Turkey 2005

 

No violent antisemitic incident was recorded in Turkey in 2005. However, a wide range of subjects relating to Jews and Israel were treated with an antisemitic slant by the Islamist and ultra-nationalist media. Three ongoing cases in Turkish courts dealt with antisemitic statements published in the press.

 

The JewIsh CommunIty

The Jewish community numbers approximately 20,000 out of a total population of 70 million. Some 18,000 live in Istanbul, 1,500 in Izmir and the rest are scattered throughout the country.

The Jewish community is represented by the Chief Rabbinate. There are 23 active synagogues in Turkey, more than half located in Istanbul, which also has Jewish social clubs, a Jewish school, two homes for the elderly and a Jewish hospital. The community publishes a weekly newspaper, Shalom, in Turkish and Ladino.

 

political ideologies and parties

The National View (or Milli Görüş, in Turkish) is an Islamist ideology developed in 1970 by Necmettin Erbakan who established the National Order (Milli Nizam) Party. This ideology was continued successively by the National Salvation (Milli Selamet) Party, the Welfare (Refah) Party, the Virtue (Fazilet) Party and finally the Felicity (Saadet) Party. All the parties preceding the Felicity Party were closed by the Constitutional Court on the grounds that they opposed secularism. The Felicity Party survives because it is more careful to observe the country’s laws of secularity and because Turkey seeks to comply with EU regulations regarding political organization. The National View promotes Islamic values and opposes Israel, Zionism, the EU, the western world, the US and cosmopolitanism.

            The ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP) split from the National View movement. While it defines itself as a conservative democratic party its ideology is based in Islam.

The ultra-nationalist stream consists of: the traditional Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket); left-wing groups (such as the Workers Party − İşçi Partisi), which are anti-EU, anti-US and anti-globalization; and various small nationalist groups. Supporters of these groups do not have Islamist tendencies, and oppose the Justice and Development Party since they disapprove of Prime Minister Erdoğan’s pro-Israel and pro-US line. In 2005 a group of nationalists tried to interrupt an iftar dinner (the evening meal during Ramadam) held by the mayor of Üsküdar for representatives of minority groups when the vice president of the Jewish community began his speech. The Turkish police immediately evicted them.

 

AntIsemItIc actIvIty

No violent antisemitic incident was recorded in Turkey in 2005. However, Turkish police are constantly on the alert and have stepped up security at Jewish institutions whenever a potential threat is detected.

Most antisemitism in Turkey is manifested in publications − newspapers, magazines and books. Many young educated Turks are heavily influenced by this propaganda and consequently form a negative view of Jews and Israel, although they may never have met either a Jew or an Israeli.

 

Media

A wide range of subjects relating to Jews and Israel are treated with an antisemitic slant by the Islamist and ultra-nationalist media. Extremely antisemitic articles may be found in the Islamist newspapers Anadoluda Vakit (Vakit) and Milli Gazete (semi-official organ of the National View), and in the ultra-nationalist publications Ortadoğu and Yeniçağ (Turkiye De Yeni Çağ). These articles can be divided loosely into 1) commentaries which attack Jews or Judaism directly, such as their alleged desecration of the Old Testament or which cite books such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and 2) criticism of Israeli policies, the Israeli prime minister and Zionism. Vakit columnist Mustafa Kaplan, for example, who routinely targets Jews, published an article in which he claimed: “Those who are not Jews are seen as dogs,” in reference to the Talmud. Hasan Damir also attacks Jews in Yeniçağ. On 1 January he claimed that the Jews of Turkey are stabbing the Turkish people in the back despite the help Jews have received from Turks over the years. On 19 September he remarked that dollar, sterling or euro was all Jewish money. In the second category, slurs such as “Israel=Murderer of kids” appear in publications such as Milli Gazete. On 31 October the latter published an article by Hakan Albayrak, accusing the Israeli government of genocide and stating that Zionism represented genocide itself. (For further examples, see Stephen Roth Institute Database.)

Conspiracy theories are used by both Islamists and ultra-nationalists to demonize Jews and Israel. Turkish-Israeli arms modernization projects; agricultural projects in southeast Turkey connected to GAP (the South-East Anatolia Agricultural Irrigation Project), which employ Israeli experts; mutual visits of Turkish and Israeli officials; and the alleged role of the Mossad in northern Iraq (for example, “The Mossad is the Boss in Northern Iraq”) have all nourished these theories. Another common theory is that the Jews, the supposed chosen people, are trying to take over the world by creating internal problems in the countries to which they have spread, thereby destroying them.

