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Huffington Post
Sept 8 2014
Stoking the Fire: Anti-Semitism and Intellectuals in Today's Turkey
Umut Ã-zkırımlı , Professor of Contemporary Turkey Studies at the
Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), Lund University
That the latest Israeli assault on Gaza which claimed the lives of
close to 2,000 Palestinians (the figures vary depending on which side
is reporting) has led to a veritable outburst of anti-semitism in
Turkey is not in itself surprising. Ethnic minorities have always been
a thorn in the political visions of the founding elites, bent on
creating a homogenous nation out of the hodge-podge of different
linguistic and religious groups they had inherited from the defunct
Ottoman Empire. The Jews were not an exception. Often the target of
such Turkification policies as the "VatandaÅ? Türkçe KonuÅ?" (Citizen,
speak Turkish) campaign of the 1930s or the infamous Wealth Tax of
1942, the Jews have also borne the brunt of the Thrace pogrom which
began in June 1934 in the northwestern city of Çanakkale and engulfed
much of the region within the span of a month, reaching a climax on
the night of the 3rd of July, when the houses of the Jews in
Kırklareli, located close to the Bulgarian border, were raided. The
majority of the Jews who abandoned their homes in 1934 never went
back; several others left for good in 1948-49 when the state of Israel
was established.
Despite their ever shrinking numbers, the Jews, along with other
minorities, continued to be the "other" against which (Sunni Muslim)
Turkishness has been defined, and the fire of anti-semitism continued
to simmer, flaring up every now and then -- be it in the media,
political discourse or actual acts of violence
Mainstreaming Anti-Semitism?
Yet something was different this time around. Something to do with the
intensity and audacity of displays of anti-semitism, and the not so
covert official backing they received, which was one of the talking
points of the recent meeting between U.S. President Obama and Turkish
President ErdoÄ?an who discussed, according to the statement by the NSC
Spokesperson Caitlin Hayden "the importance of ... combating the
scourge of anti-Semitism," among other things.
And for good reason. According to a survey conducted by Gonzo Insight,
30,926 messages in Turkish have been posted by 27,309 Twitter users in
support of the Holocaust within the span of 24 hours on 17-18 July,
ten days after Israeli Defence Forces launched Operation Protective
Edge. By then, a famous pop singer, Yıldız Tilbe, had already led the
way by sharing the words "May God bless Hitler" with her hundreds of
thousands of followers on Twitter -- a tweet which was backed up by
Melih Gökçek, the current mayor of Ankara and a senior member of the
ruling AKP. Å?amil Tayyar, an MP from the same party, joined the
bandwagon, howling "May your race be exterminated; may you never lack
your Hitler" -- a tweet he deleted later. The notoriously anti-semitic
pro-government newspaper Yeni Akit (with a readership of 58,000) was a
tad more "creative" (!), publishing a crossword puzzle with Hitler's
picture at the center and the slogan "We are longing for you!" which
appears when the puzzle is solved.
In this context, it was not surprising to hear clarion calls to
Turkey's 17,000 strong Jewish community to condemn Israel's military
actions, often expressed in "or else" form, or more direct forms of
threat such as the one directed at Louis Fishman, an Assistant
Professor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Fishman
who spent several years in Turkey was attacked by another academic,
Ali Ä°hsan Göker, the Chair of the Physics Department at Bilecik Å?eyh
Edibali University. In response to an article Fishman wrote for
Haaretz, Göker tweeted the following: "Treblinka will be ready soon.
Constructing the railway to transport jews (sic) at the moment", in
English, a blatant threat punishable by law. It needs to be added in
passing that, instead of being punished, Göker has recently been
awarded a research grant by the government-funded The Scientific and
Technological Research Council of Turkey, TÃ`BÄ°TAK).
We cannot conclude, on the basis of the above examples alone, that
anti-semitism has increased in Turkey, a claim which needs to be
substantiated by further research and cross-time comparisons. We can
safely stipulate, however, that anti-semitist sentiments are much more
mainstream and legitimate than before, given the open backing of the
representatives of the ruling AKP, the lack of legal sanctions against
hate speech towards Jews (and other minorities) and the general
atmosphere of intolerance and polarization which breed these
sentiments.
Curiously enough, it was the so-called "liberal/democrat"
intellectuals who were at the forefront of the campaign against
Turkey's Jewish community. Etyen Mahçupyan, an advisor to the
prestigious Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV),
the former editor-in-chief of the Armenian weekly Agos (and a close
friend of the former editor of the journal, the Turkish Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink who was brutally murdered on 19 January 2007),
is a good case in point.
Enter Intellectuals: The Curious Case of Etyen Mahçupyan
In an article published on 3 August 2014 in the pro-government
newspaper AkÅ?am (in which he has a regular column), Mahçupyan argues
that "non-Muslim minorities have always considered themselves to be
more modern, developed and civilized" -- hence "superior" to -- the
Muslim majority in Turkey. This attitude he claims, leads them to
underestimate the "revolutionary change" brought upon in Turkey by the
ruling AKP. It is possible to explain the dilemma faced by non-Muslim
minorities, Mahçupyan continues, by referring to their ambivalent
relationship with the leading "Kemalist nationalist" newspaper, Sözcü:
"Today, the majority of minorities, in fact almost all the Jewish
community reads Sözcü ... By memorizing the insults directed to
ErdoÄ?an ... they reproduce the anger and hatred they have accumulated
in years on a daily basis." This way, Sözcü is catering to a
"historical psychological need", helping the minorities, in particular
the Jews, to resist indigenization, hence remain alien to the society
in which they live.
