Dozens of Jewish graves vandalized in 600-year-old Turkish cemetery

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JTA — Dozens of Jewish graves were damaged or destroyed in the 600-year-old cemetery in Istanbul’s Hasköy district last week, the Turkish Jewish community announced via Twitter.

“Our Hasköy cemetery was broken into at midnight and 36 of our headstones were destroyed,” the community’s official Twitter account said last Thursday. The Turkish Jewish weekly Şalom Gazetesi later put the number at 81. arrested as soon as possible.”

The incident prompted a rapid response at the highest level. Ibraham Kalin, the spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, strongly condemned the vandalism in a tweet, calling it a “heinous attack”.

“We will never allow those who attack sacred values ​​and try to sow seeds of conflict and enmity in our society,” he added.

Shortly after, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu tweeted that two suspects had been arrested and detained by Istanbul police. Turkish media reported that they were children.

Several other prominent members of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) intervened to condemn the vandalism, as did the leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party.

As Turkish-Israeli relations reach their most optimistic point in the past decade, Erdogan has embarked on what many have seen as a charm offensive, supporting the renovation of synagogues and Jewish heritage sites around Turkey. .

However, members of the leftist, predominantly Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) raised the issue in the Turkish parliament, asking AKP leaders whether the vandalism was the result of Erdogan’s government’s intolerance.

“Isn’t the heinous attack on the Hasköy Jewish cemetery the result of a culture of hate? asked Garo Paylan, an HDP MP from Diyarbakir, Turkey’s most populous Kurdish city, addressing his questions to Vice President Fuat Oktay. “What will you do to stop hate speech that causes hate crimes against minorities [including Jews and Christians]?”

Paylan, who is of Armenian descent, has also been outspoken in support of Turkey’s Armenian minority and against denial of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan listens to his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi during their joint press briefing at Saadabad Palace in Tehran, Iran, July 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

The vandalism comes just over a month after the Israeli government warned its citizens to avoid Istanbul due to a threat of violence from Iranian terror cells in retaliation for the killing of a Security Guard colonel. revolution. Israel has since downgraded the warning after Mossad and Turkish intelligence worked together to neutralize the threat.

Although public anti-Semitism — from politicians, religious leaders and the national media — is not unheard of in Turkey, attacks on local Jewish community sites are rare. The community experienced synagogue bombings in 2003 and 1986.

Sitting along the shores of Istanbul’s famous Golden Horn – the entrance to the Bosphorus through which all the wealth of the Ottoman Empire flowed – Hasköy was home to 25,000 Jews until the 1950s, when the Jewish exodus from ‘Istanbul has started in earnest. No Jews still live in the neighborhood today.

According to Şalom, the Istanbul Municipality has pledged to restore all damaged tombs.

“We condemn him, we are sorry. We hope such situations will not occur,” Turkish Chief Rabbi Isak Haleva said in a statement. “Our government will do what is necessary. Don’t disrespect the dead. We believe that the state will solve this problem.

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