Online Anti-Semitism in Turkey

T. Nefes

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781137507969
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137507945
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Social Sciences

This is the first study that examines online anti-Semitism in Turkey. Nefes surveys important historical events concerning Turkish-Jewry and analyses people's online expressions about Adolf Hitler in the most popular forum website in Turkey, Ek?i Sözlük.

1

A Brief History of Turkish Jews and Anti-Semitism

Abstract: This chapter recounts the history of Jews and anti-Semitism in Turkey in two subsections: Turkish Jewry during the Ottoman period and the Turkish Republic. The former is a brief account about the origins of the Jewish population in Anatolia and the life of the community during the Ottoman period. The latter underlines significant socio-political changes that shaped the fate of the Jewish minority in the Turkish Republic. It discusses the treatment of Jews in important historical moments between 1923 and 2013. All in all, the chapter examines the socio-political roots of anti-Semitism in Turkey from a historical perspective and provides a background for the discussion in the next chapter.

Nefes, Türkay Salim. Online Anti-Semitism in Turkey. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137507945.0005.

Introduction

This section outlines significant historical events that are relevant to Turkish Jews and anti-Semitism. It should be reminded that the collection of these events does not represent the entire Jewish history in Turkey, which is far beyond the scope of this study. The intention here is to provide a brief sketch of Jewish history in Turkey. The first part of this chapter focuses on the origins of the community and Ottoman Jewry. Then, the study details the main focus of this section, the Turkish-Jewish relations during the Turkish Republic.

Jewish life in Anatolia before the establishment of the Turkish Republic

The origins of the Jewish minority in Turkey

The Jewish presence in Anatolia dates back to 4 BC according to archaeological evidence (Güleryüz, 2013). Moreover, Romaniot Jews lived 11 centuries during the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire between 300 and 1453 AD (Güleryüz, 2013). The Ottomans encountered this native Greek-speaking Jewish community in the conquered lands of Asia Minor, the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, in Greece and in some of the Balkan cities (Lewis, 1984: 120). This community followed the liturgy of the Jews of the Byzantine Empire, Minhag Romania (Lewis, 1984). Subsequently, immigrants from Europe, predominantly Ashkenazi Jews, arrived in the fifteenth century (Lewis, 1984). The most significant immigration wave took place after the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula in the fifteenth century (Lewis, 1984). The Ottoman Sultan Bayazid II welcomed the expelled Jews from Spain and Portugal to settle in the Ottoman Empire, and the greatest Jewish migration to the Ottoman land took place during his rule (Lewis, 1984: 50). These Sephardic groups mainly moved to Salonika, Izmir, Edirne and other cities in the Ottoman Empire. Some members of the community established the first printing press (Güleryüz, 2012).

The Ottoman Jewry in the millet system

The Jewish minority lived under the millet system between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries. This system allowed religious minorities of the Ottoman Empire, namely Christians and Jews, to implement their own laws, education and authority according to their beliefs (Lewis, 1984: 126). Jews were organized around the authority of Chief Rabbi, hahambasi, which had almost the same status as the heads of the Greek and Armenian churches. In the millet system, although non-Muslim minorities have autonomy, they were still in a subordinate position to the Muslim ruler (Icduygu et al. 2008: 362). They had to pay extra taxes and could not become state officers. The millet system gradually degraded during the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century due to nationalist movements. The system was not used in the Turkish Republic, the successor to the Ottoman Empire.

Lewis (1984: 137–138) claims that while Turkish attitudes towards Jews in the Ottoman Empire were tolerant, it was not as unblemished as described by the optimistic literature on the Turkish–Jewish relationship. Lewis (1984) notes that there were sporadic resentments among the Turkish public about the perceived freedom of non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, Lewis (1984) labels this negative attitude contemptuous rather than hostile. The reason behind this, according to Lewis (1984), was the Ottoman authorities’ pragmatic perception of the migration of the community, as they perceived Jewish migration as beneficial particularly in terms of knowledge and capital brought by them, and therefore encouraged it. According to Inalcik and Quataert (1997), Jewish bankers and tax-farmers gained a predominant place in Ottoman finances and long-distance trade. Moreover, Lewis (1984) suggests that not being the major enemy of the Ottomans, Christians, they were approached with more sympathy. It should not go without mentioning that some of the hostility towards the Jewish community in the Ottoman Empire came from the Christian minority. For example, blood libel accusations were mainly spread among the Christian communities (Lewis, 1984; Shaw, 1991).

