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ERDOGAN HAS A JUDEOPHOBIC, NAZI-LIKE BACKGROUND
by Eliyahu m'Tsiyon
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2010/06/erdogan-has-judeophobic-nazi-like.html
6-17-2010
Not much has come out about Turkish PM Erdogan's political background
in Nazi-like Islamist movements. Some info has come out. Here is the
most detailed report on Erdung's background that I have seen so far.
Professor Andrew Bostom has published fundamental anthologies of
important Muslim documents and forgotten writings by non-Muslim
authorities on Muslim jihad and on Muslim Judeophobia. Prof Bostom,
a professor of medicine, was shocked by the 9-11 events and undertook
a profound and thorough study of Islam, its history, its principle
of jihad and its Judeophobia which goes back to Muhammad, according
to Muslim sources.
Here is his report on Erdogan:
"Mas Kom Ya" Erdogan and His Ur Jew-Hatred
Just over 35 years ago, in 1974, Erdogan, while serving as president
of the Istanbul Youth Group of his mentor, former Prime Minister
Necmettin 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"--the latter of course "Jews"--and
the play focused on the evil, conspiratorial nature of these three
entities whose common denominator was Judaism.
More 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.
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 Kalkınma) Party's (AKP)
hold on power -- MEMRI published excerpts from a chilling interview
given by Erdogan's mentor, 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. The IHH--whose violent operatives featured prominently in the
Mavi Maramara Antisemitic incitement, and subsequent bloodshed--has its
origins in this same Orthodox Islamic Milli GöruÅ~_ movement. During
Erbakan's pre-election 2007 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. Indeed current
Prime Minister Erdogan amplifies this bigoted, Antisemitic discourse
which resonates among the masses, illustrating graphically the same
phenomenon described so presciently 37 years ago by Bat Ye'or about
her native 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.
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]
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 (or fewer) 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. 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."
Tragically, the contemporary leadership of the Turkish Jewish
community, Israel, and American Jewish advocacy groups never mustered
the intellectual courage to overcome their own craven denial.
Collectively galvanized, several years ago, they might have confronted
Erdogan's AKP government over the ugly living legacy of anti-dhimmi
and Antisemitic discrimination against Turkey's Jews, and demanded
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 they should have
demanded, further, that 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" - could have 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. But
nothing of the sort was ever done.
Thus a Turkish Jew, Albert Pinto--illustrating modern Jewish
dhimmitude, denial, and raw "fear for their lives" in Turkey as Muslims
"take to the street in growing numbers against Israel"--reportedly
stated, referring to the slain IHH jihadists aboard the Mavi Maramara,
What we are hearing in the media is not pleasant. Why did they kill
those people? They were nice people who simply wished to help.
More ominously, resurgent jihadism in Turkey manifest by the ruling
AKP party, and its popular leader Erdogan, now brazenly espouses
Antisemitic hatred, and focuses this animus on the Jewish State
of Israel.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - reference notes to Andrew Bostom's
article are found here.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ UPDATINGS 6-17&20-2010 Michael Rubin on
misconceptions of Turkey [as by Tom Friedman] and on Erdung's cunning,
thuggish policy [here]
For all those who appreciate a macabre sense of humor, the Woodrow
Wilson Center in Washington DC, 1/3 funded by the US Federal Govt,
is giving Erdung's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, an award in
the name of former president Wilson [here]. It is called the Woodrow
Wilson Public Service Award. How kind of the Wilson Center, headed
by one of Obama's mentors, Lee Hamilton, a former US representative!!
Hamilton was co-author of the notorious Baker-Hamilton Report which
recommended that the US shaft Israel and befriend the fascist regime
in Damascus. For those who still believe in "Hope & Change", the
Baker-Hamilton recommendations are part of Obama's foreign policy
within the generally disastrous guidelines set by Zbig Brzezinski. For
those who believe that centers and institutes named after illustrious
historical figures and proclaiming lofty goals and principles have
policies decided by sugar plum fairies, David Boyajian shows that
the Wilson Center is closely connected to various large corporations
that do big business with Turkey. Davutoglu is commonly considered
the architect of Erdung's turn towards a pro-Muslim, pro-jihad policy.
The Wilson Center explains the award [here]. The Center's spokeswoman
claims that it is not an "endorsement" of Davutoglu's views or deeds.
Claudia Rosett considers the award the decision of a fool [here].
Maybe somebody more sinister than a mere fool, methinks.
Michael Rubin has his doubts about the award [here] The ever sleazy
and slimy Lee Hamilton proudly announced that Davutoglu "personifies
the attributes we seek to honor at the Woodrow Wilson Center." So
much for Hamilton's spokeswoman's claim that the award was not an
"endorsement." Hamilton added that Davutoglu's "contributions have
been numerous and significant." [here] Is Hamilton endorsing the Mavi
Marmara pro-Hamas provocation as a "significant . .
. contribution"??
