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June 23, 2010 | 1:39 pm

Wiesenthal Center Advises Against Travel to Turkey

Posted by Susan Freudenheim

Following up on our interview with R. Hakan Tekin, Turkey’s consul general in Los Angeles, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called to let us know that last week he’d called the Turkish consul with the sole purpose of letting him know that the Wiesenthal Center would be issuing a travel advisory with regards to Turkey in the wake of the Flotilla Conference. This is the text of the Wiesenthal advisory:

SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER ISSUES TRAVEL ADVISORY TO TURKEY

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is issuing a travel advisory urging its 400,000 constituent families and the Jewish community to defer any non-essential travel to Turkey.

“For 500 years, Jews have found a safe haven in Turkey, but the unprecedented campaign of escalating rhetoric demonizing the people of Israel emanating from official circles and elements of the media has created an unprecedented toxic environment which has spread fear among Turkish Jews and raises profound concerns for their safety and the safety of any Jew visiting the country,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Center.

“We will review our advisory in three months or when events warrant,”  Cooper concluded.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center previously issued travel warnings to France and Belgium in 2003 following a spate of anti-Jewish hate crimes and in 2009 to Dubai after an Israeli athlete was barred from a tennis tournament.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).

For more information, please contact the Center’s Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter page or mobile device.

2 Comments — Leave your comment

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A sad commentary on the current state of play between Turkey and Israel. But I suppose it was inevitable given the circumstances surrounding the flotilla incident and the consequent fall-out that’s been generated.

Yes, a sad but a very predictable outcome.

And that now seems to be the way of things when viewing the present relationship between Israel and the rest of the world. Israelis are becoming more predictable. For a small country, surrounded by so many opposing cultures, that feature alone may lead to its ultimate downfall.

One of the reasons Jews are accepted, if not exactly welcomed, into other societies lies in the belief that they bring with them new dimensions; they perform the function of a catalyst, a creative element not often found within the spectrum of more conventional communities.
But if that element is perceived to be no longer active, if Jews are to be considered more or less the equal of everybody else, then the case for this special relationship breaks down and the need for Jewish inclusion in human affairs becomes much less mandatory.

Time, therefore, for a little unpredictability?

http://yorketowers.blogspot.com

Comment by John Yorke on 6/27/10 at 2:44 am

Seems as if LA JJ has advised against covering the latest flotilla voyage. Why have a separate blog heading if you don’t intend to cover the story?

Comment by LanceThruster on 9/26/10 at 11:01 am

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