Cevat Rıfat Atilhan

Cevat Rıfat Atilhan

Cevat Rıfat Atilhan (* 1892 in Vefa , Istanbul , † February 4, 1967 in Turkey) was a prominent Turkish author, journalist, publicist and general. He was chairman of the Executive Committee of the Congress of Islamic States , the predecessor organization of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation . Cevat Rıfat Atilhan was an anti-Semite and an admirer of Adolf Hitler .

Life

Cevat Rıfat Atilhan spent his early childhood in Damascus . His father Rıfat Pasha was the Mutessarif of Damascus. Cevat went to elementary school in his native Istanbul. Then he began with the military high school Kuleli Askerî Lisesi . He then graduated from the military academy .

Cevat Rıfat fought in the Balkan Wars , World War I and the Turkish War of Independence . The National Assembly awarded him the title of “Militia General”.

Atilhan began to work as a journalist in the late 1920s and published his first anti-Semitic work in 1929 . In 1933 he became an employee of the Izmir magazine İnkılâp , which was banned by the Turkish authorities in autumn 1933. Atilhan Millî founded İnkılâp (National Revolution) as the successor body , which was banned in 1934.

In 1933 In Izmir Atilhan met the German Jew Karl Kindermann , who opened the doors to influential Nazis in Germany for him that same year.

In 1942 he was imprisoned for 11 months for alleged coup plans against the then government of Ismet Inönü . Atilhan was released after an investigation by Fevzi Çakmak . In 1952 he was imprisoned for 11 months and 5 days as the person responsible for an attempted assassination against Ahmet Emin Yalman in Malatya .

Since 1946 he wrote in the two Islamic magazines Sebilürreşad and Büyük Doğu . He was one of the founding members of the Millî Kalkınma Partisi (“National Resurrection Party”) in 1945 and the “Turkish Conservative Party” ( Türk Muhafazakar Partisi ) in 1947.

At the beginning of February 1948, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini , Cevat Rifat Atilhan gave his consent to the formation of a Turkish legion that was to take an active part in the fight against the Jews in Palestine. Atilhan took an active part in the fight against the Jews in Palestine with this legion.

In 1951 he founded the anti-Semitic İslâm Demokrat Partisi (“Democratic Party of Islam”).

In August 1964 he was invited to the Congress of Islamic States in Somalia , where he was elected chairman of the organization's executive committee. This was the last office of his life. He died of a heart attack in 1967.

Act as an anti-Semite

In Athilan's view, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which he himself witnessed, was the result of a conspiracy by Jews, Freemasons, and Dönme . He made the ritual murder legend the subject of his works and spread that Jews kidnapped children to drink their blood. It is therefore not surprising that Athilan was one of the admirers of the German National Socialists and tried to spread their anti-Semitic ideas, such as those represented in the Striker in particular , in Turkey.

Atilhan's contacts in National Socialist Germany

Cevat Rıfat's contacts with the National Socialists are undisputed. However, there are very different opinions about its intensity and its beginning. It is certain that Atilhan stayed in Germany in 1933/1934 and came into contact with Julius Streicher . It is also certain that he maintained contacts with Ulrich Fleischhauer and published them under the pseudonym Djev in his world service as well as in the striker as Cev . However, neither Berna Pekesen nor Hatice Bayraktar could find out how the contacts between Atilhan and the Germans came about. The German Jew Karl Kindermann, of all people, claimed this “merit”, who enjoyed a certain protection from the Nazis because of his emphatically anti-communist propaganda.

→ Main article : Karl Kindermann

Kindermann's remarks indicate that Atilhan received more ideological than material support from the National Socialists, because apparently he was already plagued by financial problems in Berlin. Bayraktar also found that “no state authority or authority established by the NSDAP within Germany financed Atilhan and its anti-Semitic ventures”, and there was “no reason to believe that employees of the German embassy had the desire or the means, Atilhan to support him in founding and publishing his anti-Semitic magazine ".