It would have been possible to dismiss these highly controversial
claims as the musings of a confused mind, had they not come from a
self-proclaimed "democrat." After all, the author takes the existence
of a minority state of mind, an "essence" so to speak, for granted
which equally affects each and every member of the quite heterogeneous
and dissimilar Jewish, Armenian and Greek communities. In this view,
minorities despised Muslims for more than a century. Yet Mahçupyan
provides no concrete evidence for this sweeping claim and turns a
blind eye to the vast literature, academic or non-academic, detailing
the plight of the minorities under successive governments. The same
goes for the main thesis on which the article is based, that "almost
all the Jewish community read Sözcü", a claim which could only be
verified by an extensive survey (apparently, a trivial matter for the
purposes of the article's underlying logic) -- not to mention the
politically dangerous and morally problematic way out of the purported
dilemma, "indigenization", whatever that term means.
Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of ignoring these claims for
two reasons. First, Mahçupyan is one of the contributors to Recep
Tayyip ErdoÄ?an's presidential vision statement, hence an informal --
at least by the time of the writing of this article -- advisor to the
current regime. Second, as a Turkish Armenian himself, Mahçupyan is
writing from "within", with an authority that few non-minority
intellectuals can muster. This position of authority turns Mahçupyan's
claims into highly explosive material that could detonate at any time,
opening fresh wounds within an already torn community. That this is
not a distant risk is made clear by an open letter signed by several
prominent Turkish Jewish academics, professionals and journalists who
felt the need to publicly denounce the calls to condemn Israel's
actions by stating that "No citizen of this country is under any
obligation to account for, interpret or comment on any event that
takes place elsewhere in the world, in which he/she has no
involvement. There is no onus on the Jewish community of Turkey,
therefore, to declare an opinion on any matter at all."
The Turkish government and its "organic intellectuals" have been
stoking the fire of polarization and exclusion for quite some time
now. Yet the fire of anti-semitism, and more generally racism, bears
few resemblances to other fires. When it gets out of control, it burns
not only a particular community, but a whole society.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/umut-ozkirimli/stoking-the-fire-antisemi_b_5779302.html
Sept 8 2014
Stoking the Fire: Anti-Semitism and Intellectuals in Today's Turkey
Umut Ã-zkırımlı , Professor of Contemporary Turkey Studies at the
Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), Lund University
That the latest Israeli assault on Gaza which claimed the lives of
close to 2,000 Palestinians (the figures vary depending on which side
is reporting) has led to a veritable outburst of anti-semitism in
Turkey is not in itself surprising. Ethnic minorities have always been
a thorn in the political visions of the founding elites, bent on
creating a homogenous nation out of the hodge-podge of different
linguistic and religious groups they had inherited from the defunct
Ottoman Empire. The Jews were not an exception. Often the target of
such Turkification policies as the "VatandaÅ? Türkçe KonuÅ?" (Citizen,
speak Turkish) campaign of the 1930s or the infamous Wealth Tax of
1942, the Jews have also borne the brunt of the Thrace pogrom which
began in June 1934 in the northwestern city of Çanakkale and engulfed
much of the region within the span of a month, reaching a climax on
the night of the 3rd of July, when the houses of the Jews in
Kırklareli, located close to the Bulgarian border, were raided. The
majority of the Jews who abandoned their homes in 1934 never went
back; several others left for good in 1948-49 when the state of Israel
was established.
Despite their ever shrinking numbers, the Jews, along with other
minorities, continued to be the "other" against which (Sunni Muslim)
Turkishness has been defined, and the fire of anti-semitism continued
to simmer, flaring up every now and then -- be it in the media,
political discourse or actual acts of violence
Mainstreaming Anti-Semitism?
Yet something was different this time around. Something to do with the
intensity and audacity of displays of anti-semitism, and the not so
covert official backing they received, which was one of the talking
points of the recent meeting between U.S. President Obama and Turkish
President ErdoÄ?an who discussed, according to the statement by the NSC
Spokesperson Caitlin Hayden "the importance of ... combating the
scourge of anti-Semitism," among other things.
And for good reason. According to a survey conducted by Gonzo Insight,
30,926 messages in Turkish have been posted by 27,309 Twitter users in
support of the Holocaust within the span of 24 hours on 17-18 July,
ten days after Israeli Defence Forces launched Operation Protective
Edge. By then, a famous pop singer, Yıldız Tilbe, had already led the
way by sharing the words "May God bless Hitler" with her hundreds of
thousands of followers on Twitter -- a tweet which was backed up by
Melih Gökçek, the current mayor of Ankara and a senior member of the
ruling AKP. Å?amil Tayyar, an MP from the same party, joined the
bandwagon, howling "May your race be exterminated; may you never lack
your Hitler" -- a tweet he deleted later. The notoriously anti-semitic
pro-government newspaper Yeni Akit (with a readership of 58,000) was a
tad more "creative" (!), publishing a crossword puzzle with Hitler's
picture at the center and the slogan "We are longing for you!" which
appears when the puzzle is solved.
