Turkey 2006
Although no violent antisemitic incident was recorded in Turkey in 2006,
the Second Lebanon War triggered some virulently antisemitic articles,
especially in the Islamic, but also in the mainstream press, as well as several
cases of harassment and discrimination.
the Jewish community
The Jewish community numbers approximately 20,000 out of a
total population of 73 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. Of the 23 active synagogues in Turkey more than half are 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 and now
continued by the Felicity Party. The National View promotes Islamic values and
opposes Israel, Zionism, the EU, the Western world, the US and globalization.
The ruling Justice and Development Party
(Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP), led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, split from the National View movement. A
conservative democratic party, with roots in Islam, it has been trying to
cultivate relations with the West and gain accession to the EU.
The ultra-nationalist stream consists of: the
traditional Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket); left-wing
groups (such as the Workers Party − İşçi Partisi), which
oppose the EU, the US and globalization; and various small nationalist groups.
Supporters of these groups attack the pro-Israel and pro-US line of the Justice
and Development Party.
The main opposition is the secular, socio-democratic
Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi − CHP), which views
foreign and economic affairs though a nationalist prism and promotes Ataturk’s
legacy.
AntiSemitic Activity
No violent antisemitic incident against Turkey’s Jewish
community was recorded in 2006.
However, Turkish police are constantly on the alert and step up
security at Jewish institutions whenever a potential threat is detected. Several
incidents of harassment and discrimination were reported, however, during the
Second Lebanon War (see below).
Most antisemitism in Turkey is manifested in publications − newspapers, magazines and
books. Many
educated youngTurks 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. According
to a Pew Global Attitudes Survey conducted during the summer, only 15 percent
of Turks looked kindly upon Jews.
Propaganda
Extremely antisemitic articles may be found in the Islamist
newspapers Anadoluda Vakit (Vakit) and Milli Gazete
(semi-official organ of the National View), as well as in the ultra-nationalist
publications Ortadoğu and Yeniçağ. They attack Judaism
or Jews either directly, by claiming, for example, that they distort the Old
Testament, or by quoting from books such as The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion; or indirectly, by harshly criticizing Israeli policies, the Israeli
prime minister and Zionism.
Conspiracy theories are used by both Islamists
and ultra-nationalists to demonize both 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 (see below); mutual visits of Turkish and Israeli officials;
and the alleged role of the Mossad in northern Iraq have all nourished these
theories. Another common theory is that the Jews, the supposedly chosen people
who consider themselves superior to others, are trying to take over the world
by creating internal problems in the countries to which they have spread,
thereby destroying them.
The Donme (Followers of Shabtai Zvi, 1626–76),
Jews who converted to Islam in the seventeenth century, are frequently
discussed in the Islamist media. The descendants of the Donme 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 Yeni Çağ since the
war in Iraq is that most of the Kurds, including leaders Mustafa Barzani and
Jalal Talabani, are of Jewish origin, whose ultimate goal, allegedly, is to set
up another Israel in northern Iraq under the guise of a sovereign Kurdish state.(see
ASW 2005).
In summer 2006 Milli Gazete, accused
Israeli tourists of spreading a tick-like, blood-sucking insect to plague the
Turkish people.
The Second Lebanon War
During the war, some mainstream media joined Islamist and
ultra-nationalist organs in demonizing Israel and the Jews. However, most of the severest attacks were in the
Islamic media, including denial of the Holocaust and blood libel. After the cease-fire, there was a decline in reports of antisemitic incidents and media
attacks.
Following are some extracts from
commentaries and articles that appeared in the Turkish (mostly Islamic) press
during this period.
“Judaism which has been distorted since its
origins is built on violence. Jewish violence has its impact on everything, from
the ideal of Zionism to occupational policies” (Hüseyin Akın, Milli
Gazete, 8 July).
“Jews who were burnt and expelled by the West
were always saved by the Muslims. However, today Jews are avenging the Muslims instead
of the West. Only vicious people can behave thus. These people are thirsty for
blood. They can only survive by drinking blood because they have the soul of
Frankenstein” (Yusuf Kaplan, Yeni Shafak
[conservative], 7 July).
“We say that we saved the lives of Jews that we
brought from Spain to our country by ships. Their leaders always behaved nicely
to us and behind our backs they perpetrate every kind of evil as they have done
for five hundred years. This is our foolishness. I say now they have to go.
Also my antipathy against Hitler has begun to change too” (Abdullah
Kılıç, Önce Vatan [ultra-nationalist], 26 July).
“I cannot compare Israel and America to any animal since no animal does what they do! No animal can be so cruel, so
aggressive, so tyrannical… It’s not possible they come from the tribe of Moses…
They have two legs but are not human” (Hasan Karakaya, Vakit, 1 Aug.)
“This racist, selfish, greedy, perverted
state [Israel] is tragic bad luck for the world. There is no sin that they have
not committed, no massacre that they haven't carried out, no evil that they
haven't done”(Ibrahim Karagul, Yeni Shafak, 1 Aug.);
“It is Jewish propaganda that Hitler
killed 6 million Jews. It is a lie by Zionist Jews. If Hitler were resurrected
he would say: ‘It was a lie that I killed innocent Jews. Look at what they are
doing now. Wouldn't it have been better if I had exterminated the
ancestors of these monsters completely?’” (Ali Eren, Vakit, 3 Aug.).
