THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

Some 20,000 Jews live in Turkey out of a total population of over 60 million. The great majority of Jews live in Istanbul, but there are also communities in Izmir and in several other cities, including Ankara. More than 95 percent of the Jews are Sephardim.

The Jewish community is represented by its Chief Rabbinate, which is headed by the Haham Bashi. There are about 30 synagogues in Turkey, more than half of them in Istanbul, where there are also Jewish schools. The community publishes a weekly newspaper in Turkish and Ladino, Shalom, and a monthly journal, Tiryaki.

ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE POLITICAL ARENA IN TURKEY

Several factors contributed to the mainstream media’s avoidance of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel views, and to its diminishment in the [Muslim] fundamentalist media, for the second year in succession,. These included:

- the outstanding performance of the Israeli rescue teams in the aftermath of the earthquakes in August and November 1999;

- the open support of US Jewish organizations for Turkey on issues such as Turkish membership in the EU, the building of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline and improving Turkey’s image in the US;

- the CSCE summit held in Istanbul in November and the subsequent admission of Turkey as a candidate member of the EU, which sensitized the country to the issue of human rights;

- Turkish-Israeli relations as a strong strategic alliance of mutual benefit;

- the more moderate policy of the Islamic Virtue (Fazilet) Party, which replaced the banned Welfare (Refah) Party (see ASW 1998/9).

In fact, various journalists attached to mainstream newspapers, such as Selahattin Önkibar of Türkiye, Ertugrul Özkökok of Hürriyet, and Hakan Tarhan of Star, published articles condemning anti-Semitism, extremist nationalism and racial discrimination.

ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA

Holocaust denial and distortion continues to be a disturbing phenomenon In Turkey, with occasional articles and reports sympathetic to Roger Garaudy or David Irving appearing in the mainstream press. One of the main representatives of this trend is Gülay Götürk, an outspoken Turkish liberal (see ASW 1998/9). Götürk supports the right of French philosopher Roger Garaudy, author of the Holocaust denying book The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics, to express his views, insisting that everything should be open to discussion and that no action should be taken to oppose the free flow of ideas, even if they displease some groups or individuals.

On the other hand, there is an encouraging trend toward Holocaust education and condemnation of its distortion. For example, when Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya, the author of several anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial books, including Holocaust Lies, was arrested for attempting to blackmail some influential Turkish figures, Hadi Ulungin, a columnist for Hürriyet, demanded that Oktar be tried also for denigrating the Holocaust. Sedat Sertoglu, a well-know columnist for Sabah, has written several articles proposing a law against distortion of the Holocaust. It should be noted that the continued trend among left-wing intellectuals, especially in Europe, of revising previously-held anti-Jewish views, including distortion of the Holocaust, has been noted also in Turkey. Further, several books published in 1999 dealt with Holocaust themes, such as the translation of the book Auschwitz expliqué a ma fille, by Annette Wieviorka.

The attitude of the Turkish authorities toward Jews during the war period was questioned in 1999, both in the liberal press and on television programs. For example, the tax on capital imposed on all minorities in Turkey in November 1942 caused many members of the Jewish community to lose all their assets. The tax was canceled in the second half of 1943, when the tide turned against Germany. Another issue raised was the responsibility of Turkish officials for the circumstances which led to the sinking of the Jewish immigrant ship Struma in Turkish waters in February 1942. The ship, which had been carrying 769 Romanian Jews who sought to land in Palestine, was towed into the open sea by the Turkish authorities without water, food or fuel. Subsequently, it was struck by a Soviet submarine torpedo and all but one passenger perished.