Jews are alright unless they are Jews

After Mr Erdoğan’s AKP rose to power in 2002, a noble impulse seized Turkish (and Western) liberals that "one could sit down and do business with these moderate Islamists." They all united to defend the oxymoronic hope that someone who comes from various ranks of Islamic militancy could evolve into a liberal democrat who won’t see conflicts through a holy book. They may have been surprised when Mr Erdoğan declared during the early days of Operation Cast Lead that "he approaches Gaza with a Muslim’s approach." This columnist was not.

Operation Cast Lead has unmasked the open secret that various degrees of anti-Semitism Islamist politicians try hard to conceal for fear of losing the American support they fetish can go out of control each time innocent Palestinians die somewhere. It just does not change the bitter truth that hate is there carved deep into their hearts and minds.

Fortunately, the Jewish minority in Turkey is too tiny, about 25,000. Otherwise the Turks as conservative and angry as their prime minister would go out and start looking for who to blame and who to hate. Instead, they make public protests full of rhetoric, which in any decent country would count for racist offense.

A couple of weeks ago, I went out of a cafe, walked to my car when another car screeched just by my side, a window opened, and one of the awfully excited men in the car, asked me to describe the shortest way to the Israeli embassy. I looked at the men, then at the bizarre parcels they were carrying and said, "I am sorry, I really don’t know." As they sped off I saw the sticker on the rear window that said "Allah is great," then I noted down the number plate and made a call to the police. The park valet had witnessed the incident. He came toward me and said, "I don’t believe you don’t know where the embassy is. You should have told them." Why, I asked. And he answered with all his honesty: "Because I hope they blow up the Zionists." When I said: "I don’t hope so," he looked at me with so generous of hate in his eyes.Â

It was probably the same hate in the eyes of a stadium full of football fans at a recent game as they chanted: "Death to Israel," because a Jewish player had scored a goal. A week after, a Turkish player, the Jew’s teammate, planted a Palestinian flag in the middle of the pitch, after which spectators chanted: "Down with Israel."

But is the anti-Israeli/Jewish/Semitic mood exclusive to conservative/devout Turks? Certainly not. Only the nature is different. Secular Turks try Ñ probably unsuccessfully Ñ to distinguish between good and bad Jews and are programmed to think that anti-Semitism is a bad thing "even at times like this." They can be accused of sin of omission, but that’s it.

For the Islamist/mildly Islamist/conservative Turk this is a case of "guilt by association." They won’t even try to find a dividing line between "good and bad Jews." But even if they did, what would be the use? I do not think the demonstrators would first contact the Turkish Jewish community and ask them whether they support Cast Lead before holding out a placard that reads: "Hitler was right!" For them Jews are all right unless they are Jews.

That view finds echoes in Turkey’s courtrooms too. Last week, a prosecutor’s office in Ankara launched a probe into whether Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip counts as genocide, torture and crimes against humanity. The probe was launched after an Islamic human rights association, Mazlum-Der, filed a complaint against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni as well as Israel’s army and military intelligence chiefs.

Now let’s make a simulation. Take all the anti-Israeli publicity that has been all too visible anywhere in Turkey for over a month now. Replace the words "Israel" and "Jew" with anything of your choice, like "Kurd," "Muslim," "Alevi" or "Armenian." We can safely guess that we would now be talking about a few hundred prosecutions at least had that been the case. Racism, blasphemy and hate-speech are crimes under the Turkish penal code. But we must be honest and admit that they are just not applicable when the target is the Jews.

It is bizarre, there is all sorts of optimism in the public domain, even as officially expressed by Israeli officials, that Turkey can safely continue on with its role as a major peace-broker in the Middle East. In reality that’s merely material for humor magazines. On Feb. 2, the Associated Press quoted an Israeli official as saying: "(Erdoğan) won’t mediate anything any more. His stint as mediator between Israelis and Arabs is over, that’s for sure. He won’t be accepted as an honest broker by Israel at all." These days it looks better to read "unnamed sources" in news rather than "public speeches" in order to touch down with the reality and not fairy tales.