TURKISH JEW-HATE
By Andrew G. Bostom
Mediamax Agency, Armenia
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Se pt 5 2007
On August 28, 2007, the same day that Abdullah Gul became Turkey’s
President — replacing his secular predecessor, and further
consolidating the ruling Islamic AK (Adalet ve Kalkinma) Party’s (AKP)
hold on power — MEMRI published excerpts from a chilling interview
given by former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan. The interview
originally aired July 1, 2007, as part of Erbakan’s campaign efforts
in support of Islamic fundamentalist political causes before the
general elections of July 22, 2007, and the AKP’s resounding popular
electoral victory over its closest "secularist" rival parties.
Erbakan, founder of the fundamentalist Islamic Milli Gorus (National
Vision; originated 1969) movement, mentored current AKP leaders
President Gul, and Prime Minister Erdogan, both of whom were previously
active members of Erbakan’s assorted fundamentalist political parties,
serving in mayoral, ministerial, and parliamentary posts. During
Erbakan’s pre-election campaign stops before throngs of tens of
thousands of supporters throughout Anatolia (including cities such
as Trabzon, Elazig, and Konya), as well as cosmopolitan Ankara and
Istanbul, he reiterated the same virulently Antisemitic statements
captured in the July 1 interview, and other interviews.
These interviews and more expansive speeches were rife with allusions
to Zionists/Jews (deliberately conflated), as "bacteria," and
"disease," conspiring to dominate the contemporary Islamic world
("from Morocco to Indonesia,"), as they had attempted unsuccessfully
during the 11th and 12th centuries when Jews purportedly "organized"
the Crusades, only to be stopped by the Turk’s/Erbakan’s Seljuk
"forefathers." Ultimately, Erbakan claimed, modern Jews/Zionists wished
to establish "a world order where money and manpower are dependent on
[them]."
For over thirty years, Necmettin Erbakan a former chairman of the
fundamentalist National Salvation Party, and its numerous offshoots,
have represented the most significant examples of Turkish Muslim
political organizations exploiting systematized anti-Jewish,
anti-Zionist bigotry. Erbakan’s ascension to Deputy Prime Minister
in January, 1974, was marked by Pan-Islamic overtures, along with
increasingly strident verbal violence against Jews, Zionism, and the
State of Israel emanating from the National Salvation Party’s organs,
especially its daily Milli Gazete (The National Newspaper), published
in Istanbul since January 12, 1973.
The modern fundamentalist Islamic movement Erbakan founded has
continued to produce the most extreme strain of antisemitism extant
in Turkey, and traditional Islamic motifs, i.e., frequent quotations
from the Koran and Hadith, remain central to this hatred, nurtured by
early Islam’s basic animus towards Judaism. Milli Gazete published
articles in February and April of 2005, for example, which were
toxic amalgams of ahistorical drivel, and virulently antisemitic
and anti-dhimmi Koranic motifs, including these protoypical comments
based upon Koran 2:61/ 3:112:
In fact no amount of pages or lines would be sufficient to explain
the Qur’anic chapters and our Lord Prophet’s [Muhammad’s] words that
tell us of the betrayals of the Jews… The prophets sent to them,
such as Zachariah and Isaiah, were murdered by the Jews…
The April 2005 edition of the monthly Aylik, produced by a Turkish
jihadist organization which claimed responsibility for the November
15, 2003 dual synagogue bombings in Istanbul, contained 18 pages of
antisemitic material. An article written by Cumali Dalkilic entitled,
"Why Antisemitism?", combined traditional Koranic antisemitic motifs
with Nazi antisemitism, and Holocaust denial. Another article’s
title repeats the commonplace, if very pejorative Turkish Muslim
characterization of Jews, "Tschifit," which translates as "filthy Jews"
(a pejorative term for Jews whose usage was recorded by the European
travelers Carsten Niebuhr in 1794, and Abdolonyme Ubicini in 1856,
based upon their visits to Ottoman Turkey), i.e., "The Tschifits
[The Filthy Jews] Castle."
