Andrei Karlov, the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, was fatally shot
on 19 December at an art exhibition in Ankara. The perpetrator was a Turkish
special forces police officer.
Many Turkish Twitter
users, however, blamed the assassination on the Jews, calling it a “Jewish
plot” and claiming that the assassin “had a Jewish look”.
According to the Turkish
website Avlaremoz, which covers Jewish-related issues, some of the Twits included:
- The real enemy of
all the Muslims and all of the oppressed in the world is Zionism and the cursed
Israel. Behind the assassination is the Jewish lobby and the USA.
- The assassin is a
lowlife agent of the Jewish lobby.
- The Jew does not
want Turkish-Russian rapprochement. By inciting Islamophobia, their pawn in
Turkey is also involved in the game. Whoever will benefit from this should be
the perpetrator. (Dograel – a distorted form referring to the word Israel.)
- This looks like
Jewish work. Simple and effective.
- The assassin has
the typical Jewish look. I don’t know if it’s just me but he is a real Jew.
Another user implied
that as Jews are not happy with Turkey’s invasion of Syria, code-named by
Turkey as “Operation Euphrates Shield”, and the construction of the “Turkish
Stream”, a planned natural gas pipeline running from Russia to Turkey as well
as Turkey’s possible membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO),
or the “Shanghai Five”, whose leaders include China and Russia.
- “Assassination of
the Russian ambassador aims at affecting three things in one act,” he wrote.
“Russian-backed Operation Euphrates Shield, the Turkish Stream, and the
Shanghai Five.”
Two days before the Russian diplomat’s assassination, on 17 December, a
suspected car bombing in the Turkish city of Kayseri killed 13 Turkish soldiers
aboard a bus and wounded at least 55 others.
Following the deadly
attack, dozens of angry Turkish protesters stormed the
headquarters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in Kayseri in
response to the bombing. Some of the demonstrators climbed to
the top of the building, set off a fire and furled down a flag of the far-right
Nationalist Movement Party. Holding all Kurds responsible for the deaths of the
soldiers, many Turks across Turkey raided the offices of the HDP, damaged or even destroyed the
property inside.
But they particularly
had one other group to blame: The Jews.
In an attempt to spew
their Jew-hatred, many Turkish antisemites rushed to Twitter – as they often
do following all crisis situations in Turkey – and accused the perpetrators of
being Jewish. According to Avlaremoz, some Twits included:
- If you were not
treacherous, if you were not kafir, if you did not have Jewish roots, you would
not attack unarmed soldiers. Victory will be ours, hell will be yours.
- As you have
cowardly asses, you were not able to confront our soldiers and you carried out
a treacherous bomb explosion, you Jewish bastards. You will not make it.
Revenge will be ours, remember that.
- Hey you, cowardly
Jew, whose humanity is only as much as his money. As you and your dogs burn in
hell, those who you have made martyrs will be in heaven.
- Obviously, we
will not have peace unless there are explosions in Iran, England and in the
Jewish lands.
- Cowardly,
undignified ones with no honor. You do not have the courage to stand up to a
single soldier of ours. Satans. Armenian, Jewish sperms. You will all be
croaked.
- We do not want
death penalty for them. We want torture for them. Let them all pay for what they
have done, Jewish dogs.
- Vile, ignoble,
Armenian, Jewish, dogs of Hitler. They attacked our soldiers again dastardly.
May Allah curse you. The pigs of the EU, USA and Israel.
- You will not make
it, ignoble servants of Jews. This system will change and this country and this
nation will get rid of you. Get out and take your owners with you.
- You Godless ones,
those without a holy book, you Armenian, Jewish, Persian, kafir underbred ones.
Cursed sperms of rats. Enough is enough.
One even claimed that
the attackers are descendents of Amr ibn Hisham, also known as Abu Jahl, one of
the Meccan pagan Qurayshi leaders known for his critical opposition towards
Islam’s founder, Muhammad.
- “Even if Abu
Jahls and Pharaohs, who are your ancestors, your Mason fathers, your Jewish
brothers, your Jonny uncles, and your Hans uncles get united, you will not make
it.”
When Turkish soldiers
are killed in Turkey, many Turks blame it on the Jews, a group irrelevant in
the Turkish-Kurdish conflict. But even when the murderer of a foreign diplomat
is a Turkish police officer, these Turks are still too shameless to accuse Jews
of the murder committed by a criminal, who is their own: A Muslim Turk.
“Any group must already
be hated to be an effective scapegoat,” according to the website “simpletoremember”, which discusses
Jewish-related issues. “The Scapegoat Theory does not then cause
antisemitism. Rather, anti-Semitism is what makes the Jews a convenient
scapegoat target. Hitler’s ranting and ravings would not be taken seriously if
he said, ‘It’s the bicycle riders and the midgets who are destroying our
society’.”
As the Israeli
politician Naftali Bennett puts it,
“Even when a British Muslim kills a British Christian there will always be
someone who blames the Jews and Israel.”
The scapegoating that
targets Jews is not only stupid and irrational at worst, threatening the
security of all Jews, but it is also unproductive and intellectually lazy,
preventing Muslims and all others from facing their own problems and failures
and coming up with effective solutions to tackle them. But as many Muslims have
been incapable of doing so, their crises and failures are getting even more
serious and intense , so is their hatred for Jews.
