Remembering the Holocaust
In 2005, the United Nations declared Jan. 27 as “International Holocaust Remembrance Day.” Turkey was among the supporters of the decision and honors the memory of the victims at commemorative events. Safeguarding Jews is one of the historical traditions of Turkey. A prominent example is Sultan Mehmet II’s (the Conqueror) invitation to the Jewish communities residing in Anatolia and in Europe, calling them to settle in Istanbul when he conquered the city in 1453. The legacy was passed on to his son Sultan Bayezid II. Bayezid II sent the Ottoman Navy to the Iberian Peninsula in 1492 to ensure that more than 150,000 Jews, who were fleeing inquisition, reached the Ottoman territories safely.
In those years, the largest community of around 20,000 Sephardic Jews settled in Thessaloniki alone. This precious memory is not limited to the mass immigration in 1492. Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, Jews who were expelled from Hungary, France, Sicily, Venice and Bavaria took refuge in the Ottoman Empire.
Yet, there are also bitter memories that Turks and Jews share. In the 18th and 19th centuries, when the Turkish population suffered from the cruel persecutions in the Balkans and were forced to migrate en masse to Anatolia, a considerable number of Jews also became victims. Particularly among these were the unspeakable massacres during the Morea revolt of 14531454 by the Greeks against the Ottoman state, in which tens of thousands of Turks, Muslims as well as thousands of Jews were brutally killed just to change the ethnic composition of the region.
Similar motives were evident during the destruction and burning of Jewish neighborhoods in Thessaloniki in 1912, where one of the largest Jewish communities in the world lived. Following the entry of the Greek army into the city, the Greek mobs, backed up by the army, carried out pogroms against Jews. Associate professor Yücel Güçlü revealed many significant facts in this respect in his piece entitled “Jewish Salonica (Thessaloniki) in 1912 and 1943: The Ottoman and Greek/German Practices Considered” published by the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs.
Prior to the German occupation, around 55,000 Jews resided in Thessaloniki. The Holocaust would claim 6 million Jews. Some 67,000 Greek Jews were among them, constituting 87% of the Jewish population of Greece. This was statistically the highest percentage of Jewish loss in any occupied country. The remaining Jewish population in Greece at the end of the Holocaust was only one-thirtieth of the pre-Holocaust figures. Despite the presence of a relatively small community of about 6,000 Jews, anti-Semitism in Greek society continues to be a serious source of concern.
On the other side of the Aegean, Turkey’s welcoming culture continued throughout the rise of Nazis in Europe and World War II. The Jewish refugee academics from Nazi Germany took sanctuary in Turkey from 1933 onward. Turkey endeavored to protect and rescue the Turkish Jews living in Western Europe under the Nazi occupation, by means of reregistering them and updating their citizenship records at the consulates without seeking their application in order to save them from Nazi and Vichy France coercion and violence.
Turkish diplomats themselves provided citizenship documents to many Jews to keep them exempt from anti-Jewish laws. Turkey also assisted those Jews who sought an escape route to Palestine. The Turkish government permitted various rescue committees to operate mainly in Istanbul. Despite closed frontiers, refugee groups thus passed through Turkey. American historian Stanford J. Shaw indicates that 16,474 “official” Jewish refugees passed through Turkey during the war years, and approximately 75,000 others entered the country without registration between 1934 and 1944.
The neutrality policy pursued by the Turkish government was successful in averting the Nazi aggression and possibly a horrifying occupation, yet, it did not spare any effort in providing sanctuary as well as safe passage to tens of thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing from persecution and a systematic policy of annihilation by the Nazis.
Without a doubt, Turks and Jews continue to cherish their cordial friendship and historically deep-rooted relations. This well-endowed tradition of mutual respect and confidence is an indisputable fact. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan underlined once again his firm stance on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust very recently, when he received the members of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States (ARIS) and the representatives of the Turkish Jewish community.