Kemal was a classic master of diplomatic balance. After massacring millions of Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians, he still maintained good relations with the new regime. He currying favor with the Turkish Youth Party elite by pardoning the crimes of the three pashas and using Armenian property to compensate them. During World War II, He and his successors maintained good relations with the Allies, the Soviet Union and the Nazis, and fully supported the Western camp during the Cold War. He and his successors selectively ignored the benefits of flexible diplomacy in the face of the people, and attributed Turkey’s prosperity to some abstract, inherent excellent qualities of the Turkish nation, rather than flexible diplomacy. This gave birth to generations of nationalist young people, and finally gave birth to Erdogan. It is difficult to say that Erdogan and Kemal are opposites. They are just two sides of the same coin. Of course, this is something that neither Kemal nor Erdogan’s supporters are willing to admit.
OP thinks I am talking nonsense because Kemal died in 1938, but he thinks WWII started in 1939 from poland, so Kemal had nothing to do with WWII. This is a reflection of the confused worldview of Turkish nationalists. They look down on the West, but their view of history is completely Western-centric. They naively think that WWII started in 1939, but in fact for Ethiopians, WWII started in 1934, and for most Chinese, WWII started in 1931.
zloekloe on
Well, probably now more than a thousand scientists, doctors, and lawyers from Palestine and Lebanon have been accepted and settled in Turkey, right?
locknessuhyret on
Smart move
Tammer_Stern on
Turkey gets a lot of criticism in the current social media but has an amazing history and still does some great things today.
rah67892 on
You mean: before the Erdogan era? Since he is in charge, it all goes south…
Chewmass on
They surely came in handy for Turkey, since most of their academics, lawyers and doctors mysteriously vanished one decade earlier.
Let’s not forget they also committed a genocide against Kurds not that soon after, and pretty much abandoned all of its Allie’s in the Balkan Pact, whilst also not doing anything to help Liberate Greece and support the Soviets well after it became clear the Nazis were going to lose the war and had zero capability to attack Turkey.
They only declared war on Germany diplomatically, and to lesser the blame for doing almost nothing. And this is all while Turkey is being managed as a one party dictatorship, about as free as the Soviet Union, because Ataturk and his successor held some very authoritarian views that a country can only be managed by a small group of elites, united under one nationality and can only speak one language in public, even more authoritarian than the USSR under Lenin, who let minorities govern themselves to an extent.
But this is just another view. Ataturk did do amazing things for Turkey. But it’s really lucky we went through a timeline where İsmet İnönü gave up power, he even rigged the first multi party election, otherwise Turkey would probably be more comparable to Syria today, albeit a lot wealthier under US support.
Beneficial_Nerve5776 on
🇹🇷🤝🏼🇮🇱🤝🏼🇦🇿
Don’t be fooled by the Islamofascist Erdogan and his supporters. Real Turks support Israel’s fight against terrorism. We should take Israel as an example in the fight against terrorism.
wojtekpolska on
Too bad they only cared about the intellectuals that would be useful, the average Jewish person wouldn’t be so lucky to live in Turkey at that time.
Turkey was the only country not part of the axis to implement anti-jewish laws.
>Prior to joining the Allied Powers late in the war, Turkey was officially neutral in World War II. Despite its neutrality, Turkey maintained strong diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany during the period of the Holocaust. During the war, Turkey denaturalized 3,000 to 5,000 Jews living abroad; between 2,200 and 2,500 Turkish Jews were deported to extermination camps such as Auschwitz and Sobibor; and several hundred confined in Nazi concentration camps. When Nazi Germany encouraged neutral countries to repatriate their Jewish diaspora, Turkish diplomats received instructions to avoid repatriating Jews even if they could prove their Turkish nationality.
>In 1939, Prime Minister Refik Saydam stated that Turkey “would not accept masses of Jews, nor individual Jews who were oppressed in other countries”.