The Dönmes

A crypto-Judaic community, called Dönmes, has been influencing Turkish–Jewish relations since the late seventeenth century. The events that lead to the formation of this group began in 1665, when Sabbatai Sevi was declared by Nathan of Gaza as the expected Jewish messiah (Scholem, 1971). This messianic belief in Sevi rapidly spread among Jews (Neyzi, 2002). Sevi created a big impact in and beyond the Ottoman Empire (Nefes, 2012; Şişman, 2002, 2008). Subsequently, he was forced to convert to Islam by the Ottoman authorities (Şişman, 2008). After Sevi’s conversion, there were several hundred families that followed him and converted to Islam, which composed the origins of the Dönme community (Scholem, 1971). They kept their belief in Sevi secretly and publicly pretended to be Muslims (Baer, 2004). Some Dönmes, such as Mehmed Cavid Bey, who was an important politician in the early twentieth century, played important roles in the Ottoman modernization and the Turkish Republic (Baer, 2010; Nefes, 2012, 2013b). The Dönme community lived distinct from Jews and Muslims (Baer, 2010). This was manifest in one Dönme’s attempt to convert to Judaism in the 1990s: Ilgaz Zorlu wanted to retain his belief in Sevi and be a member of the Turkish Jewish community. The synagogue refused this and denied the existence of the Dönme community (Hürriyet, 2000). Şişman (2010: 16) estimates that there are currently around eighty thousand people of Dönme origin in Turkey, of which three to four thousand still follow Sevi. Although the Dönmes constitute a distinct group, the popular anti-Semitic conspiratorial rhetoric about the community sees them as hidden agents of international Jewish plots (Nefes, 2012, 2013a, 2014a, 2015). Therefore, it is important to note the existence of the Dönmes for understanding contemporary anti-Semitism in Turkey.

The Jewish community during the Turkish Republic

The Lausanne Treaty

The Treaty of Lausanne was signed in 1923 at the end of the Turkish Independence War (1919–1923) and marked the establishment of the Turkish Republic. The treaty granted that non-Muslim minorities, Armenians, Greeks and Jews, were free to use their mother tongues in education, courts and to establish institutions. In particular, the clauses 37, 38, 39, 40, 41 and 42 secured a continuation of a system akin to the millet system of the Ottoman period by enabling autonomy for the religious minorities (Bali, 1998). These rights countered the new Turkish state’s attempts to create a homogenous society (Toktaş, 2005: 398). They produced enmity towards non-Muslim minorities. In response, the Jewish minority was the first non-Muslim group to opt out of article 42 that granted the freedoms (Toktaş, 2005: 398), and the other non-Muslim minorities, Armenians and Greeks, followed the Jewish minority. On 1 August 1926, Turkish Jews declared that they renounced their rights as a minority in Turkey in the following manner:

(1) The Jews of Turkey solemnly renounce all minority rights; (2) the Government is requested to issue a decree regulating the administration of the Jewish community, the schools, and cultural and charitable institutions and to indicate the means by which to assure the existence of the community and its institutions spiritually as well as materially, similarly to indicate the possibilities of its legal security. (Linfield, 1928: 58–59)

The Turkish Jewish community leaders explained that as the Turkish state recognized the modern secular law and equality of all citizens regardless of ethnicity and religion, they did not object to renouncing the minority rights secured by the Treaty of Lausanne (Linfield, 1928). This choice was harshly criticized by the President of the American Jewish Committee for leaving the Jewish minority vulnerable to pressure by the Turkish government(Linfield, 1928). This marked a new period for the Jewish minority in Turkey.Transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic

Bali (2006: 43) quotes Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding father of the Turkish Republic, in his definition of a Turkish citizen as not necessarily a Muslim, but someone who shares the fate of the Turkish nation: ‘If the Christian and Jewish citizens who live among us today bind their fate and destiny to the Turkish nation because their conscience tells them to do so, then how can the civilized and nobly moral Turkish people consider them as strangers?’ In line with that, the republican elite in the early twentieth century declared that non-Muslims were part of the Turkish nation if they met three conditions: adopting (a) Turkish language as their mother tongue, (b) Turkish culture, and (c) the ideals of Turkism (Bali, 2006). Moiz Kohen’s (a Turkish nationalist Jew) ten commands for Turkish Jews summarize the expectations of Turkification:

