German Scholar Exposes Turkish Propaganda about Jews
02-06-2009 16:10:00 | USA | Articles and Analyses
By Harut Sassounian Publisher, The California Courier
For many years, the Turkish government and its hired
propagandists have claimed that Jews have been well treated in
Turkey throughout history.
In recent years, as Turkey came under intense international
pressure to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, Turkish officials
decided to present a more positive image of their country by
forcing local Jewish leaders to issue public statements claiming
that their community has lived in peace and prosperity for
hundreds of years.
Turkey's Jewish leaders obediently carried out the dictates
of the Turkish government in order to assure the safety of their
community and to safeguard their own business interests.
Very little research has been done, however, on the true
conditions of the Jewish community in the Ottoman Empire and the
Republic of Turkey. German scholar Corry Guttstadt recently
filled that gap by publishing a comprehensive study of 520 pages
on Turkey's reprehensible actions during the Holocaust. The
book's title in German is: "Die Turkei, die Juden und der
Holocaust" (Turkey, the Jews and the Holocaust). Based on
archival materials located in several European countries, she
was able to document the tragic fate of Turkish Jewry during the
Holocaust.
In an interview conducted by Sonja Galler and posted on
www.Qantara.de, Guttstadt explains why the Jewish community in
Turkey dwindled from 150,000 strong during World War I to only
20,000 at the present time.
"To portray the Ottoman Empire as a "multicultural
paradise" is absurd and ahistorical," Guttstadt says. "As
non-Muslims, the Jews were subject to countless constraints.
Like the Christians, they had to pay a poll tax and were obliged
to behave in a submissive manner towards Muslims."
Having witnessed the genocide of the Armenian people, Jews
were terrified that they might suffer the same fate. To ensure
their safety and survival, Jews did everything possible,
including conversion to Islam, to prove that they were loyal
Turkish subjects.
"Most Jews initially regarded themselves as allies of the
Kemalist movement and looked to the new Republic with largely
positive expectations," Guttstadt explains. "These hopes were
quickly dashed because despite their attempt to adapt and their
declarations of loyalty, the Jews quickly became a target for
the rigid nationalism of the young Republic. One of the defining
policies of the young Republic was the "Turkification" of state,
economy, and society," Guttstadt says. As a result, Jews were
“successively driven out of a number of professions and economic
sectors. This prompted many Jews to emigrate” from Turkey.
In the period between the two world wars, there was
increasing intolerance in Turkey against Jews and other
minorities. According to Guttstadt, "Anti-Semitic tracts like
the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" reached Turkey and
were translated into Turkish in the 1930's. Following a visit to
Germany, Cevat Rifat Atilhan, who could be described as the
father of Islamic anti-Semitism in Turkey, started publishing
the anti-Semitic newspaper "Milli Inkilap" (National Revolution)
in Istanbul, which contained anti-Semitic caricatures that had
been lifted directly out of the Nazi newspaper, "Der Sturmer."
Both the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" and "Mein
Kampf" have gone through umpteen new editions to this day.
Nationalist measures that affected not only Jews, but also
Kurds, Armenians, and Greeks, included forced settlement, the
so-called "wealth tax" -- which led to the confiscation of
assets of those who were not in a position to pay the
arbitrarily fixed and frequently astronomical sums they were
required to pay -- and forced labor in camps in eastern
Anatolia."
Prior to World War II, close to 30,000 Turkish Jews fled to
Europe to escape unfair and sometimes brutal treatment at home.
Little did they know that an even more tragic fate awaited them.
In 1942, Nazi Germany asked Ankara to remove its Jewish citizens
from territories occupied by the German Reich, so they would not
be rounded up along with the rest of European Jewry. Ankara,
however, refused to allow their return by revoking their Turkish
citizenship. As a result, several thousand Turkish Jews perished
after being dispatched to German concentration camps.
Guttstadt also exposes the oft-repeated lie that Turkey
provided a safe haven to many European Jews during the
Holocaust. She states that some Turkish consuls in European
countries, who intervened to obtain the release of incarcerated
Turkish Jews, did not always do so "for purely humanitarian
reasons," but "to line their pockets."
Corry Guttstadt's revealing book should be translated and
published in several major languages in order to expose the
Turkish government’s racist and criminally negligent policies
vis-a-vis its Jewish citizens during the Holocaust.