Misalliance of civilizations

Turkey has never been short of ironies. The country, boasting co-chairmanship of the fancy project with the fancy tag “Alliance of Civilizations,” features a public whose majority refuses to have atheist, Jewish and Christian neighbors. Unsurprisingly, Jews, among the “gavur,” have a very “special” place in Turkish hearts.

Officially speaking, anti-Semitism does not exist in Turkey. Therefore, the campaigners who boycotted Jewish businesses in Istanbul earlier during the year must have been neo-Nazis disguised as conservative Turks.

Similarly, another group of neo-Nazis last month commemorated Hitler in Kayseri, this time disguised as Turkish teachers (repeat: teachers... who teach our children!). Before that, I didn’t know the neo-Nazis were so perfectly organized in Muslim Turkey. Though on more than one occasion I remember Nazi women wearing the Islamic turban had carried placards that read “Now I understand Hitler!” Clever disguise. One would think they were just Turkish Islamists.

Most recently, a group of neo-Nazis, disguised as students in Trabzon in this occasion, pelted Israel’s ambassador to Ankara, Gabi Levy, with eggs to protest the Jewish state’s treatment of Palestinians, shouting niceties like “Israel is a murderer.” According to news reports, Ambassador Levy had already been embarrassed in neighboring Rize where local Mayor Halil Bakirci condemned Israel’s policies of expansion and occupation. “Due to Israel’s policies, we are worried that something undesirable may happen to Israeli tourists,” Mayor Bakirci was quoted as saying.

We can force the limits of euphemism and presume that the mayor, whose boss, the prime minister of Turkey, happens to be the co-chairman of the Alliance of Civilizations, was being very kind to the Israeli ambassador and wholeheartedly trying to prevent some crazy neo-Nazi in his town from shooting an Israeli tourist “because of Israel’s policies.” Or we can more realistically formulate the encounter as: The mayor of a Turkish province was talking about the risk of local people harming Israeli tourists due to their government’s policies.” Even that, too, can be understood (not tolerated but understood) in social psychology. But there is more.

The logic of the mayor’s warning is based on the idea that some people might be tempted to physically harm foreign visitors because their government is treating another nation badly. Is the principal motive as simple as that? Would the locals in the Black Sea coast be tempted to harm anyone whose government they believe is oppressing other people? To understand the situation better, perhaps we ought to ask ourselves further questions.

Would, for example, the mayor warn the American ambassador that due to the U.S. policies on Iraq and Afghanistan “we are worried that something undesirable may happen to American tourists?” Are the Sri Lankan tourists in danger in the Black Sea area because of civilian casualties among the Tamil? Would the Sudanese not be welcomed because their head of state has an arrest warrant for crimes amounting to ethnic-cleansing? Were the Iraqi tourists in danger in Turkey during Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait? Are the Iranians in danger in Turkey because their president often talks about wiping Israel off the map? We all know the answers to these highly hypothetical questions. We also know what their answers amount to, but are probably too shy to name it.

But neither the mayor nor Ambassador Levy needs worry. Earlier this year an influential columnist of the Islamic press, Ali Bulac, had relieved us all when he wrote that: “You, Jews, if you want our respect, stop being Zionists!” So any Jew traveling in Turkey, when at gunpoint, can escape shooting by declaring himself as a non-Zionist Jew. Alternatively, Israeli tourists can carry big badges that read: “I am a non-Zionist Jew,” and that way have all the respect of the locals.

Another perfect recipe for Turkish-Israeli friendship came from Patrick Seale in the New York Times: “…relations are unlikely to recover their earlier warmth so long as Israel’s hard-line prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, remain in power.” A very generous proposal indeed: You, Jews, want to make peace with Turkey? Dump your prime minister and foreign minister!

Well, that may be against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s powerful doctrine that “we all should respect elected leaders of the Middle East.” Or does the principle not apply to Jewish leaders? It certainly does to Hamas.

I felt sympathy for Seale’s proposal, but will suggest a better short-cut to end all Israeli-related troubles: Jews should repent and convert to Islam. And if Christians do the same then we can comfortably talk about the Alliance of Civilizations.