There's History, There's What Really Happened and Then There's Docu-Drama

 Turkish passports key to untold tale of Holocaust survivors

EJP

ANKARA (AFP)---Unbeknownst to many, Turkish diplomats on duty around Europe saved hundreds of Jews during World War II by giving them Turkish passports, enabling them to travel to safety in Turkey.   

This little known episode is told in an independent documentary entitled "Turkish Passport", being promoted as finally revealing "a secret kept for 66 years".   

The film recounts memories known mainly to 19 diplomats and the Jews they saved from German Nazi death camps. It is based on testimonies by witnesses and their relatives.   

"To remember and never to forget," said Gunes Celikcan, 30, one of the producers, as he talked about why the film was made.   

"There is not much about what the Turks did during that period of history," Celikcan told AFP, as Turkey remained neutral during World War II.   

He said the diplomats saved around 2,000 Jews from the Holocaust but the exact figure is unknown   

"We wanted to show this for the very first time and commemorate those diplomats," none of whom survive today, he said.   

The docudrama directed by Burak Arliel was first shown at the Cannes Film Festival in May. It has since been screened in Istanbul and other Turkish cities and made the rounds of festivals in the US and Europe.   

And though the buzz is quiet, it's building -- and not all is favourable.   

Its release comes at a low-point in relations between Israel and Turkey, after Israel's refusal to apologize for a commando raid on a flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip. The incident left nine Turkish nationals dead on May 31, 2010.   

In protest, Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador and froze military ties and defence trade deals.   

The Palestinians have widespread support in Turkey, where a wildly popular Turkish film series, "Valley of the Wolves", has fuelled strains, blasted by Israel as having anti-Semitic content.   

Celikcan said the film has been six years in the making and "has nothing to do with the changing political spectrum".   

But not all agree, including the chief political analyst for The Jerusalem Post, Gil Hoffman, and former Israeli cultural attache in Turkey Batya Keinan.   

In a recent article reprinted in several Turkish newspapers and websites, Hoffman said the movie was "rewriting history" with one of its "central messages -- that the Turkish government was actively involved in saving Jewish lives in Europe."
 
'This is historical fact'
 
 This "does not appear to be the case", he wrote. "Historical records indicate that the diplomats acted on their own, despite orders to the contrary from Ankara."   

Hoffman also quoted Keinan. "The Turkish press office is using the movie for propaganda," she said. "They are trying to say 'we are good people who protected Jews in the Holocaust and Palestinians now, and yet you shoot at us.' Shame on you."   

The comments have angered the movie's backers.   

"This film is not propaganda. ... There is no state involvement," said Asli Sena Genc, a representative for the Istanbul promoters. "This is a historical fact."   

Celikcan said the Turkish foreign ministry gave the filmmakers access to official archives, but ministry officials told AFP the film was a private initiative and the ministry made no official contribution.   

The docudrama recounts how the diplomats, including ambassador to Vichy France Saffet Arikan, found a way out for Turkish and foreign Jews, sending them to Istanbul on 12 trains at different points during the war.   

Behic Erkin, Turkey's ambassador to Paris from 1940-43, and Kudret Erbey, consul-general in the German city of Hamburg from 1940-45, were also involved. 

 "Turkish diplomats did their best to save Jews amid the raging brutality against Jews during World War II," said Naim Guleryuz, a historian and consultant on the film who heads a Turkish foundation that promotes the history and culture of Turkish Jews.   

"This part of the story is actually known by historians but we wanted to make it public knowledge through this documentary," he said.   

Researchers went to the United States, Israel, France and Germany, tracking down survivors or their relatives, some of whose tales are told on the film's official website.   

In one, Arlette Bules recalls when her father was arrested by the Germans and sent to the internment camp of Drancy, outside Paris.   

"My mother immediately went to the Turkish Embassy and asked for help rescuing my father. Thanks to the letters written by the ambassador, my father was rescued," she said.   

