21 November
Movie Review: Piece by Piece 
November 21, 2024 Movie Review: Piece by Piece
November 14, 2024 "Humor on the Margins: Cartoons in the Turkish Jewish Newspaper Şalom" by Rakel P. Meşulam
November 7, 2024 The "Ottoman and Turkish Ketubbot" Exhibition
November 4, 2024 TV Show Review: Nobody Wants This
November 1, 2024 The Irresistible Drunkenness of Reading Books
OPINION / The scourge of Anti-Semitism
On a February day in the 1990’s, during the bitter cold winter two men meet at a patisserie in Kars. The conversation slowly turns into a heated argument where one man tauntingly asks the other, “What are you an atheist, a Jew?” Then, all hell breaks loose.İvo MOLİNAS
September 17, 2014
On a February day in the 1990’s, during the bitter cold winter two men meet at a patisserie in Kars.
One of the men is a Professor of Agriculture who is the manager of an educational institution and the other is a young Anatolian man from Tokat working at a teahouse who has been paving the snow-covered roads for two days looking for Professor. The young man while working at the teahouse follows the country’s issues closely by listening to a radio channel covering mostly Islamic content. He’s obsessed with the unjust treatment of female students who by law are not allowed to enter university campuses wearing turbans (religious headscarf). Furthermore, he’s very upset by the news that a young female student who was kicked out of university committed suicide. At that point he decides to look for the professor who supposedly caused this young student to be kicked out of University. At the beginning, the conversation goes smoothly. The young man from Tokat asks the Professor and the manager of the Institution gently why he makes so much trouble for female students wearing turbans. The Professor, even though having met the young man for the first time, sincerely talks about the legal and mandatory aspects of the issue, telling the young man that the current laws forbid him from acting otherwise. He also explains briefly what a secular state means. The young man starts to get frustrated and tells the Professor about the young female student who has committed suicide. He gets even more frustrated when the Professor says that the reason why she committed suicide was because of a love affair, and nothing else. He tenaciously holds the Professor responsible for the death of the girl and even shows the gun he’s been carrying in his pocket to intimidate the Professor. The Professor gets scared and stutteringly says that he has a daughter who doesn’t wear a turban and a wife who does. He adds that they never mess with other people’s private lives. The young man getting extremely angry points the gun to the Professor’s head and tauntingly asks the Professor, “What are you, an atheist or a Jew?”. Professor starts to cry, asks for forgiveness, but the young man is adamant. He once again extremely irritably mentions the unjust treatment of young female students wearing turbans and pulls the trigger. The Professor collapses. End of story...
This fictitious story is mentioned in Orhan Pamuk’s renowned book “Kar-Snow” published in 2002. Having won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, Orhan Pamuk like all successful world-renowned authors, depicts his observations through the eyes of human characters and reflects these observations to his writings masterfully, in the most realistic literary style. What’s striking in this story is that while highlighting the issue of unjust treatment of female university students wearing turbans (which is no longer an issue today), he also points out that people who inflicted this unjust treatment were regarded as either atheists or Jews. In a sense, Orhan Pamuk hushedly, but pompously refers to an interiorized common Anti-Semitism (Enmity toward the Jews). For that reason alone, the “Jewish” aspect of this story which might seem irrelevant becomes more of an issue today...
As I mentioned in my latest article, Anti-Semitism in Turkey which surfaced during Gaza War, unfortunately ranked us in the recent top Anti-Semitic countries list. This week, US House of Representatives is expected to discuss a resolution that urges a tougher fight with Anti-Semitism, globally. The resolution signed by 80 Republican and Democrat congressmen will unfortunately mention the Anti-Semitism in Turkey as well, unless there’s a last minute change.
The resolution calls on US Secretary of State (Foreign Policy) to prioritize fight with Anti-Semitism specifically in the countries listed.
The official statement from the White House after the Obama-Erdogan meeting last week was also very significant. In the statement it was said that the two leaders among several world issues discussed “the importance of building tolerant and inclusive societies and combating against scourge of Anti-Semitism”. This was an unexpected development which will go down in history. While there are several subheadings of racism, the sole reference to Anti-Semitism in the Obama-Erdogan meeting corresponds perfectly to the above-mentioned resolution which will be discussed at the US House of Representatives in the upcoming days. An interiorized and standardized Anti-Semitism should be discussed rather than a shallow form of Anti-Semitism such as “Jewish dogs are not allowed to enter”.
However, truth be told, Turkey does indeed has a President who on almost every occasion says that Anti-Semitism is a crime against humanity. Also, even though more improvements are required, there are legal sanctions in place regarding discrimination and hate speeches. This fact sets Turkey totally apart from many of the countries US congressmen accuse with Anti-Semitism.
Based on this fact, we may say that Turkey has the power to avert Anti-Semitism, a notion which is not seen within the state or on the streets but rather being forced down our country’s capillaries by certain groups of people.
As we said before, in new Turkey, let Anti-Semitism stay in the past.
İvo Molinas is Editor in Chief at Şalom
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