Turkey denies media reports on alleged probe on country’s Jews

Turkey has strongly rejected media reports that it had launched a probe into some of the country’s Jewish citizens on the grounds that they had collaborated with Israel in the deadly 2012 raid on the Mavi Marmara flotilla which killed nine Turkish citizens.

"There has never been anti-Semitism in any part of our history and there will never be. Racism does not exist in the culture and the tradition of the Turkish nation. Turkey has repeatedly said it considers anti-Semitism and racism as crimes against humanity, " Selcuk Unal, a spokeperson with the Turkish Foreign Ministry, said in response to a question on Saturday.

Unal said legal procedures had been underway to identify possible perpetrators of the Mavi Marmara incident, adding that those legal procedures had nothing to do with Turkey’s "Jewish community who are equal citizens and an integral part of our society."

Saturday, December 22, 2012