2017 model bigotry: Turkey not Charlottesville

Since last week's horrific scenes of white supremacists and Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, which resulted in deadly violence, American friends familiar with polarization in Turkish society in recent years keep telling me now they understand our despair. I agree with them to a certain extent in terms of drawing similarities between worrying political tendencies of the masses in Turkey and the U.S., but only to a certain extent. 

History unfolded differently in Turkey. Modern Turkey does not have a memory of a civil war, which enforced the state to equally treat different groups of citizens. Yet the Republic carried all societal complexities of the Ottoman Empire to this day, without accomplishing the truly equal treatment of different ethnic and religious groups.  

Indeed, the moral flaws in terms of the treatment of religious minorities in Turkey were strikingly outlined in the U.S. State Department's annual religious freedoms report, published a few days ago. One might reasonably argue that the U.S. is hardly in a position to dictate moral obligations to other nations when it is struggling to clean its own backyard. But I still find these reports useful in coming to terms with our bitter realities. After all, we Turks have a tradition of burying our heads in the sand rather than confronting the ugly truth ourselves. 

We might not have well-structured Neo-Nazi groups in Turkey, but Jews continue to express concern about anti-Semitism and increased threats of violence throughout the country. Remember how the first Jewish wedding held in 41 years at the newly renovated Grand Synagogue in Edirne triggered anti-Semitic attacks on social media. Comments such as "Kill the Jews" and "It's such a pity that Hitler didn't finish the job"...