What compels Jews in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and abroad to promote a positive image of Ottomans and Turks while they deny the Armenian genocide and the existence of antisemitism in Turkey? Based on historical narrative, the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 were embraced by the Ottoman Empire and then, later, protected from the Nazis during WWII. If we believe that Turks and Jews have lived in harmony for so long, then how can we believe that the Turks could have committed genocide against the Armenians? Marc David Baer confronts these convictions and circumstances to reflect on what moral responsibility the descendants of the victims of one genocide have to the descendants of victims of another. Baer delves into the history of Muslim-Jewish relations in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey to find the origin of these many tangled truths. He aims to bring about reconciliation between Jews, Muslims, and Christians, not only to face inconvenient historical facts but to confront it and come to terms. By looking at the complexities of interreligious relations, Holocaust denial, genocide and ethnic cleansing, and confronting some long-standing historical stereotypes, Baer sets out to tell a new history that goes against Turkish antisemitism and admits to the Armenian genocide.

About the Author

Marc David Baer is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is author of The Doenme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks.

Reviews

Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks is a tour de force that is written with a backdrop of 500 years of Jewish history, spanning from when the Ottoman Empire embraced Jewish refugees fleeing Spain in 1492 all the way until today. In between those years, there were days of honey and days of onions, and as Baer shows, it was often only the sweetness we heard about, with the bitterness buried deep within the souls who suffered it, covered up by an 'utopian narrative of Ottoman and Turkish Jewish history.'

-- Louis Fishman * Turkish Studies *

In this disturbing and thought-provoking book, Marc David Baer, a Jewish American and a long-time academic scholar of Turkish Studies, bursts the bubble that the Turks throughout history were "God's rod" for the Jews, who smote the antisemitic Christians, welcomed Jews from the Spanish Inquisition and saved them from the Holocaust.

* Times Literary Supplement TLS *


Awards
Joint winner of Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prize 2021 (United States).



Book Information
ISBN 9780253045416
Author Marc D. Baer
Format Paperback
Page Count 360
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 531g