Is
Arab
Influence Cracking
Turkish Society?
Arap
etkisi Turk toplum yapisini catlatiyor mu ?
by
Shelomo Alfassa & with
translations and photos provided by David Hasday
(January
14, 2009) As the Gaza war continues and Israel fights
to protect itself from Hamas, Turkish citizens and now
Turkish politicians are demonstrating against both the
State of Israel and the Jewish people. Long a country
that was good to the Jews and good for the Jews, Turkey
often celebrates its friendly ties to the Jewish people.
Yet, just as geographical borders change with time,
so does society-at-large.
Change
can be seen on a daily basis in the Turkish newspapers
which are espousing headlines and using photos which
up until recently were only used by right-wing religious
factions. Today, newspapers from the left, the right,
the secular and the religious, are all reporting on
'massacres' and how Israel 'targets children.' Not a
single day goes by without photos of dead Palestinian
Arab children being in the papers and how the Zionists,
the Jews, are attacking the Muslim children.
SOURCE:
KeHaber Turkish Media Watch
Contrary
to what is being written in the Turkish papers and reported
on the world news, Israel is not committing any sort
of holocaust or genocide against Arabs
or Muslims in Gaza. Hamas is a body of people working
together to launch missiles into Israel which is causing
great harm to Israeli citizens, and it would not matter
if Hamas were made up of Mormons, Episcopalians, Catholics
or Hindus! The war against Hamas is not a religious
war, it is not some sort of war against Muslims, it
is a war against a rouge army which is attacking a sovereign
country that has a responsibility to protect its citizens
and its land. This begs the question, why would the
Turks, a nation made up of Muslims, be so angry anyway?
In the past, Turks fought their fellow Muslims, this
occurred many times in history, the most memorable being
the 16th century battle against the Mamluk Arabs in
Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem and down into Egypt. The
Ottoman Turks utterly destroyed that enemy Arab army.
Ironically, some of that fighting took place in Gaza
itself!
Anti-Semitic
sentiment was recently fueled in Turkey when its 'moderate'
Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared: "Allah's
punishment for Israel's inhumane actions will lead to
its destruction." While it sounds like a strong
statement, the radicals in Istanbul have no great love
for their Prime Minister, they see him as being weak.
This is the same Prime Minister who upon receiving an
award from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in
2005, stated that “Antisemitism is a Disease
of [the] Mind" and that "Anti-Semitism
Has No Place in Turkey.” Even so, that speech
and these words were never posted on the Turkish government's
Website. According to a Turkish reporter cited by MEMRI,
the Prime Minister would purportedly have looked like
a Zionist if his speech was published. Islamic radicals
would love to see the Turkish Prime Minister and his
government overthrown, this was witnessed at
a recent anti-Israel protest in Istanbul, where marchers
in faux-bloodied shirts held signs showing Prime Minister
Erdogan shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Olmert,
the caption saying, "These are our killers."
Nonetheless,
as the Turkish Prime Minister openly condemns Israel's
war against the Hamas Arab terrorist organization in
Gaza, the mainstream Turkish people are having further
rhetoric thrown their way by an alarming influx of radical
Islamic fanatics which have been increasing in number
over the past decade. Holding rallies and marches against
the Jewish state, can now also be counted a high numbers
of secularists too; the protests seem now to be inclusive
of all of Turkish society. The rallies draw tens of
thousands and they are changing the paradigm of Turkey
from a moderate Muslim country, deeply proud of its
secular tradition, to a nation which more and more resembles
a radical Arab country with a deep hatred for the Jews,
the famous hatred which was passed onto them from the
Nazis. Turkey abolished Islamic Law some 80 years ago,
but now, a large and growing group is calling for its
return, and those same people that are calling for it
possess a virulent hatred of the Jewish people.
The
Anatolia News Agency reported that Turkish Education
Minister Hüseyin Çelik issued a directive
this week calling on Turkish school students around
the country to stand in silence for one minute. He said,
"With this stand in silence the atrocities in
Palestine are condemned. This is also an act of solidarity
with the Palestinian people." News agencies
also published photos of a teary-eyed Prime Minister
Erdogan visiting wounded Palestinian Arabs that were
hospitalized in the Turkish capital. This type of propaganda
does nothing to objectively examine what really is taking
place in Gaza, what it does do is provide a misguided
lesson to a new generation of young Turkish children
which will grow up thinking that Israel and the Jews
are evil savages, not a civilized people attempting
to put a halt to daily attacks.
As
of late, Turkish society has exploded with an influx
of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel rhetoric, this included
billboards being posted with anti-Israel and anti-Jewish
expressions. Private firms are also posting anti-Israeli
and anti-Jewish statements on their Websites. Bardak,
a Turkish company which manufactures custom coffee mugs
for Toshiba, HSBC, Cargill, Acer and Canon, has a phrase
across its front page: "JEWS YOU ARE GOING TO
PAY EVERYTHING THAT YOU ARE COMMITTING."
Jews
arrived en masse to Turkey in the 15th century,
when the most powerful nation in the world, Spain, openly
and publicly threatened genocide against the Jewish
people for the stated crime of practicing their own
religion-Judaism. It was the Turkish Sultan, Mehemet,
who invited the Jews when he said:
Who
among you of all my people that is with me, may his
God he with him, let him ascend to Istanbul, the site
of my royal throne. Let him dwell in the best of the
land, each beneath his vine and fig tree, with silver
and with gold, with wealth and cattle. Let him dwell
in the land, trade in it, and take possession of it.
The
Jews happily recall that it was a religious Muslim government,
the Turks of the Ottoman Empire, which stepped in and
saved them from destruction in 1492. Even though Jews
lived as second-class citizens, the Turks never set
in place specific targeted anti-Jewish policies such
as those that existed in Christian Europe. It's a sad
reality that today, young Turkish Muslims don't know
the long history of the relationship between the Jews
which also proudly called (and do call) themselves 'Turks',
and that they are currently being brain-washed into
thinking that the Jewish nation and its people are some
sort of evil beings. Jews want nothing more than what
Ataturk, the beloved founder of the Turkish Republic
desired, "Peace at Home, Peace in the World."
Thanks
go to David Hasday and KeHaber Turkish Media Watch.
Seens
and behavior like this are not the norm for Turkey!
