Jews in the 1930s preferred Turkey over anti-Semitic Christian neighbors.

Submitted by Jon Ozdamar (United States), Sep 30, 2011 at 20:24

Iskender (Alexander),

Your analysis is peppered with historical anarchonisms. 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.

Jews were oppressed everywhere in the 30s. The much vaunted "Judeo-Christian" tradition did not exist 70 years ago. 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.)

Modern politics is distorting your historical analysis.

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