In this context, it was not surprising to hear clarion calls to
Turkey's 17,000 strong Jewish community to condemn Israel's military
actions, often expressed in "or else" form, or more direct forms of
threat such as the one directed at Louis Fishman, an Assistant
Professor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Fishman
who spent several years in Turkey was attacked by another academic,
Ali Ä°hsan Göker, the Chair of the Physics Department at Bilecik Å?eyh
Edibali University. In response to an article Fishman wrote for
Haaretz, Göker tweeted the following: "Treblinka will be ready soon.
Constructing the railway to transport jews (sic) at the moment", in
English, a blatant threat punishable by law. It needs to be added in
passing that, instead of being punished, Göker has recently been
awarded a research grant by the government-funded The Scientific and
Technological Research Council of Turkey, TÃ`BÄ°TAK).
We cannot conclude, on the basis of the above examples alone, that
anti-semitism has increased in Turkey, a claim which needs to be
substantiated by further research and cross-time comparisons. We can
safely stipulate, however, that anti-semitist sentiments are much more
mainstream and legitimate than before, given the open backing of the
representatives of the ruling AKP, the lack of legal sanctions against
hate speech towards Jews (and other minorities) and the general
atmosphere of intolerance and polarization which breed these
sentiments.
Curiously enough, it was the so-called "liberal/democrat"
intellectuals who were at the forefront of the campaign against
Turkey's Jewish community. Etyen Mahçupyan, an advisor to the
prestigious Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV),
the former editor-in-chief of the Armenian weekly Agos (and a close
friend of the former editor of the journal, the Turkish Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink who was brutally murdered on 19 January 2007),
is a good case in point.
Enter Intellectuals: The Curious Case of Etyen Mahçupyan
In an article published on 3 August 2014 in the pro-government
newspaper AkÅ?am (in which he has a regular column), Mahçupyan argues
that "non-Muslim minorities have always considered themselves to be
more modern, developed and civilized" -- hence "superior" to -- the
Muslim majority in Turkey. This attitude he claims, leads them to
underestimate the "revolutionary change" brought upon in Turkey by the
ruling AKP. It is possible to explain the dilemma faced by non-Muslim
minorities, Mahçupyan continues, by referring to their ambivalent
relationship with the leading "Kemalist nationalist" newspaper, Sözcü:
"Today, the majority of minorities, in fact almost all the Jewish
community reads Sözcü ... By memorizing the insults directed to
ErdoÄ?an ... they reproduce the anger and hatred they have accumulated
in years on a daily basis." This way, Sözcü is catering to a
"historical psychological need", helping the minorities, in particular
the Jews, to resist indigenization, hence remain alien to the society
in which they live.
It would have been possible to dismiss these highly controversial
claims as the musings of a confused mind, had they not come from a
self-proclaimed "democrat." After all, the author takes the existence
of a minority state of mind, an "essence" so to speak, for granted
which equally affects each and every member of the quite heterogeneous
and dissimilar Jewish, Armenian and Greek communities. In this view,
minorities despised Muslims for more than a century. Yet Mahçupyan
provides no concrete evidence for this sweeping claim and turns a
blind eye to the vast literature, academic or non-academic, detailing
the plight of the minorities under successive governments. The same
goes for the main thesis on which the article is based, that "almost
all the Jewish community read Sözcü", a claim which could only be
verified by an extensive survey (apparently, a trivial matter for the
purposes of the article's underlying logic) -- not to mention the
politically dangerous and morally problematic way out of the purported
dilemma, "indigenization", whatever that term means.
Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of ignoring these claims for
two reasons. First, Mahçupyan is one of the contributors to Recep
Tayyip ErdoÄ?an's presidential vision statement, hence an informal --
at least by the time of the writing of this article -- advisor to the
current regime. Second, as a Turkish Armenian himself, Mahçupyan is
writing from "within", with an authority that few non-minority
intellectuals can muster. This position of authority turns Mahçupyan's
claims into highly explosive material that could detonate at any time,
opening fresh wounds within an already torn community. That this is
not a distant risk is made clear by an open letter signed by several
prominent Turkish Jewish academics, professionals and journalists who
felt the need to publicly denounce the calls to condemn Israel's
actions by stating that "No citizen of this country is under any
obligation to account for, interpret or comment on any event that
takes place elsewhere in the world, in which he/she has no
involvement. There is no onus on the Jewish community of Turkey,
therefore, to declare an opinion on any matter at all."
The Turkish government and its "organic intellectuals" have been
stoking the fire of polarization and exclusion for quite some time
now. Yet the fire of anti-semitism, and more generally racism, bears
few resemblances to other fires. When it gets out of control, it burns
not only a particular community, but a whole society.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/umut-ozkirimli/stoking-the-fire-antisemi_b_5779302.html