Rifat Bali

In the Babylonian Talmud it is written that "The law of the kingdom is the law", and the Jews in Turkey have completely followed this precept, which exhorts Jews in exile to each be faithful and obedient subjects of the country in which they live; indeed, they have even taken it to the point of idealizing their centuries-long relationship with the Turkish State and its dominant ethnic group.  The transition from being subjects of a multi-national empire to being equal citizens that arose as a result of the formation of the Turkish nation-state appears, when one reviews the formation Turkey's policies toward its minority populations, to have never reached completion. The question of citizenship can be said to form the central theme of this book and the articles that are contained within it: Has the ideal of the Turkish nation-state as a collectivity of all its citizens, all possessing equal rights, ever truly been realized, or has it simply remained an ideal? The author has presented a study of the issue of minority-state and minority-majority relations in all its aspects and through a number of specific events stretching from the beginning of the 20th century until the present. These include the Jewish battalion within the Mahmut Sevket Pasa's "Action Army"; the Moris Schinasi Hospital in Manisa, and the attempts at anti-Jewish boycotts during the Second World War. There is also a study of antisemitism in Turkey, which until now has remained a marginal topic of research [within the country] through the person and works of Cevat Rifat Atilhan, the Turkish Society for the Struggle against Zionism (TUrkiye Siyonizmle MUcadele Derneği) and various other publications. The author characterizes the underlying current of antisemitism, to which both Turkish public opinion and its politicians have tended to turn a blind eye over the years, as an unseen aspect of recent Turkish history, and provides a detailed response to the oft-repeated claim that there is no racism within Turkey.