Where might he get that idea? Qur'an 5:41 calls them "listeners for the sake of falsehood," or "men who will listen to any lie." 5:64 says they are "accursed" for allegedly saying Allah's hand is fettered. 5:82 says "Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews and Pagans." And of course, those are just a few examples of Islam's pervasive antisemitism, all in just one chapter.
"Turkish man plotted to kill rabbis," from the Jerusalem Post, June 25 (thanks to Larry):
The individual, Ismet Rencber, had been tracked after mailing a threatening anonymous letter to the main synagogue in Istanbul and was stopped by security forces upon his arrival at a relative's home in the city's suburbs.
Rencber, a mason from the city of Kars in eastern Turkey, denied that he intended to kill any Jews, but told investigators that he "hated Jews."
In 2009, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to combat anti-Semitism in his country in the wake of IDF Operation Cast Lead. "There has been no anti-Semitism in the history of this country," Erdogan told members of his party at the time. "As a minority, they're our citizens. Both their security and the right to observe their faith are under our guarantee....
At what price?
And of course: the IDF deliberately shoot defenseless little girls. It is a fact! Turkish TV say so!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T3GVCOxc2E&feature=related
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a liar!
http://schnellmann.org/Genocide.html
From the article: "There has been no anti-Semitism in the history of this country [Turkey]" - Erdogan.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
From this jihadwatch thread, in 2005:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/10/history-will-not-judge-us-kindly-if-we-fail-to-treat-turkey-with-respec
Hugh | October 12, 2005 11:29 PM
'Which part [of Turkish history] should we respect? The 3-day orgy of rape, looting, murder, and destruction that began on May 29, 1453, with the Fall of Constantinople?
The devshirme, whereby Christian (and, in places, Jewish children) were taken by Muslim agents from their parents, and brought back to be trained as soldiers for the Sultan?
The refusal even today to allow the Hagia Sophia to be used for Christian worship? The refusal, even today, to admit to the Armenian genocide, and to punish any Turk who dares to suggest that such an admission should be made?
What exactly is it about Muslim Turkey (I can respect plenty about Byzantium, and about the ruins of classical antiquity found hither and yon) we are supposed to respect and admire?
There is a Museum of Near Eastern Antiquities, and another one devoted to Classical (Greek and Roman) Archeology, both on the site of the Topkapi complex.
In the first museum is a tiny, bar-review-sized version, in stone, of the Code of Hammurabi, and a pride of lions taken from the Ishtar Gate in Babylon (the rest of the pride is in Berlin).
There is a very good used bookstore on Istiqlal Caddesi, which sometimes sells off the library of a deceased scholar, sometimes a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany (Erich Auerbach wrote, or re-wrote, "Mimesis" while in his Istanbul exile) -- and the books displayed in the bookstore windows are most interesting.
The ill-tended cemetery of the Mevlevis is touching, especially the teetering tombstone of the Hungarian convert to Islam who established the first printing-press in the Ottoman Empire (save for the Hebrew press established in 15-someting in Safed). There are the monuments in stone to Sinan. There are those Iznik tiles. One is grateful that those who destroyed so much art, and vandalized the Hagia Sophia, somehow overlooked the mosaics, or most of them, in the Kariya Djami (St. Saviour in Chora).
But otherwise, what exactly is one supposed to "show respect" for?
The treatment of the Armenians?
Of the Greeks?
Of the Jews?
** Jamal Pasha in the vilayets that were to make up Palestine treated the Jews most fiercely, and the Jewish population in the last years of Turkish rule went down by 50%.** {my emphasis - dda}.
Ataturk was very fond of Dr. Ginsberg, his Jewish dentist.
But Ataturk died in 1938, and his respect and affection for Dr. Ginsberg did not prevent the Turkish government under Inonu from towiing the rickety unseaworthy Struma, with 800 desperate Jewish refugees aboard, out to the middle of the Black Sea, where it sank with all aboard (some say it was hit by a missile from a Soviet ship)...".
And more: a devastating series of articles by Andrew Bostom.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Read.aspx?GUID=68314118-6D77-4E06-B4D5-282AF4285BC9
Andrew G Bostom: Under Turkish Rule, Part 1.
In Front Page Magazine.com, July 27 2007.
"Ignorance about the plight of Jews under Turkish rule—past, including Ottoman Palestine, and present—is profound.
