Turkey: the exceptional nation

A moving opinion article in today’s NY Times called “In Turkey, a History Lesson in Peace”:

The Jews of Turkey are also proof of the foresight and sound judgment of secular Turkey's republican founders. As Hitler's troops were marching from the Balkans and emptying Greek cities of their Jewish populations, Turkey's president, Ismet Inonu, closed its border. Tense negotiations with the Nazis ensued. Although Turkey sent Jewish men, including my father and uncles, to camps in the interior to appease the Nazis, they were only labor camps, and there is little evidence that the Turkish government made any greater concessions to Germany, which had been its ally in World War I.

That moment in Turkish Jewish history alone is a thorn in the flesh of Islamic terrorists: it underscores the peaceful coexistence of Jews and Muslims since the 15th century in a Muslim country that respects the democratic equality of citizens of different faiths and ethnicities.

There’s hope.