United States Issues Religious Freedom Report

The United States Department has issued its annual International Religious Freedom Report. For DRL's report on Turkey, click here.

Though many accusations might be leveled at the United States for not taking a consistent position on democracy and human rights issues, a difficult task for any country, the State Department's reports on human rights and religious freedom are refreshingly objective.

Issued by the State Department's Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the reports are issued independent of the State Department's other policy making arms. For a bit on how, why, and the history behind these reports, click here.

A Story Told in Ladino

Centropa Student, a website designed to promote understanding of Jewish life in Central Europe, has produced a film in Ladino in which a Turkish Jew narrates her family's immigration from Spain to the Ottoman Empire. Ladino, a mix of Spanish and Hebrew, could once be heard widely in Jewish quarters of Istanbul. Thanks to Jenny White at Kamil Pasha for originally posting this.

"The Rabbi of Jews in Turkey" and Combating Anti-Semitism

Rabbi Isak Haleva

From the JC.com:

The Turkish Chief Rabbi, Isak Haleva, has complained to the government after it stalled for months on authorising elections for a new holder of the office.

Rabbi Haleva's seven-year term of office expired last autumn, but elections could not be held because of a row between the Turkish authorities and the community over the official title of the post.

The authorities refused, for reasons that were never explained, to allow the next holder of the post to be called "Chief rabbi of Turkey", and insisted instead on simply "Chief rabbi".

A compromise was eventually reached in which the post-holder would be called "Chief rabbi of Turkish Jews", and a letter was sent allowing the Jewish community to go ahead with the election. A vote should take place shortly, with Rabbi Haleva widely expected to win a second term.

Liberal Turkish paper Milliyet reported that the row was part of a wider governmental strategy to stop non-Muslim communities appointing leaders and force all minority faiths to appoint one joint representative.

Rabbi Haleva made the complaint to the government during a meeting with the Turkish Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bagis about the problems of non-Muslim communities in the country.

The meeting was also attended by Greek, Armenian and other religious leaders.

Other issues he raised include the legal ban on Jewish and other minority schools admitting students of foreign nationality.

The Jewish High School in Istanbul, like the Greek and Armenian schools, cannot admit students who hold foreign citizenship, including Israelis.

He also asked the government to consider including provisions in the penal code to justify legal action against antisemitic material in the press, a particular problem in some pro-Islamist publications.

The official view over complaints about antisemitic articles in the past has been that there is no legal basis for legal action.

Jews in Turkey are an officially recognized minority under the Lausanne Treaty, and the United States Department of State's International Religious Freedom Report estimates their number at 23,000. Anti-Semitism in Turkey has been rising since Israel's invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006, and took a dramatic turn for the worse following Israel's invasion of Gaza in December 2008. Anti-Semitic comments, as the JC.com article notes, are common in Islamist newspapers and the political rhetoric of religiously conservative parties.

Turkish Jews Protest Anti-Defamation League on Armenia

From the Jerusalem Post:

Turkey's small Jewish community has come out against the Anti-Defamation League's new policy position that the massacre of Armenians during World War I was "tantamount to genocide." Silvio Ovadio, head of the Jewish community in the country, issued a statement saying, "We have difficulty in understanding" the ADL's new position on the matter, the Turkish media reported on Thursday. The ADL position only reflected the opinion of "related institutions of the American Jews," the statement emphasized. "We declare that we are supporting Turkey's belief that the issue should be discussed at the academic level by opening archives of all related parties and that parliaments are not the places for finding out historical facts via voting‚" the statement read. The Turkish press also published a letter from prominent Turkish Jewish businessman Jak Kamhi to Foxman on Thursday. In his letter, Kamhi said that "by accepting this false comparison between the uniquely indisputable genocide for which the term was coined - the Holocaust, and the events of 1915, the ADL has committed an act of the most inexplicable injustice against the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, as well as against the sensitivities and pride of the Turkish people, who deserve your praise for their centuries-long tradition of compassion and their culture of humanity and cohabitation that remains an example to the world." Kamhi took issue with Foxman's assertion that there was a consensus among historians that the massacre was tantamount to genocide, saying there was no such agreement.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), under pressure from Turkey and Israel, has struggled with its position on 1915 for some time now. In 2007, the ADL moved to recognize 1915 as "genocide," only to reverse itself shortly later. ADL's most recent change in position has divided the organization, and sparked a firestorm in the United States at a time when the American Jewish community and the powers that be are equivocating on what before has been firm opposition to genocide recognition.

According to the U.S. Department of State's International Religious Freedom Report, there are approximately 23,000 Jews livining in Turkey. The population used to be larger, but several Jews left Turkey following the Second World War and the creation of Israel, as well as the Turkish Republic's infamous 1942 passage of the "Wealth Tax," which largely targeted the money of Jews and other minorities that had up to the time controlled a significant share of the wealth in the new Turkish Republic.