Jews and their Turkish oppressors

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Oct 2, 2011 at 14:46

Jon Ozdamar wrote :

> Turkey from 1930-50s was goverened by a secular nationalist regime that was categorically opposed to politcal Islam. It is therefor inappropriate to suggest that Turkish Jews were oppressed because they where a "Dhimmi" population. Jews were a minority, and like any other minority in the Republic of Turkey, they were oppressed. This includes Muslim minorities such as Alevites.<

This "secular nationalist" regime began its career by perpetrating horrifying genocides and the Jews as second biggest remaining non-Moslem minority were the next of the hit list of Kemal and his disciples.

> In fact, Jews have historically suffered much more their from Christians and their Nationalist successors than from Muslims (source: Bernard Lewis,"The Jews of Islam"). Any Jew at the time would have preferred Turkey over her next door Orthodox Christian neighborhoods of Bulgaria, Greece, or Soviet Armenia. This has a historical basis: every Ottoman blood libel was either instigated by Orthodox Christians or Arabs, never by Turks (Ibid.)<

....

What the Jews suffered in Kemalist Turkey I have outlined in a comment I sent previously and I'd not like to repeat here everything I wrote there. Suffice it to say that the oppression of Jews was systematic, state-sponsored and protracted and aimed at first at destroying their identity, language and culture to make them "good Turks" and morphing later into a useful hostage to be blackmailed and exploited internationally according to Turkey's given agenda.

So it started with Turkifying Jewish schools. All contacts with Jews living outside were forbidden and repeated acts of violence and major pogroms like that of Thrace in 1934 and in 1955 were organized by the state against them. The 1942 varlik vergisi tax demonstrates clearly as Iskander has rightly pointed out the old dhimmi status of the Jews by making them pay the new jizya of 179% of the value of their assets! That despite that the Turkish Jews were, unlike the Greeks in Constantinople, allowed to survive in Turkey had one cynical reason : 'We don't need them to be Turkified, we need to be able to identify them so that, eventually, we can squeeze them financially.

The velocity with which the Jewish population disappeared from Turkey is rather indicative of its real situation. In 1923 there were c. 200 000 Jews in Kemal's Turkish paradise. 4 years later the population census found only 81 454 Jews left and that number systematically decreased. Let's note also that in 1947 Turkey proudly voted against the right of Jews to have their own state. It seems that today's Turkey revives an old tradition forgotten temporarily under the pressure from the US.

> Modern politics is distorting your historical analysis.<

You're evidently self-referential here, aren't you, Turk?

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