Turkish Jewish Association in Israel: The Turkey Crisis Won’t Affect Israel

In the wake of the scandal that broke out in Turkey recently, when it was reported that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan allegedly instructed his son to hide large sums of cash, demonstrations similar to the Gezi Park protests have broken out throughout the country, demanding Erdogan’s resignation. However, Rafael Sadi, the spokesman for the Turkish Jewish Association in Israel, does not think that the AKP will necessarily collapse and even if it does, that Israeli-Turkish relations will not be affected.

Sadi explained that there is an ongoing tension between the religious and the secular within Turkey, which has been ongoing since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. He stated that one cannot understand the present unrest without a grasp of this history: “Mustafa Kemal Ataturk changed the rules of the country to a modern constitution and in 1923; Turkey became an even more advanced civilization than many European countries at that period of time. For example, Switzerland only gave women the right to vote in 1946 and Turkey did this in 1926.”

However, Ataturk’s encouragement of secularism in Turkey following the cancellation of the Islamic caliphate angered many Turkish sheikhs and religious sects within the country. For the past 91 years, many religious Turks referred to the secularists as “atheists” and the secularists referred to the religious as “a threat to democracy.” Sadi stressed that Erdogan’s party, the AKP, represents “91 years of misunderstanding the relationship between religion and secularism.” Before Erdogan, all of the major companies in Turkey were run by secularists; since Erdogan came to power, the religious, including the extremists, have grown substantially.

“Erdogan is a symbol of a religious conservative downtrodden public. This part of the Turkish people in the last 12 years feel as though they are the owners of a country where they used to be the outsiders and now, they feel like they are the bosses against the rest of the people,” Sadi emphasized. He claimed that recent developments have not much affected how this segment of the population thinks. “Most of Erdogan’s voters don’t believe those scandals and trust Erdogan with closed eyes. Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a hero for those people and there is a very high probability that the people which voted for Erdogan will probably vote for him again and will not change their decision. The Turks who are upset with Erdogan are not the same Turks that voted for him.”

Sadi believes that the only way that Erdogan will leave power is if the secular Turks vote in higher numbers. He claimed that many of them prefer to go sightseeing on election day rather than turn up to vote. However, Sadi thinks that this could change in the next elections in Turkey. Sadi also warned that should the AKP lose power, the Turkish economy could collapse and relations with the Kurds could dramatically deteriorate, leading to increased terrorism within the country. He also noted that the infrastructure within the country has significantly improved under AKP rule and that the average person in the street does not feel the corruption.

Problems with the AKP

Yet on the other hand, Turkey’s foreign relations have suffered significantly under AKP rule, especially in relations to Israel, as has freedom of the press and numerous military people have gone to prison on trumped up charges. In fact, one of Erdogan’s first moves in power was to imprison military people that could potentially have worked for his downfall. Prior Turkish leaders with religious leanings had been overthrown by the Turkish military and Erdogan didn’t want to take any chances.

One source inside Turkey, who opted to remain anonymous, reported, “Turkey’s legal system has long been dysfunctional. Corruption is rife, while standards of evidence and respect for due process frequently fall well below internationally established norms. Suspects are held for long periods pending trial, to the point where they currently account for 71 percent of the country’s total prison population whereas the conviction rate in trials is less than 50 percent.”

“In a way, that is how AKP punishes its opponents,” the source continued. “The problem is that the judicial system is heavily politicized and overburdened and authorities continue to engage in arbitrary arrests. Journalists and writers remain incarcerated on so-called terror crimes, which result in self-censorship. Journalists, academics and writers are afraid that criticizing the state or government publicly could result in civil or criminal suits or investigations. Furthermore, political leaders, including the PM, sue their critics for defamation.”

“Many students are charged under anti-terror laws for participating in legal demonstrations. AKP is growing moderately Islamist authoritarianism and attempts to impose Islam-inspired morality, which constitute the core of the protestors’ grievances in Turkey anyway,” the source stressed. “According to statistics, as a comparison, in 2002, more than 300 individuals stood trial for charges related to freedom of expression. By the end of 2012, this number reached 1,088. It is also funny that Turkey, often presented as a model country for the region, by the end of 2012, had in fact been labeled ‘the world’s biggest prison for journalists’ cited as jailing even more journalists than China or Iran.”

How the current crisis affects Turkish-Jewish relations?

However, Sadi does not believe that recent events in Turkey will affect Israel at all, as Turkish-Israeli relations are now tied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “Erdogan produced a very bad position in Turkey. Most of the people, it is not important which part of the political wing they are hailing, hate Israel,” he stated. “Mavi Marmara is not an essential problem between Israel and Turkey. Mavi Marmara is a fabricated issue by the AKP and Erdogan specifically. So in case they want to solve the issue and pass to a new era, it is very easy. It can even be done with an AKP government, but only after the elections.”

“The AKP is using the Israeli Turkish fabricated conflict to get a better quantity of votes. If CHP will use the same attitude, we can not say anything about this,” Sadi stated. “Maybe CHP will not use this issue, but I am sure some of the MHP member will use this factor to get better votes. But since this looks like AKP patent, they are not using this at the moment. In the past, we remember hearing the words ‘dirty Jew’ and ‘Israel to be destroyed’ by MHP leaders.”

However, Sadi stressed that Turkish Jews are managing the situation well and are surviving alright, provided they don’t wave Israeli flags and mention their Jewishness. Anti-Semitism has nevertheless increased within Turkey, and most of the commercial companies (which are now run by religious Turks), Sadi claimed, prefer not to do business with Jewish companies, resulting in most of the Jewish companies closing and new Jewish businesses are not opening up. The new generation of Turkish Jews’ prefers not to be the boss. Nevertheless, he claimed that the AKP has good relations with the Turkish Jewish community as well, with Rabbi Haleva being a close personal friend of Erdogan.