Celikcan recalls another testimony about a Jewish father who called his two daughters to his deathbed after the war. "He told them 'never forget that it was the Turks who saved us' and then died making a military salute."   

"We did this film without any expectation," Genc told AFP. "We only wanted to reveal a secret which has been kept for so many years."   

Celikcan was philosophical. "If this film makes a positive impact to mend fences between the two countries, we should only be happy for that" -- a view also held by Israeli diplomat Keinan, who has worked for recognition in Israel of these Turkish diplomats' wartime role.   

"Even though there are problems with the 'Turkish Passport', the aggressive promotion of the movie could end up helping the current efforts to improve ties between Israel and Turkey," she said in The Jerusalem Post.

Dear Turkey: Genocide Is What Genocide Is

YouTube:

Uploaded by infolivetvenglish on Dec 26, 2011

The Foreign Ministry warned that Israel's possible recognition of the Armenian genocide, could lead to the serious deterioration of Israel's ties with Turkey.
A Knesset committee discussed the possibility of setting a memorial day for the Armenian genocide by the Turkish people nearly 100 years ago, marking a first in Israeli history. Several MKs expressed support for the move, saying that Israel, as a nation of the Jewish people who have experienced genocide, cannot ignore genocides in other countries. However, the recognition of the Armenian genocide has long been a sensitive diplomatic issue due to the implications it has on Israel's relationship with Turkey, which denies it.

Will Arab Spring Rains Fall On Israel?

Who Needs Cancer When You Can Have A Growth Engine

Gul says Turkey can be EU's "growth engine"

TheStar.online

LONDON (Reuters) - Turkey is still determined to join the European Union despite the current crisis in the euro zone and can become the bloc's economic "growth engine", President Abdullah Gul said in an interview published on Sunday.

Gul rejected concerns that the economic problems facing the euro zone meant that any further expansion of the 27member EU should be put on hold. EU countries agreed unanimously in 2005 to start talks with mainly Muslim Turkey with the goal of full membership.

However, French President Nicolas Sarkozy remains opposed to Turkey joining and German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she favours a "privileged partnership" for Turkey rather than full membership.

"Some people who think in a narrow scope and who do lack a strategic perspective consider Turkey's membership a burden," Gul, who is travelling to Britain this week for a threeday visit, told Britain's Sunday Telegraph.

"But those who can think 30 years, 60 years ahead, and who can think about the changing trends in the economy and the changing centres of power, can understand how much strength Turkey can bring to the existing strength of Europe."

Gul said Turkey's membership of NATO had been considered the only reason for it to be allowed to join but now its booming economy, where GDP grew by 11 percent in the first quarter of 2011, was as valid.

"Consider the potential that Turkey has: Turkey's position, her assets, the value she can add in terms of energy resources, her population, the dynamism she can bring into Europe, and also the growth that she can bring, with Turkey being the engine of this growth."

He said Turkey viewed the euro zone crisis as a temporary situation.

"We approach the negotiations with a strategic vision, and are very determined."

Turkey has also been taking a tough approach against Syria over its crackdown on opponents of President Bashar al Assad and Gul said his country would back the Syrian people.

"When any kind of movement has its roots among the people of the country and the walls of fear come down, then the end result is very obvious," he said.

"With a strong and clear voice we are saying that the legitimate demands of the people are being supported by us. We enable them to have their meetings and discussions in a free environment, and provide a diplomatic platform.

"I strongly believe that there is no place any more for authoritarian regimes single party systems that do not have accountability or transparency on the shores of the Mediterranean."

"Life Goes On" in Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and Iran and... and... and ...

Turkish "Soap" Lifts The Veil on Child Marriages

Scotsman.com
A YOUNG girl in braids and a bridal veil lifts a tear-stained face to the camera. “My name is Hayat, and I am 15 years old,” she tells the audience. “My husband is 70 years old.”

A stout, white-bearded man steps into the frame to join her, and she dissolves into tears. “This dress is not my bridal gown,” she sobs. “It is my shroud.”

