Once
marginal in Turkish politics, antisemitism has now been co-opted, if not
incited, by Prime Minister Erdogan and his ruling party. How can Turkish Jews
stay when they’re now considered the enemy?
By
Louis Fishman
During
the last two weeks antisemitism in Turkey has surged. Many of its citizens blur
their criticism of the Israeli attack on Gaza with outright condemnation of
Jews. Even if this trend is not unique to Turkey, the level of hate speech
directed at Jews has hit dangerous levels, leaving many to even question the
future of the 17,000-strong local Jewish community. In fact, open threats have
been made against Turkey’s Jews in some of the pro-government media, which
leads to only one conclusion: The Turkish government itself is largely
responsible for this bleak situation.
For
over a decade, I have lived on-and-off in Turkey, watching Turkish society
diversify along with the new freedoms it enjoyed during the first years of
Erdogan’s tenure.
However,
over the years, peoples’ comments and the Islamist press reminded me of the
latent antisemitism there, though rightly brushed off as being largely
marginal. However, even on the worst days, such as Israel’s raid on the
Turkish-backed Gaza Flotilla, or during the Second Lebanon War, never did antisemitism
erupt to such extremes as we have seen this week, one that was characterized by
widespread praise for Hitler in the press and social media.
Despite
this, for many Turkish and non-Turkish Jews, life continues at a near-normal
pitch, since the prejudices that have been unleashed are not generally visible
in the streets or communities they live or stay in.
This
public display of antisemitism just did not suddenly reveal itself this week,
Rather, it can be traced back to last year’s Gezi protest. The mass
civil-society protest was brutally silenced by the Turkish government, but not
before “international Jewry” was ‘identified’ as one of its main culprits by
Prime Minister Erdogan, who claimed it was the work of the “interest-rate
lobby,” a term regularly attributed to Jewish financiers and media moguls.
According to the Turkish Prime Minister, the lobby aimed at hitting the Turkish
economy and trying to bring down his government. While he was careful never to
use the term ‘Jew’, it would not take long for one of his ministers to slip and
actually pronounced that, indeed, international Jewry was one of the groups
behind the Gezi protests.
Sure
enough, not even a month had passed before Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi
was ousted in a coup d’etat, a major blow to Erdogan, who saw himself as a type
of mentor for the Muslim Brotherhood leader. On social media, as the massacres
in Egypt were taking place, I was astonished to see the number of tweets in
Turkish attributing the overthrow of Morsi as a Jewish conspiracy; in fact,
some even claimed that the people shooting the protesters were not even
Muslims, but really Jews.
It
took no time at all for Erdogan to come out and accuse Israel as masterminding
the coup; the problem was however he was blaming a French Jewish intellectual,
Bernard-Henri Lévy, who merely participated in a 2011 conference on the Arab
Spring alongside then-Knesset Member Tzipi Livni. Even if this was a strangely
concocted story, Erdogan seemingly believed it, along with many of his
followers.
The
turning point in the story of Turkish antisemitism was last December’s
corruption scandal, which targeted high-government members and was perceived by
Erdogan as an attempted judicial coup masterminded by his once staunch ally,
the religious leader Fethullah Gulen, self-exiled to the United States, who has
a substantial following in Turkey and other parts of the world.
While
most of Erdogan’s focus was purging thousands of police and judicial officials
believed to be have ties with the Gulen movement, or what Erdogan coined the
“parallel state,” it took no time at all for the PM and his supporters to
remember that Gulen had been critical of the Turkish government’s role in the
Gaza Flotilla – thus, of course, he too must have been under the wing of
Israel.
Throughout
all of this, Erdogan has had to work to retain a wide front of support,
incorporating and rewarding numerous groups, including the once-marginal antisemitic
newspapers, which are now much closer to the ruling circles of power. All of
these changes also led to a transformation in Turkey’s political culture, which
has become extremely polarized. Over the last year, Erdogan has regularly
lashed out against his opponents in crude and offensive language.
There
is no doubt that through these polarizing politics he has been able to
consolidate his already strong conservative base – but at the cost of
alienating many other sectors of Turkish society.
