With the media abuzz over a major diplomatic feud between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, many outlets such as CNN and The Washington Post have been noticeably, and inexcusably, mum on one aspect of the confrontation: namely, Erdogan’s blatant antisemitism.
On October 26, CNN reported that French officials had denounced the Turkish leader for his actions:
The network described the impetus for the row while noting Erdogan’s accusation that Macron was mistreating Muslims by vowing to uphold France’s post-Enlightenment commitment to the principle of separation of church and state.
Macron has vowed to crack down on radical Islamism in France after the country was shaken by the beheading of Samuel Paty on October 16. Paty was a history professor who had taught a class on freedom of expression during which he used controversial caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed from satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The killing of the teacher by a suspected terrorist in a Paris suburb reignited tensions over secularism, Islamism and Islamophobia in France.
On the same day that CNN published its report, the Tel Aviv-based Times of Israel online news site ran a version of the same story under this headline:
Both outlets reported on Erdogan’s displeasure with Macron’s plan to combat radical Islam, which includes banning homeschooling and dissolving various not-for-profits such as the Hamas-linked group that was “directly implicated” in the teacher’s murder.
Note, however, that CNN failed to mention the Turkish president’s comparison of France’s decision-making process to that of the Third Reich:
You [the French] are in a real sense fascists. You are in a real sense the links in the chain of Nazism.
Even when media organizations did, seemingly en passant, touch upon the matter, its gravity was not emphasized. Consider this excerpt from an article in The Washington Post:
In a televised address, he [Erdogan] appealed to Muslims to boycott French goods out of solidarity with their brethren in France, whom he said were “subjected to a lynch campaign similar to that against Jews in Europe before World War II.”
The obvious is left unsaid; that is, comparing the policies of a modern, liberal democracy to something akin to the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws serves to diminish the significance of the subsequent Nazi genocide of six million Jews.
In other words, the Turkish leader’s remarks were antisemitic.
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Erdogan’s Holocaust Distortions
A possible reason for the general lack of reporting outside of Israel on Erdogan’s rampant Jew-hatred is that he does not fully deny that the Holocaust occurred. Instead, the Turkish leader is more subtle, distorting the real horrors of the tragedy in a way that minimizes or misrepresents the known historical record.
For example, Erdogan last year suggested that Israel was perpetrating a Holocaust in the Gaza Strip. In response, the Jewish state’s then-foreign minister tweeted the following:
There is no other way to interpret Erdogan’s crude and vile words – it is antisemitism, clear cut. This is proof that the responsibility of #HolocaustRemembrance is more relevant now than ever.
— ????? ?”? Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) September 24, 2019
And, in 2018, the Turkish leader compared Israel to Nazi Germany and accused the former of committing a “cultural genocide” against the Palestinian people:
Today, the Palestinians are subjected to pressures, violence and intimidation policies no less grave than the oppression done to the Jews during WWII.
Espousing such a twisted view necessarily feeds into antisemitic tropes, according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), whose Honorary Chairman Yehuda Bauer once said: “A half truth is worse than a full lie.”
And the media, at best, is telling a half truth about Turkey’s leader.
Related Reading – Defining Bias #5: Selective Omission
Media Glossing Over Erdogan’s Antisemitism
By omitting details about Erdogan’s long sordid history of antisemitic outbursts, the media is, at the very least, guilty of sloppy reporting. If, by contrast, there is a motivating factor behind the move, then news outlets are effectively legitimizing Erdogan’s repeated use of rhetoric that all-too-often translates into violence against Jews and citizens of the State of Israel.
The implications are profound when considering former Turkish parliamentarian Dr. Aykan Erdemir’s warning:
Erdogan’s state-sanctioned antisemitic propaganda will continue to haunt Turkey long after he is gone from office. The hate and prejudice inculcated in the Turkish people for almost two decades will have lasting effects in hindering Turkish-Israeli relations and will take time and effort to reverse.
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Feature Image: Spotlight via Shutterstock; Emmanuel Macron and Recep Tayyip Erdogan via Wikimedia Commons.
