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Bir Turklestirme Seruveni (An Odyssey of Turkification) |
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When looking at
the minority question during the Republican era, the attitude and policies
regarding the country's Jews has up to now been placed at a whole different
level than that of the other minorities, and with the complete acquiescence of
the community's leaders a past has been contrived that presents a picture of
peaceful, uninterrupted Turkish-Jewish unity through the ages. Within this
fictional past all events that might be seen as contradictory to this view of
Turkish tolerance and mercy toward its Jewish population-events such as the
pressure on them to forego the special rights accorded them by the 1923
Lausanne Treaty, the "Compatriot, Speak Turkish!" campaigns, the pogroms and looting of the Jewish communities
of Turkish Thrace, the conscription of twenty non Muslims labor batallions
during World War II, the turning away of the ill-fated Struma,an aging freighter carrying Romanian Jewish refugees, and
the Capital Tax: such events are always either glossed over or treated as
isolated incidents. The author, who has done meticulous archival work both in Turkey and abroad in researching this
topic, calls this view of Turkish Jewish history into question, asserting
instead that all of the aforementioned events were actually a piece of the
often tense relations between these groups, and that, as such, they represented
aspects of the regime's systematic and longstanding policy of ‘Turkifying' the
country's minorities.
From The Media
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Toplumsal Tarih