Bat Ye’or published a remarkably foresighted 1973 analysis (first
translated into English here) of the Islamic Antisemitism resurgent
in her native Egypt, and being packaged for dissemination throughout
the Muslim world. The primary, core Antisemitic motifs were Islamic,
derived from Islam’s foundational texts, on to which European,
especially Nazi elements were grafted.
The pejorative characteristics of Jews as they are described in
Muslim religious texts are applied to modern Jews. Anti-Judaism and
anti-Zionism are equivalent-due to the inferior status of Jews in
Islam, and because divine will dooms Jews to wandering and misery,
the Jewish state appears to Muslims as an unbearable affront and a
sin against Allah. Therefore it must be destroyed by Jihad. Here the
Pan-Arab and anti-Western theses that consider Israel as an advanced
instrument of the West in the Islamic world, come to reinforce
religious anti-Judaism. The religious and political fuse in a purely
Islamic context onto which are grafted foreign elements. If, on the
doctrinal level, Nazi influence is secondary to the Islamic base,
the technique with which the Antisemitic material has been reworked,
and the political purposes being pursued, present striking similarities
with Hitler’s Germany. [emphasis added]
That anti-Jewish opinions have been widely spread in Arab nationalist
circles since the 1930s is not in doubt. But their confirmation at
[Al] Azhar [University] by the most important authorities of Islam
enabled them to be definitively imposed, with the cachet of infallible
authenticity, upon illiterate masses that were strongly attached to
religious traditions. [emphasis added] Erbakan’s recent statements
are vivid evidence of the fulminant Antisemitism his popular movement
has imbued, including amongst Turkey’s current ruling elites, who
never criticize such pronouncements by their mentor. This bigoted
discourse resonates among the masses, illustrating graphically the
same phenomenon described so presciently 34 years ago by Bat Ye’or in
Egypt: sequentially grafting on to a learned foundation of Antisemitic
motifs from Islam’s core texts, modern secular Western European
elements, especially those associated with Nazism. Current Prime
Minister Erdogan, in 1974, while serving as president of the Istanbul
Youth Group of his mentor Erbakan’s National Salvation Party, wrote,
directed, and played the leading role in a theatrical play entitled
Maskomya, staged throughout Turkey during the 1970s. Mas-Kom-Ya was a
compound acronym for "Masons-Communists-Yahudi [Jews]", and the play
focused on the evil, conspiratorial nature of these three entities
whose common denominator was Judaism.
And recently, when the wildly popular, most expensive film ever made
in Turkey Valley of the Wolves (released February, 2006) included a
"cinematic motif" which featured an American Jewish doctor dismembering
Iraqis supposedly murdered by American soldiers in order to harvest
their organs for Jewish markets, Prime Minister Erdogan not only
failed to condemn the film, he justified its production and popularity.
Rifat Bali, a Turkish historian, and Jew, made a passionate indictment
of Turkey’s tacit acceptance of Antisemitism, published soon after
the November 15, 2003 Istanbul synagogue bombings. The singularly
courageous Bali, decried first and foremost, Prime Minister Recep
Tayip Erdogan’s and his AKP government’s abject failure to publicly
denounce both the Antisemitic discourse of the fundamentalist Islamic
movement from which Erdogan emerged, and which he claimed later to
have abandoned, and those (like Erdogan’s mentor Necmettin Erbakan,
for example) insistent on perpetuating such public discourse. With
bitter disbelief, Bali further noted the near unanimously shared,
albeit counterfactual view, of a respected Turkish columnist, published
(in Milliyet November 17, 2003) within two days of the bombings, who
maintained that, "…there has never been Antisemitism in Turkey in
its racist or religious sense."
The opportunity for honest discussion was squandered by every domain of
Turkish society, not only politicians, but also media and intellectual
elites. Moreover, a profoundly depressing example of collective Jewish
dhimmitude was on ignominious display: the Chief Rabbi, as well as the
secular leaders in his entourage representing the voice of Turkey’s
Jewish community, even the Israeli government, as Bali observes,
…all seemed determined to ignore…[rather than] to confront face to
face the Antisemitism which is incorporated in the political Islamic
movement…[i.e., which currently governs Turkey].