(1)Turkify your names

(2)Speak Turkish

(3)In the synagogues read part of the prayers in Turkish

(4)Turkify your schools

(5)Send your children to public schools

(6)Interest yourself in Turkey’s affairs

(7)Socialize with Turks

(8)Eliminate the [Jewish] community spirit

(9)Do your particular duty in the area of the national economy

(10)Know your constitutional rights. (Bali, 2006: 44)

This meant a transition from the millet system in which non-Muslim minorities were more independent units that did not have the same rights as Muslims. Bali (2006: 48–49) adds that the republican elite did not overcome the past memories of the millet system and the negative memories of the non-Muslims’ lack of collaboration with Turks during the First World War. Hence, although the elites pressured the non-Muslims to Turkify, they never embraced them as genuine, loyal and trustable citizens (Bali, 2006).

These changes had adverse effects on non-Muslim communities, particularly on Turkish Jews (Linfield, 1925). The secular law of the newly established republic led the Grand Rabbinate in Istanbul to discontinue their existing organization and limit their functions to the spiritual leadership of the community, ceasing its political and economic power (Linfield, 1925). Moreover, the government ordered that all teachers in the Jewish schools should be Turkish citizens and history and geography classes in these institutions should be taught in Turkish (Linfield, 1925: 68). It was also noteworthy that the Minister of the Interior ordered that all non-Muslims would be restricted in their travels and need permission from the ministry if they wanted to go to the further interior of the country (Linfield, 1925: 115). Furthermore, the abolition of the Caliphate in Turkey and the introduction of secular law sparked anti-Jewish feelings among some Muslim subjects, who accused the republican political elites of being Dönmes and labelled the abolition of the Caliphate a Jewish conspiracy (Linfield, 1925: 93).

The ‘Citizen Speak Turkish’ Campaign and Turkification policy in the 1930s

The Jewish minority continued to use the Ladino language in the early republican period. This was seen as counteractive to the Turkification of the new Turkish Republic and led to a campaign called ‘Citizen Speak Turkish’—Vatandaş Türkçe Konuş—in 1928. This campaign was launched by university students and aimed to lead minorities to learn and use Turkish. It became very quickly popular among the masses. Some Jewish intellectuals like Abraham Galante and Moiz Kohen (Tekinalp) also supported the campaign as a chance to integrate the Jewish community into Turkish society (Toktaş, 2005). In 1934, local Jews in Izmir decided that the prayers in synagogues were to be read in Turkish (Schneiderman, 1935: 239). The Turkification of the language trend continued as Turkish newspapers in Istanbul campaigned against public use of all languages except Turkish in 1937 (Schneiderman, 1938: 493). In this year, it was reported that the Jews of Izmir had decided to speak in Turkish publicly (Schneiderman, 1938: 493).

The Turkification programme of the government was also manifest in the economic discrimination against non-Muslim minorities. For example, it was reported that in August 1930 Jewish employees of the shipping industry were discharged without prior notice in order to create job vacancies for Muslim Turks (Schneiderman, 1931: 128). In municipal elections in Istanbul in the same year, Ali Fethi Bey, leader of the opposing Liberal Republican party, was openly supported by around 240,000 members of the Greek, Armenian and Jewish minorities (Schneiderman, 1931: 39), but was defeated by the governing Republican People’s Party. There was growing animosity against these minorities among the public for their support for the Liberal Republican Party (Schneiderman, 1931: 39). The decline of the Jewish community in this negative environment was discernible in one of the biggest newspaper’s demand to the government to take steps to tackle the further exodus of Turkish Jews, who were described as useful citizens of the country (Schneiderman, 1931: 39).

1934 Thrace pogroms and the Jewish situation before the Second World War

There were several attacks on Jewish homes and shops in the Thrace region of Turkey in 1934 (Bali, 2008; Haker, 2003; Toktaş, 2005). Bali (2008) argues that anti-Semitic publications of the extreme rightist Cevat Rifat Atilhan were influential in mobilizing the masses against the Jewish population. Between 15,000 and 20,000 Jews fled from the region because of the events and left for Istanbul and Palestine (Toktaş, 2005). After the events, the right-wing press that allegedly provoked the events were shut down, and the Turkish state declared that anti-Semitism behind the events was not Turkish in origin, but ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  A Brief History of Turkish Jews and Anti-Semitism
• 2  Analysis of an Online Discussion on Adolf Hitler
• Discussion and Conclusion
• References
• Index