Anti-Semitism in Turkey: Myths and facts (II)

The first one was also the earliest, which started with the Reform Edict of 1839. It was a reaction to the winds of modern nationalism that started to influence the Christian nations of the empire such as the Greeks, Serbs, or Bulgarians. "If we emphasize the equality and civil rights of all our citizens," the Ottoman elite thought, "then we can keep them from revolting against us." But when Ottomanism proved not to be that attractive to the Christian peoples of the Empire, Islamism became more popular. Here the idea was to emphasize brotherhood between the Muslim elements such as Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Albanians, Circassians, etc. Its champion was Sultan Abdülhamid II, who ruled from 1876 to 1909.

The rise of Turkism
And Turkism came to stage at the turn of the century, as an ideology promoted by a group of secularized Young Turks. They had lost faith in all non-Turkish elements of the Empire, so they put "Turkishness" to the center of their political agenda. As you can guess, this third line, Turkism, triumphed at the end and became the official ideology of the Turkish Republic, which was created from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.

In fact, the populace that remained in the borders of Turkey was not fully Turkish, so the Turkish Republic decided to engage in a long-term social engineering to fix this "problem." There were two tandem strategies: All non-Turkish Muslims, such as Kurds, would be "Turkified." All-non Muslims, such as Greeks, Armenians and Jews, would be defined as "minorities," who were perceived as "foreigners" that have the potential to be fifth columns for "foreign powers."

That’s why the very foundational idea of the Turkish Republic included the potential to breed anti-Semitism. That potential turned into malicious action in the 30’s and early 40’s, when both the ideology and the "efficiency" of Nazi Germany found sympathizers among Kemalists such as Recep Peker, the "third man" of the "single party" regime.

The first malicious action was the pogroms in Trace, Turkey’s Western edge, that took place in 1934. The 45-thousand strong Jewish community became the target of plundering masses who were provoked by the notorious Turkish anti-Semite Cevat Rıfat Atilhan. The Kemalist government stopped the violence only very late, leading to comments that it was content with what was going on. The culprits were not punished, and Atilhan went on writing anti-Semitic bilge. One of his books was titled, "Oh, Son of Turk, Know Thy Enemy!" The enemy was "international Jewry."

The second and even worse malicious action was the Wealth Tax of 1942, which was a very heavy burden levied on the wealthy citizens, which especially included Jews and even Jewish converts. 2,000 of them, who could not pay the enormous amount demanded for this sudden tax, were arrested and sent to a forced labor camp in eastern Turkey. 21 of them died there.

When it became obvious that the Allies would win the war, though, the policy suddenly shifted, the Wealth Tax was abolished, and a group of extreme Turkist ideologues were arrested. It was time to play Mr. Nice Guy. But the hidden suspicion toward the Jews and other non-Muslim minorities remained deep-seated in Kemalist Ankara. That’s why you can see them at any high position in bureaucracy.

All this history should explain us why anti-Semitism in Turkey is strong among secular nationalists Ñ since the early Turkists to the latter day "ulusalcı"s such as the members or sympathizers of the notorious Ergenekon network.

Of course, there is anti-Semitism on the Islamic camp as well. But here, there is a curious nuance. The Islamic communities in Turkey who trace their heritage to the Ottoman Empire have almost never sympathized with anti-Semitism. The "Nurcu"s and their modern off-shoot, the Fethullah Gülen community, for example, have rather emphasized "Ottoman tolerance" and even engaged in inter-faith dialogue with Jews, both at home and abroad. It is a line in parallel with their support to the democratization process, and, more lately, the EU membership.

Islamic side of the coin
Yet even this mild form of civic Islam is too much for Turkey’s draconian secularism, and thus it has been suppressed since the beginning of the republic. Soon, the vacuum was filled by a more radical and fuming form of Islamic thought that evolved in the Middle East. Starting from the late 60’s, a new generation of Islamists arose whose source of inspiration was not Ottoman thinkers and Anatolian Sufis, but rather theorists of hardcore Islamism such as Sayyid Qutb of Egypt or Abul A'ala Maududi of Pakistan. No wonder today anti-Semitic Muslims in Turkey are the ones who are inspired by this imported radical Islamism. Notably they sometimes accuse the more native, home-grown and moderate Islamic circles as cowards or traitors who have accepted "the system of the unbelievers."

The liberation of Turkey, of course, lies in accepting that very "system," i.e., liberal democracy, which comes from not "the unbelievers," but universal values such as human dignity, equality and freedom. That is the national way to go. We just should be careful to note that the challenges do, and will, come from both the secular and the Islamic camps.