The Donmes (Crypto-Jews, followers of Shabtai Zvi, 1626–76), who converted to Islam, are frequently discussed in the Islamist media. The descendants of the Donmes are accused by journalists such as Mehmet Sevket Eygi of Milli Gazete and by leftist Yalçın Küçük in several of his books of being undercover Jews who have attained high office in the Turkish administration, which they misuse for their own hidden agenda.

Another claim often raised by ultra-nationalist papers such as Ortadoğu and Yeniçağ since the war in Iraq is that most Kurds, including leaders Mustafa Barzani and Jalal Talabani, are of Jewish origin, whose alleged aim is to set up another Israel in northern Iraq under the guise of a sovereign Kurdish state. Such a state, which will serve the ultimate dream of a Greater Israel – ‘the Promised Land’ – from the Nile to the Euphrates, will include part of southeast Turkey. This would explain, so the line of reasoning continues, why Israel is allegedly buying up land in southeast Turkey, inter alia, through the agency of Turkish Jews. On 8 January, for example, the Islamist daily Yeni Şafak, known as the unofficial mouthpiece of the Justice and Development Party, published an article which alleged that Israel was attempting to set up farms in southeastern Turkey and populating them with Russian and Ethiopian Jews whose integration into Israel was problematic. It was also reported during 2005, by journalists such as Ayhan Bilgin in Vakit, that the Mossad and Israel were responsible for planting mines which killed Turkish soldiers in southeast Turkey. Such claims created a very negative atmosphere against Israel and Jews in Turkey.

During a February 2005 interview with Das Magazin, internationally acclaimed Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk made statements implicating Turkey in massacres against Armenians and persecution of the Kurds, declaring: “Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands.” He was labeled a traitor and condemned in many newspapers, especially in the ultra-nationalist Yeniçağ. Moreover, their claims that he was “a Jewish lover,” “best friend of the Jews” and “the servant of Jews,” fomented an anti-Jewish atmosphere. Criminal charges of ‘insulting Turkishness’ were brought against him, but were later dropped.

Following his claim in 2005 in the mainstream daily Akşam that Jews were behind all wickedness, ultra-nationalist columnist Nihat Gençst was forced to leave the newspaper.

It was reported in some main newspapers such as the mainstream Milliyet that Eric Edelman, who served as US ambassador to Turkey, resigned his post in March because of attacks on his Jewish origins in newspapers such as Yeniçağ, Milli Gazete and Vakit. Edelman’s departure came against the background of ongoing Turkish-US tensions, exacerbated by Turkish expressions of solidarity with Syria.

Islamist-oriented TV channels such as Mesaj and Kanal 7 take advantage of every news item concerning the Middle East to attack the Jews with derogatory religious statements, sometimes including quotes from the Qur`an.

 

Books

Translations of classic antisemitic tracts such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford’s International Jew are sold at well-known bookstores. Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a bestseller printed by various publishing houses, is apparently subsidized and sold very cheaply. When mainstream newspapers such as Akşam headlined this fact, referring to it as a “dangerous development,” Turkish Jewish community leaders received many phone calls, including from media representatives, asking for their reaction. After the issue died down, the government served prosecution orders against the publishers of the books, as owners of the copyright. Mein Kampf is the only book which seems to have been removed from bookstores.

Another book which aroused a lively discourse in the media in 2005 was the popular futuristic anti-American novel Metal Fırtına (Metal Storm). According to the authors, Orkhun Uçar and Burak Turna, who gave an interview to the mainstream publication Vatan, after reading the book people would understand the realities behind Israel and the Jews and cease to regard them positively since they would see how the Jews betrayed Turkey and the Turkish people which had embraced them throughout history.

It should also be noted that many books dealing with conspiracy theories relating to Israel and Jews are freely available in well-known bookstores.