It
would be erroneous to think that ‘world Jewry’ was the only target of his
attacks. During the Gezi campaigns, protesters were falsely accused of
attacking a religious woman and desecrating a mosque, allegations that despite
being disproven were reproduced in all the major pro-government papers and repeated
numerous times by Erdogan. Following the break with the Gulen movement,
Erdogan’s language hit new levels when he declared a witch hunt against them,
stating that “in order to sterilize this dirty water that contaminated the
milk, we will either boil or vaporize it.”
When
a group representing Alevis, Turkey’s largest religious minority, voiced
opposition to Erdogan, he offensively questioned their religious beliefs as
Muslims. Erdogan then caused anger among Turkey’s very small Shiite community
when he explained that the Gulenists were even worse than Shiites in sedition
and malice. In fact, in a similar way, MP Zafer Caglayan, in reference to the
Gulen movement, said that he would have understood their (treacherous) actions
had they been Jews, Zoroastrians, or Atheists; this lead to a harsh state of
condemnation by Turkey’s Chief Rabbinate.
If
things were not polarized enough, Turkey for the first time will go to the
polls in August to vote in a president, with Erdogan as one of the main
candidates, providing fertile ground for this latest wave of antisemitism.
However, it seems that rather dictating a moderating path, Erdogan took the
cues of radical voices, leading to him making even harsher statements than in
the past. Further, we must remember that antisemitism and praise for Hitler –
and protests against Israel – have provided a sense of unity and joint purpose
among some divided parts of Turkish society.
During
the last two weeks, Turkish Jews have been subjected to the ugliest of
campaigns, with blatant threats lodged against the community, and even against
foreign Jewish tourists. One author demanded that the Jews publicly condemn
Israel, or else they could be subjected to pogroms such as that faced by
Turkey’s Greek community in 1955. In the same newspaper, Yeni Akit, there was a
cross-word-type game with Hitler’s portrait adorning the central panel with the
slogan: “We are longing for you.” Many Turks reacted with shock, but this was
by no means an isolated incident. One pro-government news source tweeted the
dangerously inciteful words of IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, Bulent Yildirim,
who declared: “If the Turkish Jewish community does not put an end to Israel’s
actions, very bad things will happen.” He explained in a succeeding tweet that
it was getting hard to constrain ‘our youth’,
in effect suggesting that violence against Turkish Jews was imminent.
If
such statements by the pro-government press were not enough, a ruling party AKP
MP, Samil Tayyar, tweeted a message to Jews: Let your race be finished off, and
may Hitler never be too far away. Further, Erdogan loyalist and mayor of
Ankara, Melih Gokcek, came out in support of singer Yildiz Tilbe who praised
Hitler on Twitter.
It
was following these expressions of hate towards Jews that Erdogan, in an
election campaign speech, positioned Israeli barbarism as even worse than Hitler’s,
a claim would clearly cause grave offense to any Jew regardless of their
affiliation with Israel. He followed this up by hedging his position, stating:
“I don’t approve of any (bad) attitude towards our Jewish citizens in Turkey,
despite all this. Why? They are the citizens of this country.” These words, at
least nominally upholding the right to safety of the Jewish citizens of Turkey,
seem far too little and also too late. He has still made no public condemnation
of his own party members’ praise of Hitler and their antisemitic statements,
nor has he condemned the threats made against members of the Turkey’s Jewish
community in the pro-government press.
On
the bright side of this darkening picture, if social media in Turkey has
provided a breeding-ground for antisemitic statements, it also has brought to
light the condemnation of antisemitism by numerous Turkish columnists and
appalled individuals, with voices even emerging in the more moderate
pro-government press. However, it seems safe to say that in the wake of the
current atmosphere of blatant antisemitism, more Jewish families will be
convinced that the time has come to leave, a decision already made by many of
the Jewish members over the last decade. If they stay, they are choosing to survive
within their own psychological and physical bubble, or to carry on by ignoring
the fact that many of their compatriots see them as the enemy.
Louis
Fishman is an assistant professor at Brooklyn College, City University of New
York and writes on Turkish, and Israeli/Palestinian affairs. His upcoming book
is on Ottoman Palestine. He has lived most of his life between the U.S.,
Israel, and Turkey. Follow him on Twitter: @IstanbulTelaviv
He blogs at: http://louisfishman.blogspot.com