Jennifer Rubin suggests that the US Govt stop funding the Wilson
Center [here] Labels: Erdogan, Judeophobia, Mavi Marmara, Turkey,
Turkish Armada
From: A. Papazian
by Eliyahu m'Tsiyon
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2010/06/erdogan-has-judeophobic-nazi-like.html
6-17-2010
Not much has come out about Turkish PM Erdogan's political background
in Nazi-like Islamist movements. Some info has come out. Here is the
most detailed report on Erdung's background that I have seen so far.
Professor Andrew Bostom has published fundamental anthologies of
important Muslim documents and forgotten writings by non-Muslim
authorities on Muslim jihad and on Muslim Judeophobia. Prof Bostom,
a professor of medicine, was shocked by the 9-11 events and undertook
a profound and thorough study of Islam, its history, its principle
of jihad and its Judeophobia which goes back to Muhammad, according
to Muslim sources.
Here is his report on Erdogan:
"Mas Kom Ya" Erdogan and His Ur Jew-Hatred
Just over 35 years ago, in 1974, Erdogan, while serving as president
of the Istanbul Youth Group of his mentor, former Prime Minister
Necmettin 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"--the latter of course "Jews"--and
the play focused on the evil, conspiratorial nature of these three
entities whose common denominator was Judaism.
More 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.
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 Kalkınma) Party's (AKP)
hold on power -- MEMRI published excerpts from a chilling interview
given by Erdogan's mentor, 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. The IHH--whose violent operatives featured prominently in the
Mavi Maramara Antisemitic incitement, and subsequent bloodshed--has its
origins in this same Orthodox Islamic Milli GöruÅ~_ movement. During
Erbakan's pre-election 2007 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. Indeed current
Prime Minister Erdogan amplifies this bigoted, Antisemitic discourse
which resonates among the masses, illustrating graphically the same
phenomenon described so presciently 37 years ago by Bat Ye'or about
her native 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.
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]
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 (or fewer) 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. 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."
Tragically, the contemporary leadership of the Turkish Jewish
community, Israel, and American Jewish advocacy groups never mustered
the intellectual courage to overcome their own craven denial.
Collectively galvanized, several years ago, they might have confronted
Erdogan's AKP government over the ugly living legacy of anti-dhimmi
and Antisemitic discrimination against Turkey's Jews, and demanded
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 they should have
demanded, further, that 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" - could have 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. But
nothing of the sort was ever done.
Thus a Turkish Jew, Albert Pinto--illustrating modern Jewish
dhimmitude, denial, and raw "fear for their lives" in Turkey as Muslims
"take to the street in growing numbers against Israel"--reportedly
stated, referring to the slain IHH jihadists aboard the Mavi Maramara,
What we are hearing in the media is not pleasant. Why did they kill
those people? They were nice people who simply wished to help.
More ominously, resurgent jihadism in Turkey manifest by the ruling
AKP party, and its popular leader Erdogan, now brazenly espouses
Antisemitic hatred, and focuses this animus on the Jewish State
of Israel.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - reference notes to Andrew Bostom's
article are found here.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ UPDATINGS 6-17&20-2010 Michael Rubin on
misconceptions of Turkey [as by Tom Friedman] and on Erdung's cunning,
thuggish policy [here]
For all those who appreciate a macabre sense of humor, the Woodrow
Wilson Center in Washington DC, 1/3 funded by the US Federal Govt,
is giving Erdung's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, an award in
the name of former president Wilson [here]. It is called the Woodrow
Wilson Public Service Award. How kind of the Wilson Center, headed
by one of Obama's mentors, Lee Hamilton, a former US representative!!
Hamilton was co-author of the notorious Baker-Hamilton Report which
recommended that the US shaft Israel and befriend the fascist regime
in Damascus. For those who still believe in "Hope & Change", the
Baker-Hamilton recommendations are part of Obama's foreign policy
within the generally disastrous guidelines set by Zbig Brzezinski. For
those who believe that centers and institutes named after illustrious
historical figures and proclaiming lofty goals and principles have
policies decided by sugar plum fairies, David Boyajian shows that
the Wilson Center is closely connected to various large corporations
that do big business with Turkey. Davutoglu is commonly considered
the architect of Erdung's turn towards a pro-Muslim, pro-jihad policy.
The Wilson Center explains the award [here]. The Center's spokeswoman
claims that it is not an "endorsement" of Davutoglu's views or deeds.
Claudia Rosett considers the award the decision of a fool [here].
Maybe somebody more sinister than a mere fool, methinks.
Michael Rubin has his doubts about the award [here] The ever sleazy
and slimy Lee Hamilton proudly announced that Davutoglu "personifies
the attributes we seek to honor at the Woodrow Wilson Center." So
much for Hamilton's spokeswoman's claim that the award was not an
"endorsement." Hamilton added that Davutoglu's "contributions have
been numerous and significant." [here] Is Hamilton endorsing the Mavi
Marmara pro-Hamas provocation as a "significant . .
. contribution"??
Jennifer Rubin suggests that the US Govt stop funding the Wilson
Center [here] Labels: Erdogan, Judeophobia, Mavi Marmara, Turkey,
Turkish Armada
From: A. Papazian