 

AttItudes toward the Holocaust

Three events commemorating the Holocaust were organized by the Turkish Jewish community in 2005: an exhibit from the Salonika Holocaust Museum at the Profilo Shopping Mall Theater, Istanbul; a documentary, The Story of the Violins That Survived the Holocaust, accompanied by a violin concert by Amnon Weinstein; and for the first time, the participation of some 50 Turkish Jews in the March of the Living on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.

There has been a significant increase of articles denying the Holocaust in the radical Turkish press. Fatih Sertyüz, in Milli Gazete, Hasan Karakaya, in Vakit and Selçuk Düzgün, in Ortadoğu, all complain that Hitler did not finish off the Jews. Common expressions include: “the Holocaust tale,” “lies about genocide,” “rooms are not ‘gas chambers’ and have never been used for such purposes,” “Are Jews completely innocent?” “the so-called Yad Vashem Genocide Museum,” and “the ‘legend’ called the liberation of Auschwitz.” After an article, accompanied by a picture of Hitler and entitled “Hitler’s ‘Gas’ Is a Lie, As Is the ‘Jazz’ of the Zionists,” by Hasan Karakaya, appeared (30 Nov. 2004) in Vakit, which is also published in Germany, it was discovered by a German parliamentarian and translated into German. As a result, German Interior Minister Otto Schilly closed down Yeni Akit, headquarters of the publication of the European edition and demanded that steps be taken against the newspaper in Turkey due to the continuous publication of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel, as well as anti-western, articles. Turkish Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu told Schilly on 12 April 2005 that no action could be taken against the newspaper since there was no law permitting prosecution of the owners. Vakit expressed its anger at the ban in Germany by comparing Schilly to Hitler and declaring German politicians to be at the beck and call of the “Jewish lobby.”

On the other hand, the well-known writer Engin Ardıç, whose articles appear in the mainstream newspaper Akşam, fights actively against Holocaust denial. He has written many times and in great detail about the horror and uniqueness of the Holocaust, after visiting Auschwitz and other camps. Further, columnists from mainstream papers such as Ertuğrul Özkök and Hadi Uluengin from Hürriyet, Ayşe Hür and Türker Alkan from Radikal and Şemsi Yücel from Takvim, as well as Ayşe Günaysu from the fringe, mainly Kurdish-directed paper Özgür Gündem, have all written articles condemning antisemitism.

 

RESPONSES TO ANTISEMITISM

Five court cases were ongoing in Istanbul. Two dealt with the books Turkey under the Threat of Israel and Zionism, by the Turkish nationalist Cemal Anadol, and The Wooden Sword of the Jew, by Mustafa Akgün, a columnist with Milli Gazete (see ASW 2004). Three cases concerned antisemitic statements published in the press. Two of these were initiated by Minister of Justice Cemil Çiçek, who for the first time ever ordered prosecution proceedings concerning antisemitic remarks made during a newspaper interview given in December 2003 by the son of a terrorist who blew himself up in the bomb attack at HSBC Bank on 20 November 2003; another concerned the above-mentioned article in Vakit.

Hearings were also continuing in the case of the murderers of the young Jewish dentist Yasef Yahya, who was slain in August 2003, allegedly because he was a Jew.

The trial of the alleged perpetrators of the November 2003 bomb attacks was also continuing. Some of the arrested were released after the court determined that the attack was not an organized criminal act.

A book called Fact or Fraud, by Goran Larsson, which refutes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, has been published in Turkish and sold in popular bookstores.

In January 2005, Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister Abdullah Gül participated in the ceremonies commemorating the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz, in Poland. He then visited Israel for the first time, and was followed by Minister of Justice Cemil Çiçek and Prime Minister R. Tayyip Erdoğan. The visits, including pictures from Yad Vashem and the speeches made there, especially Cemil Çiçek’s statement that “Antisemitism is a perversion,” were given wide media coverage in Turkey.

In December 2005 Turkey joined 104 other countries in signing the UN agreement denoting 27 October, the date of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945, as Holocaust Memorial Day.

As a member of the OSCE (Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe), Turkey also signed the agreement to educate the Turkish people about the Holocaust. However, the subject was not included in the 2005 curriculum.

A Jewish European Culture day was held on 4 September, at which all synagogues were opened to the public, Jewish song concerts were held and Jewish meals cooked and served. The event received very positive media coverage. It should be noted that both the president of the republic and the prime minister both sent greetings to the Jewish community on the occasions of Chanukah and Passover.