Even when Germany wanted to get rid of Turkish Jews living in their land by sending them back to turkey, Turkey refused:
>When Nazi Germany encouraged neutral countries to repatriate their Jewish citizens in the so-called repatriation ultimatum (*Heimschaffungsaktion*) in late 1942, Turkish diplomats received instructions to avoid repatriating Jews even if they could prove their Turkish nationality.
While other neutral countries frequently intervened on behalf of their Jewish citizens living in German-occupied Europe, historian Corry Guttstadt found that “scarcely any records of Turkish interventions on behalf of Turkish Jewish citizens can be found”. According to French historian Claire Zalc, while it was possible for Turkish authorities to intervene successfully on behalf of Turkish Jews, “such interventions were rare, and they soon stopped altogether”.
Turkey also obstructed Jews traveling trough Turkey to the British Mandate of Palestine:
>During the 1940s, around 10,000 Jews obtained transit visas enabling them to pass through Turkey on the way to Mandatory Palestine. Turkey imposed limits on these visas, issuing them only to be valid for ten days, which meant they were unusable whenever wartime conditions led to delays. Guttstadt found that “during the decisive years of 1942 and 1943, the flight through Turkey was largely blocked” and the majority of these Jews passed through Turkey in late 1944 after the Allies captured southeastern Europe.
This paragraph sums all of this up pretty well: **[TL:DR]**
>According to the research of historian Rıfat Bali, more Turkish Jews suffered as a result of discriminatory policies during the war than were saved by Turkey. Since the war, Turkey and parts of the Turkish Jewish community have promoted exaggerated claims of rescuing Jews, using this myth to promote Armenian genocide denial.
EDIT: Just so you know, it’s not like i hate Turkey, i think they are fine people, but it’s important to remember the whole story so it doesn’t happen again. Sadly Turkey has never really been good with minorities living in their country…
PS: If you downvote, then tell me why, because i would really like to know if you believe this is false and why so. Perhaps you could use your knowledge to update the linked wikipedia page correcting any errors.
10 Comments
Kemal was a classic master of diplomatic balance. After massacring millions of Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians, he still maintained good relations with the new regime. He currying favor with the Turkish Youth Party elite by pardoning the crimes of the three pashas and using Armenian property to compensate them. During World War II, He and his successors maintained good relations with the Allies, the Soviet Union and the Nazis, and fully supported the Western camp during the Cold War. He and his successors selectively ignored the benefits of flexible diplomacy in the face of the people, and attributed Turkey’s prosperity to some abstract, inherent excellent qualities of the Turkish nation, rather than flexible diplomacy. This gave birth to generations of nationalist young people, and finally gave birth to Erdogan. It is difficult to say that Erdogan and Kemal are opposites. They are just two sides of the same coin. Of course, this is something that neither Kemal nor Erdogan’s supporters are willing to admit.
OP thinks I am talking nonsense because Kemal died in 1938, but he thinks WWII started in 1939 from poland, so Kemal had nothing to do with WWII. This is a reflection of the confused worldview of Turkish nationalists. They look down on the West, but their view of history is completely Western-centric. They naively think that WWII started in 1939, but in fact for Ethiopians, WWII started in 1934, and for most Chinese, WWII started in 1931.
Well, probably now more than a thousand scientists, doctors, and lawyers from Palestine and Lebanon have been accepted and settled in Turkey, right?
Smart move
Turkey gets a lot of criticism in the current social media but has an amazing history and still does some great things today.
You mean: before the Erdogan era? Since he is in charge, it all goes south…
They surely came in handy for Turkey, since most of their academics, lawyers and doctors mysteriously vanished one decade earlier.
Here is a more detailed [page](https://anyedenwarren.medium.com/albert-einstiens-letter-to-ismet-inonu-ab55ee4ec5db) about how Albert Einstein wrote to the Prime Minister Ismet Inonu about the 40 Scientists and how Mustafa Kemal Ataturk allowed even more Scientist and Scholars to seek asylum in newborn Republic of Turkey.