The music swells and the camera cuts to black. “One out of two women in Turkey is married off as a teenager,” a speaker announces from off-screen. “More than two million of our girls have been sold for a bride price.”

The two-minute film clip, which has already racked up tens of thousands of clicks on the internet, is the trailer for a much-anticipated soap opera by Mahsun Kirmizigul, a popular singer turned screenwriter and director, which is scheduled to debut this week on Turkish television and expose the continuing extent of the child bride practice.

The series, called Life Goes On, will follow the life and times of Hayat’s extended family as they flee poverty in central Anatolia and attempt to find their feet in Istanbul. The focus in the initial episodes will be on the fate of the young girl as she is married off to the old man – a fate that is all too common in Anatolia.

In fact, as the television critic Sina Kologlu pointed out in Istanbul, the trailer bears a striking resemblance to the real-life testimonies of child brides around the country interviewed for a documentary film by women’s rights activists being released this week.

The film, entitled Child Brides, is the result of an 18-month information and awareness campaign conducted by the Flying Broom women’s rights group, which included seminars, conferences and meetings with local officials and families around the country, as well as a book and an academic research project.

“I was 13 years old when I was married off to a 30-year-old man I had never seen,” a woman, now 37, told campaigners in the southeastern province of Van. “I always remained afraid of him.”

“I was married at 16,” another recounted at a meeting in Izmir, while other women spoke of violence, abuse and misery in testimonies collected in the campaign’s book. “We have spent 20 years in silence. We are still strangers to each other.”

A national average of 28 per cent of Turkish women are married before the age of 18, Yildiz Ecevit, a sociology professor at Middle Eastern Technical University, told a parliamentary committee hearing on child brides in Ankara last month.

But regional differences mean that as many as 50 per cent of girls are married off as minors in some parts of the country, particularly in eastern and central Anatolia.

Reliable figures on child brides are hard to come by because official statistics do not register the unofficial religious marriages still prevalent in much of Anatolia. Childhood marriages are “widely accepted” by Turkish society with girls married off early to minimise the economic burden on their family as well as the risk of any sexual contact before marriage. The bride “price” that is still paid in many regions remains an additional incentive.

As further causes, the report pointed to deeply rooted customs like the exchange of brides between two families, the betrothal of babies at birth, the giving of girls as brides to settle blood feuds, and the continued practice of polygamy. In addition, girls who have been raped or molested are quickly married off to the rapist or any other man to preserve family honour, the report noted.

The commission slammed child marriages as “violations of children’s rights, women’s rights and human rights”, pinpointing the practice as a prime cause of domestic violence, infant mortality and gender inequality. “State institutions do not yet address this problem sufficiently,” the report found.

Selen Dogan, project coordinator of the Flying Broom campaign, agrees. “Almost all local officials we spoke to at our conferences around the country agreed that this practice is a bad thing, but no one had ever done anything about it,” Dogan said. More Here

See Also CNN Coverage of Saudi Arabian Child Brides:

400 Hundred Years with Turkey ... There's Nothing to Celebrate!

VK.NL (Translated From Dutch)

No Celebration of 400 Hundred Years of Turkish Relations, President Gul Can Stay Home

PVV leader Geert Wilders wants the Netherlands in 2012 the celebration of 400 years of relations with Turkey canceled. President Abdullah Gül is also not allowed for a state visit. Wilders writes that morning on the opinion pages of the newspaper.

