Mick Hartley

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A Turkish Race

Turkish TV recently showed Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah”: the first time a film about the Holocaust has been broadcast on public television in a Muslim country. How would Iranian Al-Alam TV cover this delicate subject? Surely the public in another Islamic nation can't really care about such things? – can they?

Well, they spoke to their Turkish expert, Ibrahim Aqbab, who was able to clarify:

Interviewer: Under the title of the Holocaust myth – or the so-called Holocaust – the Israeli entity occupied Arab and Islamic countries, and plundered the lands of other countries as well. It has tormented many nations, and is almost ruling the world by evoking the sentiment of the West, claiming that a certain injustice was done to it. I'd like to ask about the response of the Turkish public to the official distribution of this production.

Ibrahim Aqbab: I don't think there is any support among the public for this film. But as I've said, there are documents that show that the Jews who were annihilated in Germany were Turkish Jews who immigrated from Iran to Germany centuries ago. There was a Turkish race that was annihilated among them. That's why Turks sympathize with [the victims of] this annihilation in Germany. This I cannot deny.

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3 responses to “A Turkish Race”

  1. Martin Adamson Avatar
    Martin Adamson

    He is referring to the story, or legend of the Khazars.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars
    The idea that the Khazars converted en masse to Judaism is central to many modern anti-semitic ideologists: if the majority of European Jews are descended from a Central Asian people, the historic link with Biblical Israel is broken

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  2. Dom Avatar
    Dom

    Well, I read the article that MA pointed to above, and found this:
    “The theory that the majority of Ashkenazi Jews are the descendants of the non-Semitic converted Khazars was advocated by various racial theorists and antisemitic sources in the 20th century, especially following the publication of Arthur Koestler’s The Thirteenth Tribe.”
    Then I read about The Thirteenth Tribe, and found this:
    “… Koestler told French biologist Pierre Debray-Ritzen he was convinced that if he could prove that the bulk of Eastern European Jews (the ancestors of today’s Ashkenazim) were descended from the Khazars, the racial basis for anti-Semitism would be removed and anti-Semitism itself could disappear.”
    I think I’m going to stop reading the internet now. It’s getting too confusing.

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  3. Sadie Avatar
    Sadie

    I have some filing to do under Area 51 and aliens.
    Note to self:
    Add Aqbab, Khazar story and selected others to large metal trash bin of science fiction history.
    Purchase lighter fluid.
    Light match.

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