{"id":83519,"date":"2021-01-24T17:00:11","date_gmt":"2021-01-24T15:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=83519"},"modified":"2021-01-23T17:10:56","modified_gmt":"2021-01-23T15:10:56","slug":"30-00-52","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=83519","title":{"rendered":"Turkey pro-government media: \u2018Jews overrepresented in Biden Cabinet\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Turkey pro-government media: \u2018Jews overrepresented in Biden Cabinet\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

SETH J. FRANTZMAN <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
The latest claim comes on the heels of a conspiracy theory spread by a high-level AKP official that said US president Joe Biden is \u201cKurdish.\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\n

U.S. President Joe Biden signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington \/\u00a0 (photo credit: TOM BRENNER\/REUTERS)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

A\u00a0Turkish<\/a>\u00a0social media site that usually posts about armed conflict attacked Jews as \u201coverrepresented in Biden cabinet,\u201d part of a rising crescendo of antisemitism and anti-Biden media coverage in Turkey. Turkey\u2019s ruling AKP party and its president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was close to Trump and Turkish pro-government media cultivated ties with America\u2019s far-right, including the Proud Boys, often pushing conspiracy theories about Antifa and the US \u201cdeep state.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The latest claim comes on the heels of a conspiracy theory spread by a high level AKP official that said US president Joe Biden is \u201cKurdish.\u201d Turkey\u2019s has a long history of spreading populist racist rhetoric against Kurds, Armenians, Jews, Greeks and other minorities.\u00a0 Clash Report, the social media site, posted an image online on January 22 claiming to show the \u201cJews severely overrepresented in Biden cabinet. One percent of US population, more than fifty percent of cabinet.\u201d This is the kind of language that was used by antisemitic regimes to excuse discrimination against Jews. For instance Germany passed a series of \u201cnumerus clausus\u201d under the Nazis to keep Jews at only 1.5 percent of admissions to certain educational institutions. Nazism was influenced by Turkish nationalism. Adolf Hitler told Turkey\u2019s ambassador in 1939 that he was influenced by Turkey. Expert Stefan Ihrig documented how Ankara\u2019s extremism influenced Nazism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clash Report is ostensibly an open source intelligence social media site that posts about \u201cclashes.\u201d It got attention during Turkey\u2019s involvement in Syria, Libya and Azerbaijan, showing off video of Turkey\u2019s Bayraktar drone strikes. It was never clear how it obtained them but the report\u2019s tweets, which are often in English, Turkish and other languages, were widely shared, including by Washington-based think tank members and journalists who follow the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since few other Turkish media appeared to have access to such immediate drone footage from military sectors many online have suggested the opaque and shadowy Clash Report may be linked closely to Ankara, although it is not clear online because the social media site has no clear website or information about who runs it. It has 129,000 followers meaning that its posts get a lot of attention.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is clear is that on January 22 it suddenly tweeted in English, Turkish and Russian about the \u201cJewish overrepresentation\u201d in Biden\u2019s new government. It claimed that Antony Blinken, David Cohen, Avril Haines, Janet Yellen, Ronald Klain, Wendy Sherman, Merrick Garland, Eric Lander, Anne Neiberger, Rachel Levine and Alejandro Mayorkas are Jewish. The post has numerous English spelling and grammatical errors, such as referring to Sherman as \u201che.\u201d On yellen it claims that she \u201cwas one of the three Jews taking place in a commercial against Trump in 2016.\u201d It wasn\u2019t clear what this means. For David Cohen, the deputy director of the CIA, it claims that \u201che has been closely involved with Jewish affairs for a long time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While some on social media joked about the Clash Report tweet, others in Turkish took it seriously and called out the antisemitism. While some did critique the post, most did not, including the many verified followers of Clash Report. For instance the son-in-law of Turkish President Erdogan, is a follower.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the post got the most retweets in Turkish, around 206 by Saturday afternoon, it was not getting a huge response. A search of Clash Report tweets about Jews appears that this is only the second tweet to use the term \u201cyehudiler\u201d or \u201cyahudilerin\u201d in Turkish and the same was true in English, illustrating that the account had never zeroed in on Jews before and it was unclear why now it had shifted from covering \u201cclashes\u201d to \u201cJews.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It appears that the report relied on a JTA piece that was headlined \u201call the Jews Joe Biden has tapped for roles in his administration.\u201d The Clash Report repackaging of this information to claim Jews were overrepresented appeared to mischaracterize all the names as \u201ccabinet\u201d level appointees. In this sense the report relied on US media coverage of the same issue but made it appear negative.<\/span><\/p>\n

The claim of Jewish overrepresentation comes on the heels of another antisemitic article in Turkey\u2019s pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper which claimed in early January that the \u201cgreat president\u201d Donald Trump had been removed by \u201cJewish lords\u201d and that the \u201cglobal Jewish power in America has dealt another blow to Trump.\u201d The outlandish article asserted that Jews control America and were responsible for Pearl Harbor and 9\/11 and other conspiracies. These kinds of antisemitic articles are never condemned by Turkey\u2019s ruling party and many of these far-right websites are read by Turkish government officials. All critical media in Turkey has been silenced and many journalists who are critical of Erdogan are in prison or exile. This means that when Turkish media or social media accounts push antisemitism it is with the approval of the government. Antisemitism has been rising in Turkey along with conspiracies. Turkey\u2019s president also compared Israel to Nazi Germany during a speech at the United Nations in 2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other Turkish media have focused on Jewish issues recently. An Article at Salom in Turkey, a magazine that is a weekly Jewish newspaper, wrote positively about Jews in Biden\u2019s cabinet. Pro-government Anadolu wrote about how France is investigating an Imam who bashed Jews in France. According to the report Algerian-born Imam Mohammed Tatai was referred to court accused of \u201cinciting racist hatred\u201d against Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Turkey pro-government media: \u2018Jews overrepresented in Biden Cabinet\u2019 SETH J. FRANTZMAN The latest claim comes on the heels of a conspiracy theory spread by a high-level AKP official that said US president Joe Biden is \u201cKurdish.\u201d U.S. President Joe Biden signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington \/\u00a0 (photo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83519"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83519"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83538,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83519\/revisions\/83538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}