Wilders: "There is nothing to celebrate. The Islamic regime of Gul and his party, the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan is not a true friend of the West and therefore not in the Netherlands. President Gül is not welcome. " Centenary For nearly a year working on a grand celebration of the fourth centenary of the Turkish-Dutch relations. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has appointed a special representative to coordinate all activities. Wilders' Turkey has no place in the European community of values and there is no cause for celebration.  "Anyone who" looks beyond what is obvious, "writes Wilders sees" the regime of Gul and Erdogan busy is Turkish secular state system to kill and re-Islamise Turkey.D66 leader Alexander Pechtold called the development of Wilders 'absurd'.Pechtold: "This is a disgrace for the government and the Netherlands. Extremely painful that we have as a country through the construction tolerance shall be displayed. " Beatrix The PVV has also turned against the intention of Queen Beatrix to still a state visit to Oman to bring. It is scheduled from January 10 to 12. Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Máxima went along. The visit was in March this year canceled due to riots in the country and the uprisings elsewhere in the region. However, a short private visit to the Sultan of Oman made. Also PvdA, SP and Green would like clarification from Prime Minister Rutte, because they consider the situation in the country has not changed compared to earlier this year. Rutte said at his weekly press conference that doubts do not understand. "The government believes Oman now sufficiently stable." read the opinion in the Volkskrant morrow contribution of Geert Wilders

Child Marriage Rate in Turkey ... 14%

Report finds Turkey’s early marriage rate at 14 percent.

Today's Zalman

The percentage of child marriages in Turkey, where one of the spouses is underage, is 14 percent, a study by the International Strategic Research Agency (USAK) has found.

Turkey has the second highest rate of early marriages among the European countries in the USAK survey, following Georgia where the percentage is 17

percent.

USAK’s report found that the highest number of child marriages can be found in Western, Eastern and Central African countries followed by South Asian counties.

The agency held a press conference on Friday to announce the details of its report “Marriage or Playing House? Early and Forced Marriages: Child Brides,” which includes the results of a study conducted by the agency.

USAK researcher Elvan Aydemir presented the results to the media. The report also includes statements and observations from experts as well as interviews with some of the surveyed.

The report found that an estimated 10 to 12 million girls are forced into marriage at an early age every year in the developing world. In Turkey, one out of every three women is married as a child bride.

USAK’s findings indicate that early marriages cannot just be explained by cultural factors or traditions and beliefs, saying that the practice is caused by a large number of factors that include socio-cultural factors, education, gender equality in society as well as wars or natural disasters.

The report says that early marriages have devastating results, both at an individual and social level. A few among these consequences are mother-child deaths, problems relating to fertility health, lack of education, violence against and exploitation of women as well as the social isolation of women, the report said.

Also See ... Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time 

According to "Today's Zaman," an English-language edition of what has traditionally been one of Turkey's most conservative newspapers (I generally don't agree with their opinion page- to put it midly), a 12-year-old Syrian bride who was married to a 35-year-old Turkish man in the southeastern Turkish city of Urfa (known for its famous dish, Urfa kebab-pictured here) has returned home to her parents.

Bedia Amori, the child bride (she is not the one actually pictured here), has claimed that her spouse Abdullah Tapan, had abused her during their very short marriage, which was never recognized by the state though it had been sanctioned by a local mosque (Turkey's state laws, in many instances, are quite ironically more progressive/secular than 'tribal laws' in rural regions).

According to "Today's Zaman," Tapan had a criminal record in the Urfa district and the groom's family had paid their future in-laws a considerable amount of money (approximately $30,000) for Amori's hand in marriage.

Amori's father ended up traveling to Urfa, which is very close to the Syrian border, and asked to get his daughter back. Local authorities soom arrested Tapan, and Amori was set free to return to Syria.

The child bride told police that Tapan drank too much alcohol and forced her to watch pornographic films.

Amori's family had assumed they were giving their daughter to a good Muslim man.

I should point out that anti-Muslim sites like jihadwatch.org love these sorts of stories, but I disagree with their political agenda as I see both extreme evangelical Christians and radical fundamentalist Muslims to be an equal political threat to secularism universally. And, though I don't practice Islam, my late father's religion, myself I do not in any way view it as a religion of evil.

Nevertheless, I am concerned that the social aims of Islamic conservatives in Turkey and elsewhere has reached its proverbial tipping point, but there are signs, at least in Turkey, that opposition movements will soon regain traction politically.

Turkey: Young Turks ... or ... Old Ottomans?