How many of you knew that Einstein wrote a letter on 9-10-1933 to Ataturk?
When Christopher Columbus set sail for “India” in 1492, the royal send-off ceremonies were held not in Spain’s largest port or the second largest, but the third largest.
You know why?
Because the first two ports were busy expelling Jews of Iberia who refused to convert to Catholicism.
Spanish Inquisitions gave Jews two options:
1) convert and stay
2) or go if you wish to stay Jewish.
Most Jews chose the latter. The trouble is, no one would take them in. Most European countries at time would refuse the Jewish pleas for fear of retaliation by catholic Rome.
Only one country was self-confident, courageous and compassionate enough to allow the Jews in: the Ottoman Empire.
Sultan Bayezid wrote to Queen Isabella of Spain, “I hear you are expelling your Jews. Give them all to me. They are your loss and my gain. I am sending a fleet of the Ottoman Navy to pick them up.”
Copy of this firman can be seen at the Jewish Museum in the Profilo Building in Istanbul today.
Jews came to the Turkish lands; found peace and respect there for five centuries; prospered and stayed loyal to the Ottoman Empire to the end. The Turks trusted the Jews so much that a small Jewish colony would be tacked on to the Turkish colony to be sent to the lands conquered in the Balkans.
Newly appointed Turkish governor of Cyprus (1571) is known to place a complaint to the Sultan about the newly appointed Turkish governor of Hungary, saying the latter “stole his Jews” and that he wants his Jews back.” Eventually, he got other Ottoman-Jews to kick start trading and banking practices in Cyprus. Such was the interfaith friendship and trust.
This tradition of Turkish-Jewish friendship continued when the Republic of Turkey opened its borders to German Jews running from Hitler’s Germany.
How many of you knew that Einstein wrote a letter on 9-10-1933 to Ataturk urging Turkey to give sanctuary and research facilities to forty German Jewish scientists and doctors who had been removed from their work by the rise of Nazism?
Not just the forty that Einstein requested, but many scores of German and Austrian Jewish scientists, their families, and their assistants, moved to Turkey. For the next ten to fifteen years the medical schools, and science and technology departments, especially in Istanbul flourished. In fact, several of my father’s professors at the Istanbul University, Forestry Department were from those Jews.
During World War II, Turkish diplomats saved Turkish Jews living in France (many were French citizens others were holding Turkish passports) from certain death, a fact of which the Anglophone world was ignorant until Stanford Shaw first revealed the historical data in 1995.
Up until that time, this important piece of history had been ignored by historians. Mistakenly however, Shaw attributed the actions of Turkey’s legations in both occupied and Vichy France to a well articulated policy created by the Turkish government in Ankara, when in fact these brave acts of heroism were devised by the diplomats themselves as a matter of conscience.
In fact, from the outset of these actions the Turkish government had to be prodded and pushed, with various ramifications including implied aid programs from a number of sources, to acquiesce from outside of Turkey not from within. The diplomats involved were: Behiç Erkin, Turkish ambassador to Paris and later to Vichy; Necdet Kent, Consul General in Marseilles; Paris Consul-Generals Cevdet Dülger, Fikret Sefik Özdoganci, and Paris Vice Consuls Namik Kemal Yolga, Fatin Rüştü Zorlu and Melih Esenbel; Marseilles Consul Generals Bedi’i Arbel, and Mehmed Fuad Carim.
There is much more, but I think the point is made. Six centuries of close friendship, mutual respect and trust should not be wasted because of current political posturing.
Ergun KIRLIKOVALI
