The Turkish Governor's "Huge Hatred"

by Burak Bekdil  •  November 29, 2014 at 5:00 am "It is shameful for a public official to make such remarks. Hate-speech and anti-Semitism have seized the state. The hate-speech often exhibited by the ruling politicians encourages public officials to follow suit." — Aykan Erdemir, lawmaker, Republican People's Party. "This governor has a lot to learn from Sultan Abdulhamid... They [Jews] are our people. This is Turkey's synagogue, not Israel's." — Young Civilians group. The governor has probably scored good points to get a future promotion for the "huge hatred inside" him. Once again, hate-speech in Turkey will not be prosecuted because it targets people who are not Sunni Muslim Turks. A view of the Great Synagogue" of Edirne, from 2010. (Image source: Wikipedia Commons/Yabancı) At the beginning of the 20th century, Edirne, a Turkish province in Thrace, hosted a prominent community of some 20,000 Jews – a larger community than the entire Jewish population of about 17,000 in Turkey today. Most of the Jews of Edirne were forced to leave the city after the pogroms of 1934. In 2000, the Jewish population in Edirne had dropped to 2 (no typo: two) people. Earlier, in the Ottoman Turkey of 1907, Sultan Abdulhamid had ordered the construction of what would become one of the world's two biggest synagogues (and Europe's biggest), known in Turkish as "Buyuk Sinagog," or the "Great Synagogue", in Edirne. As the Jews left the town, the Great Synagogue turned into a sorrowful wreck. Continue Reading Article