Unconventional alliance.. Why did European Jews sympathize with the Ottoman Empire in its war against Christian Russia?

On 26 June 2018, the EU General Affairs Council stated, “The Council notes that Turkey is moving away from EU policies, and thus Turkey’s accession negotiations have effectively stalled.”

[1] This came after years of Turkey’s attempt to join Europe starting in the nineties of the twentieth century, but Turkey’s relationship with the old continent was not always this way, but like all international relations, it has always changed with the fluctuation of political and economic interests, and the change in historical and social conditions.

In 1878, after the Berlin Conference held by the European powers at the time (Britain, France, Germany and the Empire of Austria-Hungary) with the Russian Empire to settle the Russian-Turkish war following the victory of Tsarist Russia over its Ottoman rival, the British Prime Minister at the time, “Benjamin Disraeli” returned To Britain, he is proud of the political achievement he achieved, which is saving Turkey from being divided into states by the victorious Russia, as he saw this as preserving the peace of Europe and Britain's interests in the region.

[2] British politician Lord Palmerstone said at the time that "the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire are essential to the continuation of calm, freedom, and a balance of power in the rest of Europe."

However, the political factions in Britain did not agree with “Disraeli” at the time. Rather, Britain’s position on the war quickly led to many discussions about the right of the Prime Minister to lead the country, as some British politicians saw that Britain’s position in the war was a disgrace to it, and that the British Empire should Do not stand with the "foreign barbarians".

During that heated debate, voices in the political arena accusing Disraeli of putting his Jewish affiliation before his British affiliation, which is an interesting accusation from our position today, but going back to those years makes it a logical accusation given what was known about the Jews at the time of sympathy with the state Ottoman.

[3]

In the eyes of some Europeans, Jews are a "fifth column for the Islamic East"

Benjamin Disraeli (networking sites)

Disraeli is Britain's first Jewish prime minister, and he is the only one to this day.

He was a politician from the British Conservative Party, the son of an Italian Jewish writer, and one of the first British Jews to engage in politics in the corridors of the capital, "London", due to the law that was removed in 1858 and previously stipulated preventing Jews from entering the British Parliament.

[4] Disraeli's rule represented a new social experience in Britain due to his Judaism while he was at the head of the Queen's government closely related to the Anglican Church, and his standing in the side of the Ottoman Empire during its war with the Russians added a new dimension to this experience.

Disraeli was accused first of having stood by Turkey in defiance of Russia, which persecuted the Jews at that period, and it was then said, in echoing the anti-Jewish propaganda in Europe at the time, that the Jew, no matter how entrenched in Western societies, he will remain loyal to the East.

This latter accusation may seem strange today, with the emergence of the idea of ​​the settlement project and the Zionist occupation of Palestine at the beginning of the twentieth century, and with the development of the influence of Western Jewish societies;

Today, Jewish identity has become synonymous with Western identity, but it was not the case only a century ago, paradoxically.

In his discussion of the Russo-Turkish War, British Member of Parliament Thomas O'Connor said, "One of the remarkable phenomena in this war is the phenomenon of the great sympathy shown by the Jews for the Turkish Sultan against the Russian Tsar. Different and deeply isolated, they are all now united in their feelings towards this Russo-Turkish conflict.. Over the course of many eras, more in the past than in the present, many classes of Jews were constantly found sympathetic to the Mohammedans (Mohammedan here for Muslim, a common term in European literature up to a century went), as this friendship was formed in order to confront the common Christian enemy, which is an enemy of the Mohammedans as much as he is hostile to the Jew. The Jews were the friends of the Mohammedans in the Crusades, and in Spain the Jews were the constant allies of the Moors in their confrontation with the Christians.

[5]

These views were not confined to the political class alone, but were also adopted by intellectuals and historians such as JA Froude, Edward Augustus Freeman, and Goldwin Smith.

However, Disraeli’s Jewish identity does not fully explain the role Britain played in this war, as he applied his policies in defending Turkey against Russia, British and Christian men in the end, and one of the goals at the time of Britain’s assistance to the Ottoman Caliphate was purely strategic despite the propaganda that focused Exclusively on the existence of a link between the Judaism of "Disraeli" and his foreign policy, and was based on what is known and popular about the closeness of the Jews to the Ottomans at the time, and the negative view that many Christian Europeans held for the Jews at that time.

Disraeli, who thought of volunteering in the Ottoman army

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed the beginning of the weakening of the Ottoman Caliphate, and the European powers - especially Britain - saw that this fall might affect European stability, as the disintegration of a superpower in Europe the size of the Ottoman Empire opens the door wide to the expansion of neighboring countries, and new divisions and wars, This was not in the interest of Britain, which saw the stability of Europe as the most important factor in its economic prosperity.

[6] On the other hand, Britain saw that the Russian attack on Turkey would open the way for Moscow to compete economically in the Mediterranean, and in its ports and roads towards India.

Therefore, it was necessary for Britain to help the Ottoman Empire through economic support and negotiations so that the latter would come out of this war with minimal losses, which is what Disraeli succeeded in.

