A European View: Europe, Turkey, Jews and Israel

Many Jews – as well as Europeans, Americans and Israelis – dreaded what might follow when Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) first took power in late 2002.  

Sceptics pointed out that AKP leader Recep Tayyib Erdogan was, during the 1970s, a disciple of the Islamist National Salvation Party under the hardliner Necmettin Erbakan. And while Erdogan’s then two-year-old successor party seemed decidedly more moderate and less confrontational, was this not all just a ruse?

Might AKP not abolish Turkey’s long established secular mores, and replace parliamentary governance with the rule of the mullah? History has certainly proven otherwise. AKP kept to its word to respect the constitution. More than that, it liberalised draconian laws and boosted the economy significantly.

But what of religious tolerance? No problem there, certainly not for Jews, it seems. Within the machinations of internal Turkish politics, the headscarf issue loomed large.

The constitution forbids officials or wives of officials from wearing the offending cloth. So when Abdullah Gül was put forward as presidential candidate earlier this year, and his wife Hayrunnisa was spotted wearing a headscarf, the military stepped in and blocked his candidacy.
 
Hence AKP’s decision to force the issue by calling early parliamentary elections. The gamble more than paid off. To quote the Washington Post on Election Day: “If it weren’t for a metre-square piece of fabric… Turkey’s 42 million voters wouldn’t be going to the polls today”.
 
Of course, Turkish Jews are not profoundly affected one way or the other by the scarf issue. But as a community of just 20,000 out of some 70 million, naturally they have concerns about whether a new burst of Muslim religiosity might impede their own freedoms.
 
The AKP victory seemed to mark the death knell for Turkey’s hopes of ever joining the EU. But here again the sceptics were wrong-footed. For AKP has accelerated Turkey’s path towards joining the EU, a move that Jews in Europe should really support.

When some European xenophobes argue against “alien” Muslims joining the EU’s “Christian club”, what does this signal to Europe’s own non-Christian minorities? Jews harbour some painful memories of subordination to the church’s edict: are we seeing Christian identity once again defining “true” citizenship?

If so, that would be truly regressive. With Turkey onboard, and notwithstanding the economic challenges this may initially introduce, EU could shine as an example of pluralism within the rule of law.
 
Istanbul has for centuries formed a pivotal location along timeworn Jewish trade routes. In fact, the Jewish/Turkish relationship exhibits a long history of harmony and mutual respect. Think of the year 1492, when Catholic Spain expelled Jews who had lived in Iberia for centuries.

Almost immediately the Ottoman Muslim Caliphate offered a large proportion of the 150,000 refugees succour and new homes in the Balkans, in Greece and the Aegean islands, and on the Anatolian mainland itself.
 
True, the Sultan’s motive was probably not entirely, or solely, humanitarian in origin. The Turks knew that Sephardi Jews were preternaturally talented and economically dynamic. Constantinople had fallen to the Ottomans just forty years earlier. Who better, then, to raise its status as a financial entrepot than these entrepreneurs, with their myriad contacts across the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and Middle East?
 
Following the theme of Turkish “enlightened self-interest”, even when the Ottoman Empire fell in 1918, and Attaturk’s Turkey arose from its ashes, there was a safe place for Jews. Turkey has since proven to be one of Israel’s most steady allies in a troubled Middle East. Indeed, it was the first Muslim country to recognise the Jewish state, in March 1949.

Despite fears to the contrary – as alluded to already – Turkey’s essential strategic ties with Israel remained intact after Erdogan took power in 2002. Not only did he uphold the epochal free trade agreement signed between Ankara and Jerusalem in 2000, he even built on it. Erdogan has visited Israel, and particularly Yad Vashem.

Yes, there was admittedly a minor rumpus over his decision not to don a yarmulke at the site. But surely that pales beside the realisation of the significance of an elected Islamist leader paying homage to the six million victims of Nazi hatred.
 
Not everything in the garden is entirely rosy There was, for instance, the recent hullabaloo about prominent novelists, including Turkey’s Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk, being hauled before the courts on charges of “defaming the republic”.

Kurds, for their part, feel disappointed that Erdogan has not smoothed the path towards recognition of their language and minority status. Sadly, bigotry – whether anti-Semitic, anti-Kurdish or anti-anyone else – is endemic everywhere. And Turkey is no exception. The point is, we should be wary of rushing to judge “the usual suspects”.

When al-Qaida minions bombed Istanbul’s largest synagogue, Neve Shalom, in November 2003, Erdogan personally visited the wrecked buildings, and then prayed with the relatives of the six Jews murdered that day. Most significantly, Erdogan and other leaders announced that an attack on Turkish Jews was an attack on all Turks.

Such comments immensely reassured the small community .The AKP government was clear: those who attacked the synagogue might claim to act in the name of Islam, but as terrorists they had made themselves the enemy of all Turks, Muslim, Christian or Jewish. If ever there was a reminder that “Islamism” comes in different varieties, that was it.

Claudia Roth for Germany’s Greens feels the time for Turkey in the EU has come. The window of opportunity is still open. “Turkey’s democracy isn’t perfect”, she was quoted on German radio and in the Turkish daily Cumhurriyet, “but despite everything, it works. Turkey isn’t a Muslim country, it’s secular. But most Turkish people are Muslim.”
 
And if the window closes, what then? A Turkey adrift on its own; or seeking friends only to the east? From our perspective at the EJCJ, two things seem clear: Turkey is part of Europe, and if Turkey wants to elect an Islamist government, that doesn’t spell Armageddon. This is a great opportunity for Israel, for Europe and the Jews.