At least in the “U. Bodnung-Verlag "in Erfurt in 1934 Atilhans writing The beautiful Simi Simon , in which, the publishing announcement," the Jewish spy portrayed gripping on the Turkish front during the [first] World War ", and a number of anti-Semitic caricatures of Philipp Rupprecht appeared both in the striker and in the Millî İnkılâp . Bayraktar assumes "that the Turkish newspaper did not simply copy the drawings from the German magazine, but that there was cooperation between the two press organs". In addition, Bayraktar also refers to evidence that suggests "that butcher Atilhan in the summer of 1934 by printing a Millî İnkılâp edition, just as he had anti-Semitic leaflets printed in Erfurt distributed in large numbers in Budapest two years later. This in turn would explain why Atilhan not only spoke of a circulation of 15,000, but even the New York Times spoke of the 'distribution of 10,000 copies' of the anti-Semitic magazine. "

Fleischhauer's Welt-Dienst also organized anti-Semite congresses . This gave Atilhan another platform for its own activities. He claimed, "that he and Streicher took part in an anti-Semite congress on March 4th in the Munich Hotel 'Königshof'". Bayraktar found no confirmation of this, but found an 'anti-Semitic and Pan-Aryan World Congress' planned by Fleischauer in consultation with Streicher for September 1934 in Nuremberg. “Shortly before the party congress of the NSDAP, he [Fleischhauer] originally wanted to hold an anti-Semite congress in Nuremberg on September 8th. When the party headquarters in Munich got wind of it, Hitler had the meeting forbidden through Hess. Fleischhauer was suggested to bring the participants of the congress to Erfurt. The meeting was then combined with a similarly oriented event, which was planned for September 24, 1934 in Brussels. A Belgian health resort was chosen for the congress, where the participants exchanged ideas from September 22nd to 26th, 1934. The aim was to break away from locally anchored anti-Semitism and to establish cooperation across national borders. The meetings were organized conspiratorially. The National Socialists supported the Erfurt activities, but did not want to appear officially as a sponsor. ”Atilhan had already traveled to Germany at the beginning of August 1934 to participate in the congress planned for Nuremberg and wanted to use the opportunity to establish his contacts with German government agencies and To intensify business circles. In a short biography in Turkish he is described as President of the Congress of 1934, but there is no further evidence for this.

Whether Atilhan actually returned to Turkey from Germany to "found a Turkish Nazi organization there", as Corry Guttstadt writes, or whether Karl Kindermann "thwarted an intended Hitler coup in Turkey" by setting up an Atilhan intended for Hitler. Translating paper from French into German against the intentions of its author must remain as an open research question. On the other hand, other Atilhan actions mentioned by Guttstadt appear less dubious: “In front of the gates of the University of Istanbul, he distributed swastika badges and painted some Bosporus steamers with Nazi symbols. However, he found no response with his actions. "

The magazine Millî İnkılâp and its influence on the 1934 Thrace pogrom

For its less than one year existence, the magazine Millî İnkılâp triggered a comparatively large response in its research into the causes of the Thrace pogrom of 1934 . Their anti-Semitic agitation, which was oriented towards the striker , culminated in articles “in which, for the first time in the history of the Turkish press, excessive hostility towards Jews was carried out. The Millî Inkilap described himself as one exuberant nationalist ' (Taşkın milliyetçi) political magazine and forbade by a signature on the second page, take ad orders of Jews. It published press articles and caricatures from the striker , but also in-house productions that mainly dealt with the 'treasonous activities' and the 'Judgment of Turkey'. ”This profile of the magazine led to the question of whether it was anti-Semitism imported from Germany was the mouthpiece of Atilhan and his magazine, which prepared and triggered the Thrace pogrom. This thesis goes back above all to the publicist Avner Levi, who said that "the anti-Jewish riots were staged by Turkish offshoots of German National Socialists," by which he meant Cevat Rıfat Atilhan and his Millî İnkılâp in the first place .

