Turkey and Turkish Jews in France: 1940-1944

Abstract

Turkish diplomats saved Turkish Jews living in France from certain death during World War II. The Anglophone part of the world was ignorant of this fact until Stanford Shaw first revealed the historical data in 1995. Up until that time, this important piece of history had been ignored by historians. However Shaw suggested that the actions of Turkey’s legations were part of a well articulated policy formulated by the Turkish Foreign Ministry with the blessing of the government in Ankara. Not long thereafter, those acts of heroism and decency mentioned by Shaw were revealed in detail with the underlying presumption that at very minimum the Turkish diplomats were given guidance to act from Ankara. The totality of recent findings of contemporaneous documents from various US government archives attest to the fact that the intervention in behalf of French Jews with Turkish origins was not the policy of the Government of Turkey at all but the determined undertaking of members of the Turkish diplomatic corps in France who acted on their own against the extant policy of their own government and that of the US and the UK. In fact, from the outset of these actions the Turkish government had to be prodded and pushed to acquiesce from outside of Turkey not from within. With their deeds the diplomats risked the wrath and ire of their own government as well as the governments of Germany and Vichy France. At all times they risked their careers and often their lives finding no solace among diplomatic peers representing western countries. After Turkish Ambassador Behic Erkin’s forced departure from Vichy, the removal of Turkish Jews from France to safety in Turkey greatly diminished.