On the other hand, the accusations leveled by political opponents against "Disraeli" about his loyalty to his Judaism before his homeland Britain and his belonging to the East were not mere propaganda.

Disraeli really took an interest in and loved Eastern and Islamic culture, which is what his writings reveal to us.

In one of his novels, Disraeli wrote on the lips of the protagonist: "Why don't we study the East? It is certain that in the pages of the history of the Persians and the Arabs we can discover new sources of emotion, and new harbingers of imagination. sacred nature.”

Disraeli revealed not only his love for the East in his writings, but also in his actions, as he thought of his youth to volunteer in the Ottoman army, which reflects the view of Jewish public opinion towards Islam and the Ottoman Empire at the time.

[7]

More than two hundred years before the occurrence of these events, the Jewish Rabbi “Isaac Sarfati” sent a message urging European Jews to immigrate to Turkey, saying: “I assure you that Turkey is a country that lacks nothing. Here everyone lives in peace under a fig tree and with his dinner, Here you are allowed to wear the most valuable clothes as you like, unlike what we live under the rule of Christians where we cannot choose what to wear for our children, for fear of insults and beatings. So is it not better for us to live under the rule of Muslims?”, This message came against the background of what the rabbi knew “Serfeti” stems from the increasing persecution of the Jews in Germany, from which he himself emigrated in 1453. [8]

Prime Minister Disraeli's "conservatism", of course, was not spared some racist propaganda coming from the camp of liberals, who accused him of ignoring the rights of Ottoman Christians who did not share their faith.

It should also be noted that the sympathy felt by liberal British politicians towards the Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and wishing to be independent from it;

It was behind their desire to see the rapid disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.

The conservative "Disraeli", like other conservatives, accused them of being drawn to humane tendencies that have no place in politics, as the investigation of the Ottomans' oppression of Christian communities that rose up against Istanbul represented a humanitarian goal for "Disraeli" away from the geopolitical goals of Britain, which mainly sought to stop the Russian advance. .

The dispute remained raging between many conservatives and liberals regarding the position on the “Eastern Question” in general, with the first group siding with the protection of Istanbul as a “great European country,” and the second group siding with the right of self-determination for the Balkan peoples.

[9] The “province” of Prime Minister “Disraeli” did not hand over

Yesterday, the Jews were in the caliphate

The sympathy of the Jews with Turkey in its war against Russia, then, came after many historical accumulations.

Most of the Jews who came to Turkey at that time to escape persecution in Europe, they are either Sephardic Jews from Spain, or Ashkenazi Jews from central and eastern Europe.

In their various experiences, the Jews noticed a difference in dealing with them under the Ottoman caliphate compared to what they suffered in Europe, where they were allowed in the Ottoman Empire to establish their own institutions, such as Jewish schools, a right that was allowed for all minorities in the Ottoman lands.

The Jews also had an influential role in the Ottoman diplomacy with Europe, in addition to the flourishing of Jewish literature at that time.

[10]

According to Bernard Lewis, “the Jews were not only allowed to settle in the Ottoman lands, but were encouraged and encouraged to stay there.”

According to Bernard Lewis, a British writer and historian of Jewish origin, “the Jews were not only allowed to settle in the Ottoman lands, but were encouraged and encouraged to stay there.”

The kinship that British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and the many Jewish classes in Europe felt towards the Ottoman Empire in its war with Tsarist Russia did not come out of nowhere, but rather came after the Ottoman Empire was the only European country that was considered safe for them.

On the other hand, European Jewish scholars and historians in this period presented a neutral view of Islam and Islamic achievements in science and philosophy, away from the biased and negative view that Europeans carried with them since the Crusades, and since the period of Muslim rule in Andalusia.

Perhaps the most prominent of these is the orientalist Gustav Weil, who became a university professor in the Arabic language, and spent some of his life in Istanbul, Cairo and Algeria, where he mastered the Arabic, Turkish and Persian languages. Then, in 1843, he published his first writing, a book on the biography of the Prophet.

Previously, books on the Prophet Muhammad (may God bless him and grant him peace) and his teachings were published in Europe, but the book "Will" was considered one of the first books that attempted to present Islamic texts to Europeans from a neutral perspective.

Will wrote after that books on the emergence of Islam, and five volumes on the history of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and his writings are among the landmarks of the West's discovery of Islam in the nineteenth century.

Before the rise of nationalist tendencies at the dawn of the twentieth century, which led to the first and second world wars, and before the crystallization of Zionism and the idea of ​​a home for the Jews;

The Jews of Europe did not see the Islamic world as their enemy, and this does not necessarily mean that they saw it as an ally. However, their experience in the Islamic astronomy in Andalusia and the Ottoman lands made them more sympathetic to Muslims in their confrontations with Europe.

This is demonstrated by the sympathy of the Jews with the Ottoman Caliphate in its war against Russia, and is confirmed by the letter of Rabbi “Isaac Sarfati” in which he wrote his meditative sentence today, centuries after it was written: “Is it not better for us to live under the rule of Muslims?”

_____________________________________________

Sources