Even if Avner Levi, after Berna Pekesen, has the credit of informing a small public for the first time about the anti-Jewish excesses of 1934 in the 1990s, she nonetheless comes to the conclusion that Atilhan's postulated role in the riots at least to be put into perspective ". Like Guttstadt before, she does not see the trigger for the pogroms in Thrace in an “imported anti-Semitism”, but claims that Turkish circles “had a certain interest in making it look as if the pogrom was in Thrace and on the Aegean was provoked by Pan-Turkist anti-Semitic persons ”. Guttstadt made it clear that there was not only an ambivalent stance on the part of the Turkish government, which was manifested in the fact that it verbally condemned riots against Jews, but at the same time tolerated anti-Jewish measures or secretly suggested them. She referred to the state's denial of anti-Semitism in Turkey and to the fact that the role of the CHP and the state authorities had never been investigated during the riots. Perkesen argues in a similar way when she points out “that the Kemalist press and the institutions of the CHP ( Volkshäuser and their publications) began to deal with increasingly anti-Jewish stereotypes from the mid-1930s. As will be shown, in any case, xenophobic campaigns were carried out in the Thracian villages as early as the mid-twenties, and because of the clear presence of the Jewish population in this region, clearly anti-Jewish campaigns initiated by the student associations, the local Kemalist press and the people's houses . In their nationalistic zeal they were in no way inferior to the anti-Semitic journalism of a Millî İnkılâp . "

Against this background, Perkesen can hardly be contradicted when she states that the “conclusion that it was only the permanent agitation against Judaism in the paper Millî İnkılâp triggered the anti-Semitic attacks” is too simplistic. Hatice Bayraktar was also able to show that due to the low reception of the magazine, an initial spark of the pogroms by the Millî İnkılâp can be ruled out. She came to the conclusion that the print run of the magazine was hardly higher than 10,000 to 15,000 copies and refers to the low literacy level in Turkey at that time (1935 = 16%), from which it follows that Millî İnkılâp did not have any “noteworthy” Proportion of the population of the Thracian General Inspectorate. The Turkish historian Ayhan Aktar wrote that the magazine can hardly be ascribed the main culprit for the anti-Semitic unrest. "

Bayraktar also points to delays in implementing the government's decision to shut down the magazine, which enabled Atilhan to produce one more issue, the last of six. For them it is therefore obvious to suspect “that there were advocates of Millî İnkılâp who knew how to prevent the magazine from being closed down quickly. [..] The Turkish government must have had information about the character of the magazine after the first issue was published. The Turkish leadership has therefore deliberately tolerated the anti-Semitic articles published in Millî İnkılâp , probably because they came in very handy for political reasons, otherwise the hatred would have been banned much earlier. "Pekesen confirms these assumptions by referring to documents from the German Foreign Ministry:

“After his magazine was banned on July 11, 1934, Atilhan himself had turned to the German Embassy and asked for financial support for the publication of his book 'Suzi Libermann'. In this conversation he reported on the 'great success' of the 'anti-Jewish movement in Turkey' he led. He understood how to enlighten the armed forces and youth in particular about the importance of Judaism, and his magazine had sold well. The government had banned his paper under pressure from the Soviet embassy (!), But dealt with him very lightly in spite of all this: Ankara had informed him beforehand and allowed him to quickly publish number 6, which he was not prevented from selling will. He is now turning to the German official authorities because he presupposes a 'community of interests' in view of the anti-German attitude of the Turkish Jews. He only needs a small financial contribution, but under no circumstances does he want to be suspected of being paid by foreign sources. "

On the German side, however, this request was not complied with because it was the ambassador's maxim to "stay away from internal affairs in Turkey and instead concentrate on spreading pro-German reports in the Turkish press." Atilhan's self-overestimation this rejection by the Germans did no harm. In 1951 he boasted:

“As a result of my truthful and enthusiastic publications in the Millî İnkılâp in early 1934, the people of Thrace and the Dardanelles rightly got excited and enthusiastic. The people had repeatedly fallen victim to the swindles of a certain minority population. As a result, there was a migration movement of Jews who flocked to Istanbul in droves. "