"In lieu of serious, critical examination one finds whitewashed apologetics concocted to promote dubious geo-political strategies—even the morally bankrupt denial of the Armenian genocide, as promoted, shamefully, by public intellectuals and major US Jewish organizations who abet the exploitation of their co-religionist Turkish Jews as dhmmi “lobbyists” for the government of Turkey.
"These strategies have “succeeded”, perversely, in further isolating Jews, while failing, abysmally, to alter a virulently Antisemitic Turkish religious (i.e., Islamic), and secular culture -...".
..."Jews in Ottoman Palestine, Early 16th Century Until the End of World War I
Although episodes of violent anarchy diminished during the four centuries of Ottoman suzerainty the degrading conditions of the indigenous Jews (and Christians) living under the shari’a’s jurisdiction remained unchanged."
As witness to the nature of Turkish Muslim rule over Jews in eretz Israel, I adduce the humble Aussie lighthorseman, Ion L Idriess, who was in 'Palestine' in 1917.
Here is his summary of the predicament of the Jews there resident:
"I think this is the 17th (December, 1917). Yesterday we rode by numbers of vividly pretty little red-roofed towns.
"The inhabitants are very fair skinned, **mostly Jews** {my emphasis - dda}. They are by far the most cleanly people we have yet met. They are very hospitable although they do charge us a hefty/ p. 184 / price for brown bread, honey and tobacco.
"**Lots of them have had a hard time from the Turks** {my emphasis - dda}.
"They seem to live between two devils, the Turk and the Arab.
"Apparently the Turk prevents the Arab from massacring them outright, because the Jews are a very handy people to squeeze taxes from...".
Andrew Bostom, again. Anyone who has not yet read this article, or the above, do please click and read. Detailed, comprehensive, massively documented, and damning.
When you've finished, go back and read Erdogan's words again, "there has been no antisemitism in the history of this country [Turkey]"; and recoil at the monstrosity of the lie.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Read.aspx?GUID=3CA6CAE4-04C9-4AC6-BA1C-08B047719A1A
Under Turkish Rule: Part II.
By Andrew G. Bostom
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, August 03, 2007.
Selected passages:
"During the summer of 1934 a paroxysm of antisemitic violence took place within this general atmosphere of Turkish Muslim xenophobia."
"The persecutions, euphemistically referred to as the “Thracian events” (Trakya Olaylari), started at the end of June 1934 in the district of Çanakkale, a region in northwestern Asia Minor that also included the Gallipoli peninsula and the Dardanelles. [ i.e., in the Çanakkale Province on the southern (Asiatic) coast of the Dardanelles (or Hellespont).
"Çanakkale, is also a town and seaport in Turkey. Çanakkale Province is the second province (the first one is Istanbul) in Turkey that has lands on two different continents (Europe and Asia)]
"Menacing letters were received, Jews were physically beaten and their shops were boycotted.
"The wave of antisemitic attacks rapidly spread northward and, within a couple of days, almost all of Turkish Thrace was in an uproar.
"In the small town of Kriklareli, located close to the Bulgarian frontier, that attacks escalated into a pogrom: during the night of July 3—4, the homes of Jewish inhabitants were raided and their properties looted.
"Thousands of panic-stricken Jews fled to Istanbul.
"An official statement spoke of 3000 refugess, comprising about a quarter of the 13,000 Jews in Eastern Thrace and the adjacent Çanakkale district, though the real number may have been even higher.
"After a delay of several days {hmmm - dda} the Turkish government finally reacted and issued orders to the local authorities to quell the riots and sent military units to the sites of unrest."...
"...Frank Weber has summarized Turkey’s unenviable record of treatment of its small Jewish minority during the years leading up to World War II, following the 1934 pogrom against Thracian Jewry ...".
"Wasserstein’s broader discussion of Turkey’s wartime policies towards Jews concludes
QUOTE - “…there is little in the Turkish record to boast about.”, and suggests the “nadir” was reached with the enactment (November, 1942) of the capital tax—a brutally discriminatory levy which targeted Jews, Dönmes, and the Christian minorities (Greeks and Armenians) in Turkey UNQUOTE ".
And Jews have voted with their feet:
"...from 1948 to 1950, almost 31,000 of Turkey’s roughly 77,000 Jews—i.e., 40 per cent—emigrated to the newly created State of Israel.
"Turkey’s Jewish population continued to decline in the 1950s, particularly after **the 1955 Istanbul pogrom (discussed below)** {my emphasis - dda}, reaching approximately 32,000 in 1964.
"At present, it is believed only 20,000 Jews remain in Turkey".