A TRAP FOR MUSLIMS
Soner Cagaptay
Hurriyet Daily News
Oct 25 2009
Turkey
How does one deal with and explain rising anti-Americanism,
anti-Semitism, and anti-Israeli sentiments in Turkey? A dangerous
tendency is to look into the historic roots of these phenomena
and explain them as being hardwired in the Turkish polity, not as
products of current politics. This is a trap that Turks must avoid at
all costs for it bears the risk of casting Turks, and other Muslims
as inherently anti-American, anti-Israeli, and anti-Semitic.
To be sure, there have been anti-Western instincts in Turkish
nationalism, not unlike other post-Ottoman nationalisms. Turkey has
had past episodes of anti-Americanism and even marginal cases of
anti-Semitism. The country has also witnessed anti-Israeli sentiments.
However, these phenomena were never grassroots movements. Furthermore,
they were not politically sanctioned or mainstream. Turkey has been
a home for Jews ever since Anatolia became Turkish. The Turks have
historically supported strong ties with the United States. They also
did not oppose intimate ties with Israel, which Turkey recognized
in 1949.
Today, however, there is change on all fronts; a recent Infakto poll
shows that 44 percent of Turks consider the United States the biggest
threat to Turkey, while the number of people who have anti-Semitic
views is rising dramatically. A 2008 Pew survey found that 76 percent
of Turks surveyed had a negative view of Jews – an increase from 49
percent in 2004.
So why are the Turks suddenly spiteful towards the United States and
Israel, Americans and Jews? Anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are
surging in Turkey for the first time in modern Turkey; the government
is sanctioning these phenomena, driving them towards the mainstream of
political life. This combination of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism
is not a coincidence. Islamist thinking on the matter easily allows
for such sentiment: "The Jews are evil, and so is Israel; Jews run
America, and therefore the United States is also evil."
Take, for instance, the billboards that Istanbul’s AKP government
put up during the Gaza war in Istanbul’s mixed Muslim-Jewish
neighborhoods. These oversized billboards depicted a burnt-out
child’s sneaker, with a sign saying "humanity has been slaughtered in
Palestine" over it. Under the sneaker, in large print, the billboard
quoted the Old Testament commandment "Thou shall not kill" and
added "You cannot be the Children of Moses." What does the Gaza war
have to do with Jewish law? It is not an accident that a day after
these billboards appeared in Istanbul’s cosmopolitan NiÅ~_antaÅ~_ı
neighborhood, vigilantes distributed fliers calling for a boycott of
Jewish businesses. The next day, Jewish businesses in the neighborhood
took down their names.
The outrage sparked by the Gaza war has failed to subside. In early
February 2009, the AKP city government of Istanbul opened a cartoon
exhibit in the city’s downtown Taksim Square metro station â~@~UTaksim
Square is to Istanbul what Times Square is to New York Cityâ~@~U which
included cartons depicting bloodthirsty Israelis killing Palestinians
with American help. One such cartoon showed a satanic-looking Israeli
soldier washing his hands with blood from a faucet labeled the United
States. Each month, millions of Turks pass through the Taksim metro
station – a government-owned public service.
Unsurprisingly, such black propaganda is not without consequences. A
sage once told me that a society is truly anti-Semitic when teachers
say bad things about Jews in school. Last month, a group of Turkish
schoolteachers distributed sweets in the Central Anatolian town of
Kayseri to commemorate Hitler’s blessed memory. During the Gaza war,
Israelis, including Israeli teenagers who were visiting Turkey to play
volleyball, were attacked. Shops plastered signs on their windows,
saying that "Americans and Israelis may not enter." What’s more,
Turkish Jews felt physically threatened for the first time since they
found refuge in the bosom of the Ottoman Empire.
All this has nothing to do with whatever historic causes one might
seek for such developments. Popular anti-Semitism is driven in Turkey
by the acts and rhetoric of the government. Analysts ought to follow
Turkey’s current politics in explaining the Turks’ shifting political
attitudes. If one fails to point out how anti-Americanism, anti-Israeli
sentiments, and anti-Semitism are driven by the government, once such
sentiments lay roots, we will have no other explanation but to say
that anti-Americanism, anti-Israeli sentiments, and anti-Semitism are
intrinsic to Turkish society and, God forbid, the Turks’ religion,
Islam.
Pundits, policymakers, and common Turks alike ought to think twice
before they overlook Turkey’s political transformation and turn
to historicizing Turkey’s current anti-American, anti-Israeli,
and anti-Semitic stance. The surge of these sentiments since 2002
demonstrates that, when in power, Islamists can corrupt even the
most liberal of Muslim societies. The singular example of a Muslim
society that is friendly towards Jews and Americans risks disappearing
if we do not point out the political nature of Turkey’s current
transformation. If we ignore the political forces changing Turkey
today, others will blame the change on the Turks and Islam tomorrow.