Rifat N. Bali: Confronting Turkish Anti-Semitism
[Rifat N. Bali is a FrontPageMag columnist.]
One of the most illuminating methods of explaining and accurately describing present-day Turkish anti-Semitism and the reasons for its widespread nature is to examine the reactions among Turkish intellectuals and the Turkish press to various Israeli military actions in recent years. Surveying articles by Turkish columnists during Israel’s most recent military operations, the summer 2006 war with Hizballah in Lebanon and the more recent Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in Gaza, will shed light in this regard.1 Particularly significant are those columnists who are considered opinion leaders, some of whom are academics as well. Understanding the reactions of these opinion makers, however, requires an overview of the attitudes of much of the Turkish intelligentsia toward what is known as the “Palestine question.”
The Influence of Islamist, Leftist, and Nationalist Intellectuals In Turkey
The Islamist Community
Turkish intellectuals holding either Islamist or leftist positions have always taken a pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli stance.
For much of the Islamist intelligentsia, references to Palestine, a former Ottoman province, bring to mind events from the last—and in their minds, darkest—years of the empire. These include Zionist leader Theodor Herzl’s request in 1901 from Sultan Abdülhamid II for permission to settle Jewish immigrants in this territory and the Sultan’s refusal; and, about a decade later, the presence of the Salonician Jew Emmanuel Carasso, a member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP),2 in the delegation notifying the Sultan of his removal and exile to Salonica, where he would live out his remaining years in the villa of the Jewish family Allatini.3
Although these might appear unrelated events, the Islamists see a direct causative line from Abdülhamid II’s rejection of Herzl’s request to his later removal from the throne. In this view, the Young Turk Revolution—and more specifically, Abdülhamid’s forced abdication after the failed counterrevolution of April 1909—were payback, delivered at the hands of Jewish and crypto-Jewish cabals secretly manipulating the CUP.4 Nor, from the Islamist perspective, does the revenge-taking end with the Sultan’s abdication. They believe that the final stages of the retribution were the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924 at the hands of Turkish nationalist leader Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), who originated in the “cursed city” of Salonica and is widely thought among Islamists to have been a Dönme, a descendant of the Jewish devotees of Sabbatai Sevi who followed him into a nominal conversion to Islam but continued to practice their own heretical brand of Judaism in secret, and the “placing of the Turkish people in the straightjacket of secularism with the intent of debasing it.”
Indeed, because of this widespread conviction a book by Soner Yalçın, a journalist for the mainstream Hürriyet newspaper, claiming in short that the Turkish Republic has always been dominated and governed by Dönmes has become a bestseller and sold close to two hundred thousand copies.5
The Islamist mindset views Israel as a “robber state,” which divested the Palestinians of their homeland. For the Islamists, Israel was born of a revolution that they see as Jewish-directed and carried out for Jewish aims,6 and both the secular Turkish Republic and Israel were established by the Dönme Mustafa Kemal. More broadly, the Islamists see Zionism and its political manifestation, Israel, as merely one branch of the overarching plan for world domination set forth in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the classical anti-Semitic work that has become a bestseller in Turkey among various conspiracy books whose main theme is Zionist domination of the world.7 Zionism, from this standpoint, is a satanic and expansionist ideology that threatens not only the Arab world but Turkey itself.8...
The Left
Turkey’s leftist intelligentsia tends to see Israel as an “imperialist and expansionist state” and “an extension of American hegemony in the Middle East.” Hence, it views the Arab-Israeli conflict through the prism of “solidarity with those oppressed by the imperialists”—namely, the Palestinians.15
This view has its origins in the political and ideological struggles of the 1970s. During those years leftist militants who dreamed of carrying out a Marxist revolution in Turkey often joined the PLO so as to receive training in armed struggle, even taking part in attacks against Israel. Some lost their lives in the process or in Israeli counterstrikes against PLO camps,16 while others returned to Turkey.
Some of those erstwhile militants are now opinion leaders in Turkey.17 Just as for the Islamist community, for the Turkish Left Zionism is an aggressive ideology that fosters anti-Semitism. An illuminating example of the anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli sentiment is a special 2004 edition of the Turkish leftist journal Birikim that was devoted to anti-Semitism; it described Zionism and anti-Semitism as “two sides of the same coin.”18 In the same issue Ümit Kıvanç, previously a columnist for the liberal-leftist daily Radikal and nowadays for Taraf of the same tendency, wrote in an article that “the people who actually govern Israel are a band of rogues” and emphasized that “everybody who wants to be a member of humanity must work for the abolition of the state of Israel in its present form. Because the state of Israel has also captured the Jewish identity.”19...
