{"id":70846,"date":"2013-07-03T17:02:35","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T14:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=70846"},"modified":"2014-01-08T12:57:25","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T10:57:25","slug":"turkish-jew-affirms-deputy-pms-remarks-anti-semitic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/07\/03\/turkish-jew-affirms-deputy-pms-remarks-anti-semitic\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkish Jew Affirms Deputy PM’s Remarks Anti-Semitic"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Inside
Inside Neve Shalom, Istanbul Synagogue
Israel news photo: HLJ<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Turkey’s Jewish community rejects Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay’s claim that Monday’s anti-Semitic remarks were \u201ctaken out of context.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turkey’s Jewish community has rejected a claim by Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay that an anti-Semitic accusation against Jews was \u201ctaken out of context.\u201d<\/p>\n

Istanbul-based\u00a0Turkish Jewish journalist\u00a0Denis Ojalvo\u00a0told Arutz Sheva<\/em> in a phone interview Wednesday morning that if Atalay\u2019s remarks were taken out of context, then \u201cin what context were they?\u201d<\/p>\n

But Ojalvo, who writes a column for Shalom Gazette<\/em>, the country\u2019s sole Jewish weekly,\u00a0said Atalay has never been heard to say anything anti-Semitic in the past. \u201cUntil now we never heard such statements from his mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, \u201cWhen he says \u2018the diaspora\u2019 it is an amorphous\u2019 term,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s a cabal. He thinks it is the Jews who run the media \u2013 but it is a general accusation. He was just expressing a stereotype, making an anti-Semitic remark out of general prejudice.<\/p>\n

“There is no excuse to say such a thing. This is how the Jewish community feels,\u201d Ojalvo explained.<\/p>\n

The Turkish Jewish community posted a statement on its website this week in response to Atalay\u2019s remark, saying, \u201cWe would like to express our concern that all Jews around the world, including Turkish Jews, may be a target because of such sorts of remarks, in almost every situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In general,\u00a0over the past several decades\u00a0Jews in Turkey have become\u00a0extremely cautious about drawing attention to themselves from the general population, and\u00a0from the government.\u00a0This fear has increased exponentially under the ruling AK Party, which other Jewish sources have told Arutz Sheva<\/em>\u00a0has intensified the Islamist atmosphere in some areas of the country.<\/p>\n

Representing Jewish communities of 100 countries around the world, World Jewish Congress head Ronald S. Lauder issued his own statement as well. \u201cIt is shocking to hear from a senior Turkish government minister such despicable and totally baseless slurs,\u201d Lauder said, according to AFP. Lauder called on Atalay to formally apologize, calling the remarks \u201can insult not only to the Jewish people but also to the many Turkish citizens who took part in the protests and who have real grievances.\u201d<\/p>\n

The furor began over remarks made at an AK Party conference on Monday, when Atalay accused the \u201cJewish diaspora\u201d of triggering the recent nationwide protests against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some circles that are jealous of Turkey growing so much,\u201d Atalay said in video footage released by the Cihan News Agency<\/em>. \u201cThey are all uniting, on one side the Jewish diaspora. You saw the foreign media\u2019s attitude during the Gezi Park incidents; they bought it and started broadcasting immediately, without evaluating… The ones trying to block the way of Great Turkey will not succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facing a firestorm of worldwide outrage, Atalay later said, \u201cI do not make any statement that hurts Jews … I very carefully select the words,\u201d the AFP news agency<\/em> reported.\u00a0\u201cI am upset that the statements I\u2019ve made about Gezi Park have been deliberately distorted by a (news) agency,\u201d Atalay said. \u201cAn accusation regarding the Jewish lobby or Jews is out of the question.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Gezi Park protests, which have continued off and on throughout the country for more than three weeks,\u00a0were ignited by plans to remove the only remaining green area in Istanbul, Taksim Square\u2019s iconic Gezi Park, in order to build a replica of an Ottoman artillery barracks and a mall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turkey’s Jewish community rejects Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay’s claim that Monday’s anti-Semitic remarks were \u201ctaken out of context.\u201d Turkey’s Jewish community has rejected a claim by Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay that an anti-Semitic accusation against Jews was \u201ctaken out of context.\u201d Istanbul-based\u00a0Turkish Jewish journalist\u00a0Denis Ojalvo\u00a0told Arutz Sheva in a phone interview Wednesday morning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":70847,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[9219,9215,9218,9216,9217,9214],"class_list":["post-70846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-denis-ojalvo","tag-deputy-pm","tag-deputy-prime-minister-besir-atalay","tag-remarks-anti-semitic","tag-turkeys-jewish-community","tag-turkish-jew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}