Works

in Turkish

• Hey Turk! Düşmanını Tanı!
• İslamı Saran Tehlike ve Siyonizim
• İğneli Fıçı-Tarih Boyunca Yahudi Mezalimi-
• Masonluk Nedir? Tarihte ve Günümüzde Masonluk
• Turk Oğlu! Düşmanını Tanı!
• Bütün Açıklığıyla İnönü Savaşları ve Gerçek Kahramanlar
• Menemen Hadisesinin İç Yüzü
• Sultan Abdulhamid Han Ve İttihatı Terakkicilerin Cinayetleri
• Yahudiler Dünyayı Nasıl İstila Ediyorlar?
• Medeniyetin Batışı
• Siyonizm ve Protokolları
• Tarih Boyunca İslam Hakimiyeti ve Uğradığı Suikastlar
• Gizli Devlet ve Fesat Programı
• Tarihte ve Günümüzde Masonluk
• İslam ve Beni İsrail
• Dünya İstilacıları
• Çağ Açan Hükümdar Fatih
• 31 Mart Faciası
• Turk! İşte Düşmanın
• Musa Dağı
• Suzi Liberman'ın Hatıra Defteri (published in German 1934; see below)
• Filist Cephesinde Yahudi Casusları
• Farmasonluk Nedir? 24 Sina Cephesinde Yahudi Casusları
• Dünya İhtilalcileri İsrail
• Farmasonluk İnsanlığın Kanseri
• Farmasonlar İslamiyeti ve Türklüğü Yıkmak İçin Nasıl Çalıştılar
• İstiklal Harbi'nde Sarıklı Kahramanlar

in German language

• The beautiful Simi Simon. The Mata Hari of the Syrian Front. According to official records of Jewish espionage, Cevat Rifat Bey processed. U. Bodung-Verlag, Erfurt, 1934 (Welt-Dienst-Bücherei, Issue 1).

literature

• Erdem Güven and Mehmet Yılmazata: Millî İnkılâp and the Thrace Incident of 1934 , in: Modern Jewish Studies , Volume 13, Number 2, July 2014, ISSN  1472-5886 , pp. 190–211. doi: 10.1080 / 14725886.2014.918738
• Berna Pekesen: Nationalism, Turkishization and the end of the Jewish communities in Thrace 1918–1942 , R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-70715-1 . Mainly the chapters
  • 5 Anti-Jewish currents in the interwar period (pp. 191–197) and
  • 6 research accounts: Cevat Rıfat Atilhan and the influence of German National Socialism in Turkey (pp. 198–202).
• Berna Pekesen: The secret expulsion of the Jews from Thrace 1934 , in: Medaon - magazine for Jewish life in research and education , 4th year, 2010, No. 7, pp. 1-19.
• Hatice Bayraktar: "Ambiguous individuals with bad intentions" The anti-Semitic riots in Thrace 1934 and their background , Klaus Schwarz Verlag, Berlin, 2011, ISBN 978-3-87997-372-9 . Mainly chapters in it
  • 6 Cevat Rıfat Atilhan and Millî İnkılâp (pp. 146–177).
• Corry Guttstadt: Turkey, the Jews and the Holocaust , Association A, 2008, ISBN 978-3-935936-49-1 (pp. 169–173; 184–194).

