User:Bonico91

Turks were mistaken for Jews Turks in Nazi Germany: A Blind Spot in Turkish-German Studies November 9, 1938, is a significant date in both German and Turkish history. That day witnessed the pogrom against Jews in Austria and Germany that signalled the beginning of the Holocaust. That same day the young Turkish Republic lost its first leader, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who had led the Muslim side in the Greco-Turkish War (1918-1922) and established the republic in 1923, built on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. Turks in Berlin were eyewitnesses to violence against German Jews that day, and some of them were targeted by the mob because they “looked Jewish.” Tarık Emiroğlu, a Turkish student of architecture in Berlin in 1938 and 1939, mentioned in a letter to his grandmother that during the pogrom “a ruckus almost started when Turks dispersed into the street after having gathered at the {Turkish Club of Berlin’s} clubhouse upon hearing of Atatürk’s death. Seeing a lot of dark-skinned people gathering, Germans mistook the Turks for Jews who were planning a counter action and raised an uproar, but the police intervened and resolved the issue.”1 It is difficult to find mention of Turks being mistaken for German Jews in academic and popular literature on World War II. Scholars have generally overlooked the presence of Turks in Nazi Germany.