Bali further admonished the Erdogan regime to live up to its professed
support of equality for Jews within Turkish society:
Turkey’s Jews are not dhimmis in need of the tolerance and the
protection of the Muslim majority. They are citizens of the Republic
of Turkey.[emphasis added] Amidst this atmosphere of chronic,
openly espoused Antisemitism in Turkey-punctuated by the violent
synagogue attacks of November, 2003, and met with craven silence by
both political leaders in Israel, and major Jewish advocacy groups
in the United States-a related subplot which concerns recognition of
the Armenian genocide has been unfolding since March, 2007.
According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (4/23/07, "Turks want
genocide commission"), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the American Jewish
Committee, and B’nai B’rith were all lobbying against the Armenian
genocide recognition legislation in the Congress (HR 106) and the
Senate (SR 106), at least "passively", by presenting of letters of
opposition from the beset dhimmi Jewish community of Turkey; ADL and
JINSA reportedly complemented these letters with their own statements
opposing the resolutions. When the ADL later sponsored a campaign
to combat bigotry and celebrate diversity ("No Place for Hate")
it sparked bitter resentment in Watertown, MA-a small town whose
8,000 Armenian-Americans comprise nearly 25% of the population —
ultimately forcing the organization and ADL leader Abraham Foxman to
recognize this established historical event. But even the most recent
statements by ADL and AJC-both of whom publicly recognized the Armenian
Genocide only under duress-actively oppose (ADL), or fail to support
(AJC), the resolutions.
These groups maintain that passage of HR/SR 106 jeopardizes both
the safety of Turkey’s small Jewish minority (which is glaringly
inconsistent with their simultaneous hagiography of Turkey’s treatment
of Jews, past and present), and what they profess to be the ongoing
congenial and strategic relationship between Turkey and Israel. The
predictable Turkish response to ADL’s about face has been apoplectic
denial — of the Armenian genocide; of threats to the vestigial Turkish
Jewish community as a consequence of potential American Jewish support
for HR/SR 106 (let alone any acknowledgement of Turkey’s chronic,
virulent Antisemitism) — replete with verbal chastisement of Israeli
leaders and American Jewish organizations, ADL especially.
This unhinged "diplomatic" response by Turkey occurred, ironically,
despite the fact that the US Congressional resolutions are based wholly
on copious, often repellently detailed World War I era documentation,
most notably, the diaries of Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador to
Turkey from 1913 to 1916, and his immediate successor Abraham Elkus,
an extended report by American consul Leslie Davis in Harput, Turkey,
from 1915 to 1917, and the entire recently published United States
Official Records on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917.
Such official Turkish governmental outrage and bullying is itself
outrageous. Equally reprehensible is the behavior of Israeli political
leaders, major American Jewish advocacy organizations, and the overtly
dhimmi leadership of the vestigial Turkish Jewish community. This
unholy alliance of "Jewish leadership" never condemns in public the
poisonously Antisemitic discourse, or even violent acts committed
in Turkey against Turkish Jews, yet, perversely is quick to apply
pressure-notwithstanding the ahistorical and amoral connotations of
these actions-to block recognition of the Armenian genocide, even
within the United States.
Perhaps ceasing this disgraceful and delusional behavior starts
by putting an end to the hagiography of Jewish life under Ottoman
rule — including Jews living within Istanbul’s ghettoes, and
Ottoman Palestine — and using precise terms that describe this
half-millennium of history, appropriately and accurately: jihad,
surgun (forced population transfer), and chronic dhimmitude. There
was nothing "humanitarian" whatsoever in the Ottomans accepting a
relatively modest number of Jewish refugees from the Inquisition —
far greater numbers were accepted in other parts of Europe itself.