“The Jew is the same Jew as ever. Whatever the Jew
has done throughout history he is doing again, aggressively, and murdering
others. Only their methods are changing. They always find the opportunity to bring
death to humanity” (Zeki Ceyhan, Milli Gazete, 27 Aug.).
Mehmet Elkatmis, representative of the
ruling party and chairman of the parliamentary Human Rights Commission, claimed during a speech that Israel was
avenging Hitler’s Holocaust by killing innocent people in the region.
Islamist-oriented TV channels such as Mesaj and
TV 5 also continued to 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.
In addition, numerous NGOs condemned Israel and many anti-Israel demonstrations were held in various cities; at one rally in Istanbul, 100,000 people gathered in the Çağlayan neighborhood. Slogans
demonizing Israel were reported at a demonstration organized by the banned
Welfare Party of former Prime Minister Necmettin
Erbakan, developer
of the National View ideology (see above).
A Jewish student at Yıldız Teknik University was verbally abused by his professor in the middle of class and blamed for Israel’s bombing of Lebanon.
Anti-Israel protests were also reported at a football
match between two Turkish teams in late summer in the Fenerbahçe Stadium.
Further, a basketball match against an
Israeli women’s team in Kayseri was the scene of protests, including an attempt
to remove the Israeli flag. Israeli tourists also
reported cases of harassment, particularly in Antalya.
Shalom,
the weekly newspaper of the Jewish community, received some 150 threatening messages
to its website within one week.
It should be noted, however, that some serious
columnists of mainstream newspapers were more balanced. For example:
“As I wrote before, I said that it was not the
people of Palestine and Lebanon but Hizballah and Hamas who are terrorists and
don’t want peace. They are the ones who are sacrificing their people by screaming
to death” (Defne Samyeli, Güneş, 21 July).
“The guy will scream that the state of Israel will disappear or will say shamelessly that the Holocaust did not happen… And the
others will do nothing but just watch! How come!, and: “Civilians will be
attacked but rockets will be sent from buildings housing many kids and then
when these buildings are targeted you’ll start to cry that Israel has targeted civilians. Don’t lie, be honest!” (Engin Ardıç, Akşam, 8
Aug.).
Books
Translations of classic antisemitic tracts such as The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford’s International
Jew, as well as books dealing with
conspiracy theories, continue to be sold at well-known
bookstores.
New editions of two books by writer-journalist “Hasan
Taşkın” were published in 2006. Scenarios of Israel in GAP and
Forceps, deal mainly with the Israeli
aspiration allegedly deriving from the Torah, to establish a Greater Israel
from the Niles to the Euphrates, which would also include part of southeast
Turkey.
“Hakan Yılmaz Çebi” in the
recently published books, The Code of Israel and The Hidden Laws of the
Talmud, writes, among other subjects, of alleged secret plans of the Jews
and Israel to try and conquer the world.
Attitudes toward the Holocaust
Following Turkey’s signature, together with 104 other countries
in December 2005, of the UN agreement denoting 27 January, the date of the
liberation of Auschwitz in 1945, as Holocaust Memorial Day, the Foreign
Ministry issued a declaration on 27 January 2006, stating that Turks had always
helped Jews in their most troubled times; in 1492, Ottoman Empire had welcomed
the Jews who were expelled from Spain, and during WWII, many Jewish
intellectuals were welcomed to Turkey and contributed considerably to the
education of Turkish youth. The declaration ended by commemorating all the
people who had lost their lives during the Holocaust.
Although there were no other state initiatives
on Holocaust Memorial Day 2006, the independent Cinema Group, with the support
of the Jewish community of Turkey, held a Holocaust cinema week in April in
Istanbul, during the week of Israel’s Yom Hashoah. Some leading journalists
invited to the gala night wrote about the event in their columns. An exhibition
of Holocaust photos was also set up in the Istanbul mall housing the cinema.
RESPONSES TO ANTISEMITISM
Verdicts were delivered in two trials in 2006 (see ASW 2005).
In the case of the book Turkey under the Threat of Israel and Zionism, the author Turkish
nationalist Cemal Anadol was acquitted but the legal process was continuing.
Two appeals against the decision were rejected. In the case initiated by Minister of Justice Cemil Çiçek, who had ordered proceedings against the son of a terrorist who blew himself up in the bomb attack at HSBC Bank
on 20 November 2003, as
well as the newspaper which
published his antisemitic remarks a month later, the young man was acquitted on
the grounds that the crime had no legal basis. A second case initiated by Çiçek,
concerning an article in Vakit denying the Holocaust published in
August 2004, was continuing, as was the trial of the murderers
of the young Jewish dentist Yasef Yahya, who was slain in August 2003,
allegedly because he was Jewish.
The trial of the alleged perpetrators of the November
2003 bomb attacks was also continuing. Some of the detainees were released
after the court determined that the terrorists had acted on their own
initiative and the attack had not been orchestrated.
Another case that began in 2003 against Fuat
Bezmen, an aged businessman who insulted the Jews during an interview in the
conservative magazine Aksiyon, ended in May 2006. Bezmen published an open apology to the
Jews in the magazine as well as in some newspapers.
An important challenge for the Jewish community
in 2006 was to disprove the various conspiracy claims, particularly the one
made by Rahşan Ecevit, wife of former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, that
the GAP could become a second Palestine, since Israel was buying up land
through Turkish Jews in southeast Turkey Yeniçağ (14 June).
The community issued a press release, demanding that the claim be proved,
but received no answer.
