 · Gökçe Yurdakul and Y. Michal Bodemann
argued very harshly and often emotionally against us. They did not
listen to my arguments. Following me, a rabbi spoke. He said, “You
have no right to talk like that. In 1933 as well, as an anti-Semitic
measure, ritual slaughtering was outlawed. Following these anti-
Semitic measures, 6 million people were murdered.” Suddenly, the
discussion fell silent. Nobody wanted to speak to that. I think if I
was in that situation, I could not accept these drastic arguments,
and I would leave the discussion. But in this country, following the
increasing anti-Semitic politics, six million people were murdered.
So no one can simply leave while the rabbi is speaking. That would
be a scandal. So they listened to the end. When we left, I told him,
“Many thanks. So that is how one has to express oneself. Our situ-
ation is different.” He said to me, “I know that they keep grudges
against me. That is in their genes. The best you can do is to be stand-
ing close to us Jews. As minorities we have to fight discrimination
together. To us they have to listen. Your words will not be listened
to.”^65Obviously, this is not simply about slaughtering animals and eating meat;
it is about practicing the laws of one’s religion, as do Christians and Jews.
While Jews and Muslims are often in opposition to each other, Turkish
Muslims point to the parallel with German Jews to claim religious rights
from the German state.
Conclusion
Our aim in this article was to show how immigrant associations refer to
historical minorities as models to create a common ground of struggle
against discrimination and then make political claims. We have argued
that social scientists rarely look at the ways in which immigrant groups
orient their behavior to those who arrived before them. Both immigrants
and minorities orient themselves to other minority or immigrant groups.
This is one way in which societal structures are being reproduced and
that give ethnic-cultural communities (globalization notwithstanding)
their own character within particular nation states. As we have demon-
strated, Turkish leaders certainly have taken note of Jewish communal
behavior, and Jewish leaders have done the same vis-à-vis the Turks.
Turkish leaders in Germany use the German Jewish trope to establish