Indeed the vacuum created for these skilled Jewish refugees whom
the Ottomans re-settled in their burgeoning Empire was created by
the Ottoman jihad conquest of Byzantine and Venetian territories and
their Jewish populations, i.e., Jews who were subjected to the Ottoman
jihad, including massacre, pillage, enslavement, forced conversion,
and surgun deportation.
Also one cannot get lost in comforting happy talk and ignore the
chronic, grinding Antisemitism, and vestiges of dhimmitude to which the
Jews in Turkey have been subjected throughout the history of modern
Republican Turkey-including the large, government organized Thracian
pogroms of 1934, and the blatantly discriminatory, deliberately
pauperizing varlik vergisi taxation scheme and subsequent deportations
of Jewish business leaders to "Turkish Siberia," during World War II
(WWII). This ongoing discrimination contributed to the rapid exodus
of 40% of Turkey’s Jews after WWII to Israel within 2 years of its
creation, followed by the steady, continuous attrition of the Turkish
Jewish population — their departure accelerating again after the
notorious Istanbul pogrom against Greeks, Armenians, and Jews in
1955-so that only 17,000 of Turkey’s 77, 000 post-WWII Jews remain.
Joseph Hacker’s seminal research highlights the 1523 book of the
Talmudist Eliyah Kapsali (Seder Eliyah Zuta, composed in Crete),
and its embellishment by the 17th century Egyptian chronicler Rabbi
Yosef Sambari (in Sambari’s Divrei Yosef)-rather crudely redacted
narratives which became the version accepted by modern historiography
of the history of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire:
…the surgun [forced population transfer] phenomenon and all its
attendant [discriminatory] features features was not considered
at all. If the surgun was mentioned at all in the writings of the
[Jewish] scholars of the Empire, it was held to be an insignificant,
indecisive episode in the history of the Jews. The relations between
Jews and Ottomans were thus felt to be both idyllic and monotonous from
their very inception, no distinction being made either between kinds
of Jewish populations or between one period and another throughout
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Kapsali conceals all criticism and tries to cover up and obliterate
inconvenient facts…This is also apparently the reason for his utterly
ignoring the Romaniot [Byzantine] Jews and their fate at the time of
the conquest of Constantinople, and of the suffering of the others
exiled there after the conquest.
The 16th century dhimmi Jewish leadership’s deliberate
misrepresentation of the actual plight of Ottoman Jewry was described
by Hacker with obvious contempt. Tragically, and in our modern era,
inexcusably, this pathological behavior persists five centuries later
among contemporary Jewish leadership elites, who appear incapable of
identifying, let alone adequately defending against, the resurgence of
jihadist Islam in Turkey. Gifted writer Diana West’s evocative language
depicts the ultimate outcome if this self-destructive dhimmitude is
not reversed: "in denial there is defeat."
But a liberating victory can still be achieved if the leadership of
the Turkish Jewish community, Israel, and American Jewish advocacy
groups simply muster the intellectual courage to overcome their
own craven denial. Collectively galvanized, they could confront
Erdogan’s AKP government over the ugly living legacy of anti-dhimmi
and Antisemitic discrimination against Turkey’s Jews, and demand
immediate efforts at amelioration of their plight: marginalization and
legal punishment of Turkish politicians and public intellectuals whose
discourse incites Jew-hatred, and potentially, anti-Jewish violence;
the implementation of concrete reforms, ensuring in practice equal
rights, opportunities, and public safety for Jews. And if all these
measures were not implemented rapidly, with tangible evidence of
success, Turkey’s Jews would be allowed unfettered, mass emigration
without any economic penalties.
Such bold, forthright action — joint "anti-dhimmitude" — would put
an end to the ongoing phenomenon of a vestigial de facto dhimmi Jewish
community of Turkey (via its dhimmi leadership) holding Israel, and
American Jews hostage to the whims of an oppressive Turkish government,
in the throes of a transformative fundamentalist Islamic revival.
Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS is an Associate Professor of Medicine at
Brown University Medical School, and regular contributor to Frontpage
Magazine. He is the author of "The Legacy of Jihad."