Karel Valansi'nin kaleminden...

The stunning victory of the conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey does not pose a threat to Turkish Jewry, Turkish-Jewish columnist and blogger Karel Valansi told  The Algemeiner  on Thursday. Valansi, the political columnist for the Turkish-Jewish weekly,  Şalom , said the “public voted for security and against the instability that is perceived with governments formed by coalition.”

The victims of the Holocaust were officially going to be commemorated in Turkey – as they would be in many other countries. This was huge. And it would happen in Ankara, the heart of Turkey! We already had a Yom HaShoah, a Holocaust memorial day. The UN’s Holocaust International Remembrance Day was first commemorated in Turkey five years ago at Neve Shalom Synagogue. Last year, the commemoration was held for the first time outside Jewish institutions, at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. This year it would be held at Bilkent University in Ankara. This year was also important because the Speaker of Parliament, Cemil Çiçek, would be attending the ceremony. It would be the first time that such a high ranking official did so.