Web links

• Books by and about Cevat Rifat Atilhan in WorldCat (65 titles)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Andrew Mango: The Turks Today. London 2004, no page number. (Quote: “Cevat Rıfat Atilhan, known as an admirer of Hitler”).
2. ↑ ^{a b} Hatice Bayraktar: "Ambiguous individuals with bad intent" , p. 155
3. ^ Karl Kindermann: Letter to Marvin Tokayer dated July 13, 1974, in: Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem: Joseph Walks Karl Gustav Kindermann Collection 1925–1997.
4. ↑ ^{a b} biyografi.net: Short biography in Turkish
5. ↑ UNITED NATIONS PALESTINE COMMISSION, DAILY NEWS SUMMARY 13, 11 February 1948 . See also the article Mufti Hails Turkish Legion , New York Times , February 10, 1948, p. 14.
6. ↑ Rıfat N. Bali: Cevat Rifat Atilhan (in Turkish)
7. ↑ Berna Pekesen: Nationalism, Turkishization and the end of the Jewish communities in Thrace 1918–1942 , p. 195, and Hatice Bayraktar: "Ambiguous individuals with bad intentions" , p. 107
8. ↑ Hatice Bayraktar: "Ambiguous individuals with bad intent" , p. 167
9. ↑ Hatice Bayraktar: "Ambiguous Individuals in Bad Intention" , p. 172. Berna Pekesen also comes to a similar assessment in Section 6 Research Account Verses : Cevat Rıfat Atilhan and the Influence of German National Socialism in Turkey in her book Nationalismus, Türkisierung und das Ende der Jewish communities in Thrace 1918–1942 , pp. 198 ff.
10. ↑ Quoted from Hatice Bayraktar: "Ambiguous individuals with bad intentions" , p. 159
11. ↑ Hatice Bayraktar: "Ambiguous individuals with bad intent" , pp. 156–157
12. ↑ Hatice Bayraktar: "Ambiguous individuals with bad intent" , p. 173
13. ↑ Hatice Bayraktar: "Ambiguous individuals with bad intent" , p. 161
14. ^ Eckart Schörle : Internationale der Antisemiten. Ulrich Fleischhauer and the “Welt-Dienst” . In: WerkstattGeschichte , Heft 51, 2009, Klartext-Verlag, Essen, p. 67. (PDF; 606 kB) . Compare also: Magnus Brechtken : “ Madagascar for the Jews”. Anti-Semitic Idea and Political Practice 1885–1945. Munich 1997, ISBN 3-486-56240-1 , p. 49 ff.
15. ↑ Hatice Bayraktar: "Ambiguous individuals with bad intentions" , p. 163 ff.
16. ^ ^{A b} Corry Guttstadt: Turkey, the Jews and the Holocaust , p. 170
17. ^ Karl Kindermann: Letter to Joseph Walk of December 14, 1976, in: Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem: Joseph Walks Karl Gustav Kindermann Collection 1925–1997. KIndermann's claim that he prevented a Hitler coup in Turkey sounds absurd because a corresponding charge against Atilhan was only brought in August 1940 (Corry Guttstadt: Turkey, the Jews and the Holocaust , p. 172) at one point in time that is, to which Kindermann had long since been able to leave for Japan with the support of the Gestapo.
18. ↑ Berna Pekesen: Nationalism, Turkishization and the end of the Jewish communities in Thrace 1918–1942 , p. 194
19. ↑ Berna Pekesen: Nationalism, Turkishization and the end of the Jewish communities in Thrace 1918–1942 , p. 198
20. ↑ Berna Pekesen: The secret expulsion of the Jews from Thrace 1934 , p. 4
21. ↑ ^{a b} Berna Pekesen: Nationalism, Turkishization and the end of the Jewish communities in Thrace 1918–1942 , p. 17
22. ^ Corry Guttstadt: Turkey, the Jews and the Holocaust , p. 184
23. ^ Corry Guttstadt: Turkey, the Jews and the Holocaust , p. 193
24. ^ Corry Guttstadt: Turkey, the Jews and the Holocaust , p. 192
25. ↑ Berna Pekesen: Nationalism, Turkishization and the end of the Jewish communities in Thrace 1918–1942, pp. 201–202
26. ↑ Berna Pekesen: Nationalism, Turkishization and the end of the Jewish communities in Thrace 1918–1942, p. 16
27. ↑ Hatice Bayraktar: "Ambiguous individuals with bad intent" , p. 147
28. ↑ Hatice Bayraktar: "Ambiguous individuals with bad intent" , p. 154
29. ↑ Berna Pekesen: Nationalism, Turkishization and the end of the Jewish communities in Thrace 1918–1942 , p. 200
30. ↑ Berna Pekesen: Nationalism, Turkishization and the end of the Jewish communities in Thrace 1918–1942 , p. 201
31. ↑ Cevat Rıfat Atilhan, quoted from: Berna Pekesen: Nationalism, Turkishization and the end of the Jewish communities in Thrace 1918–1942 , p. 201
32. ↑ The book was first added to the list of harmful and undesirable literature in 1938 by the Reichsschrifttumskammer . ( Proof in the German Digital Library )