Edit: typo
Let’s not forget they also committed a genocide against Kurds not that soon after, and pretty much abandoned all of its Allie’s in the Balkan Pact, whilst also not doing anything to help Liberate Greece and support the Soviets well after it became clear the Nazis were going to lose the war and had zero capability to attack Turkey.
They only declared war on Germany diplomatically, and to lesser the blame for doing almost nothing. And this is all while Turkey is being managed as a one party dictatorship, about as free as the Soviet Union, because Ataturk and his successor held some very authoritarian views that a country can only be managed by a small group of elites, united under one nationality and can only speak one language in public, even more authoritarian than the USSR under Lenin, who let minorities govern themselves to an extent.
But this is just another view. Ataturk did do amazing things for Turkey. But it’s really lucky we went through a timeline where İsmet İnönü gave up power, he even rigged the first multi party election, otherwise Turkey would probably be more comparable to Syria today, albeit a lot wealthier under US support.
🇹🇷🤝🏼🇮🇱🤝🏼🇦🇿
Don’t be fooled by the Islamofascist Erdogan and his supporters. Real Turks support Israel’s fight against terrorism. We should take Israel as an example in the fight against terrorism.
Too bad they only cared about the intellectuals that would be useful, the average Jewish person wouldn’t be so lucky to live in Turkey at that time.
Turkey was the only country not part of the axis to implement anti-jewish laws.
From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_and_the_Holocaust):
>Prior to joining the Allied Powers late in the war, Turkey was officially neutral in World War II. Despite its neutrality, Turkey maintained strong diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany during the period of the Holocaust. During the war, Turkey denaturalized 3,000 to 5,000 Jews living abroad; between 2,200 and 2,500 Turkish Jews were deported to extermination camps such as Auschwitz and Sobibor; and several hundred confined in Nazi concentration camps. When Nazi Germany encouraged neutral countries to repatriate their Jewish diaspora, Turkish diplomats received instructions to avoid repatriating Jews even if they could prove their Turkish nationality.
>In 1939, Prime Minister Refik Saydam stated that Turkey “would not accept masses of Jews, nor individual Jews who were oppressed in other countries”.
Even when Germany wanted to get rid of Turkish Jews living in their land by sending them back to turkey, Turkey refused:
>When Nazi Germany encouraged neutral countries to repatriate their Jewish citizens in the so-called repatriation ultimatum (*Heimschaffungsaktion*) in late 1942, Turkish diplomats received instructions to avoid repatriating Jews even if they could prove their Turkish nationality.
While other neutral countries frequently intervened on behalf of their Jewish citizens living in German-occupied Europe, historian Corry Guttstadt found that “scarcely any records of Turkish interventions on behalf of Turkish Jewish citizens can be found”. According to French historian Claire Zalc, while it was possible for Turkish authorities to intervene successfully on behalf of Turkish Jews, “such interventions were rare, and they soon stopped altogether”.
Turkey also obstructed Jews traveling trough Turkey to the British Mandate of Palestine:
>During the 1940s, around 10,000 Jews obtained transit visas enabling them to pass through Turkey on the way to Mandatory Palestine. Turkey imposed limits on these visas, issuing them only to be valid for ten days, which meant they were unusable whenever wartime conditions led to delays. Guttstadt found that “during the decisive years of 1942 and 1943, the flight through Turkey was largely blocked” and the majority of these Jews passed through Turkey in late 1944 after the Allies captured southeastern Europe.
This paragraph sums all of this up pretty well: **[TL:DR]**
>According to the research of historian Rıfat Bali, more Turkish Jews suffered as a result of discriminatory policies during the war than were saved by Turkey. Since the war, Turkey and parts of the Turkish Jewish community have promoted exaggerated claims of rescuing Jews, using this myth to promote Armenian genocide denial.
EDIT: Just so you know, it’s not like i hate Turkey, i think they are fine people, but it’s important to remember the whole story so it doesn’t happen again. Sadly Turkey has never really been good with minorities living in their country…
PS: If you downvote, then tell me why, because i would really like to know if you believe this is false and why so. Perhaps you could use your knowledge to update the linked wikipedia page correcting any errors.