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One of the most illuminating methods of explaining and accurately describing present-day Turkish anti-Semitism and the reasons for its widespread nature is to examine the reactions among Turkish intellectuals and the Turkish press to various Israeli military actions in recent years. Surveying articles by Turkish columnists during Israel’s most recent military operations, the summer 2006 war with Hizballah in Lebanon and the more recent Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in Gaza, will shed light in this regard.1 Particularly significant are those columnists who are considered opinion leaders, some of whom are academics as well. Understanding the reactions of these opinion makers, however, requires an overview of the attitudes of much of the Turkish intelligentsia toward what is known as the “Palestine question.”
The Influence of Islamist, Leftist, and Nationalist Intellectuals In Turkey
The Islamist Community
Turkish intellectuals holding either Islamist or leftist positions have always taken a pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli stance.
For much of the Islamist intelligentsia, references to Palestine, a former Ottoman province, bring to mind events from the last—and in their minds, darkest—years of the empire. These include Zionist leader Theodor Herzl’s request in 1901 from Sultan Abdülhamid II for permission to settle Jewish immigrants in this territory and the Sultan’s refusal; and, about a decade later, the presence of the Salonician Jew Emmanuel Carasso, a member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP),2 in the delegation notifying the Sultan of his removal and exile to Salonica, where he would live out his remaining years in the villa of the Jewish family Allatini.3
Although these might appear unrelated events, the Islamists see a direct causative line from Abdülhamid II’s rejection of Herzl’s request to his later removal from the throne. In this view, the Young Turk Revolution—and more specifically, Abdülhamid’s forced abdication after the failed counterrevolution of April 1909—were payback, delivered at the hands of Jewish and crypto-Jewish cabals secretly manipulating the CUP.4 Nor, from the Islamist perspective, does the revenge-taking end with the Sultan’s abdication. They believe that the final stages of the retribution were the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924 at the hands of Turkish nationalist leader Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), who originated in the “cursed city” of Salonica and is widely thought among Islamists to have been a Dönme, a descendant of the Jewish devotees of Sabbatai Sevi who followed him into a nominal conversion to Islam but continued to practice their own heretical brand of Judaism in secret, and the “placing of the Turkish people in the straightjacket of secularism with the intent of debasing it.”
Indeed, because of this widespread conviction a book by Soner Yalçın, a journalist for the mainstream Hürriyet newspaper, claiming in short that the Turkish Republic has always been dominated and governed by Dönmes has become a bestseller and sold close to two hundred thousand copies.5
The Islamist mindset views Israel as a “robber state,” which divested the Palestinians of their homeland. For the Islamists, Israel was born of a revolution that they see as Jewish-directed and carried out for Jewish aims,6 and both the secular Turkish Republic and Israel were established by the Dönme Mustafa Kemal. More broadly, the Islamists see Zionism and its political manifestation, Israel, as merely one branch of the overarching plan for world domination set forth in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the classical anti-Semitic work that has become a bestseller in Turkey among various conspiracy books whose main theme is Zionist domination of the world.7 Zionism, from this standpoint, is a satanic and expansionist ideology that threatens not only the Arab world but Turkey itself.8...
The Left
Turkey’s leftist intelligentsia tends to see Israel as an “imperialist and expansionist state” and “an extension of American hegemony in the Middle East.” Hence, it views the Arab-Israeli conflict through the prism of “solidarity with those oppressed by the imperialists”—namely, the Palestinians.15
This view has its origins in the political and ideological struggles of the 1970s. During those years leftist militants who dreamed of carrying out a Marxist revolution in Turkey often joined the PLO so as to receive training in armed struggle, even taking part in attacks against Israel. Some lost their lives in the process or in Israeli counterstrikes against PLO camps,16 while others returned to Turkey.
Some of those erstwhile militants are now opinion leaders in Turkey.17 Just as for the Islamist community, for the Turkish Left Zionism is an aggressive ideology that fosters anti-Semitism. An illuminating example of the anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli sentiment is a special 2004 edition of the Turkish leftist journal Birikim that was devoted to anti-Semitism; it described Zionism and anti-Semitism as “two sides of the same coin.”18 In the same issue Ümit Kıvanç, previously a columnist for the liberal-leftist daily Radikal and nowadays for Taraf of the same tendency, wrote in an article that “the people who actually govern Israel are a band of rogues” and emphasized that “everybody who wants to be a member of humanity must work for the abolition of the state of Israel in its present form. Because the state of Israel has also captured the Jewish identity.”19...