- ANKARA (AFP) - Cheap cover
prices and a rise in nationalist sentiment have made an unlikely best-seller
in Turkey of Adolf Hitler's infamous autobiography, "Mein Kampf",
analysts here say.
-
- The book was first published here in 1939, when Axis
and Allied countries were competing for Turkey's soul as they tried to
woo it away from the neutrality it would maintain until the very end of
World War II.
-
- But since January, the book has sold more than 50,000
copies and is number four on the best-seller list drawn up by the DetR
bookstore chain.
-
- "'Mein Kampf' has always been a sleeper, a secret
best-seller," said Oguz Tektas of Mefisto editions, one of several
publishing houses to re-release the book Hitler wrote while in jail in
1925. "We took it out of the closet for purely commercial reasons."
-
- His company's sole aim, he stressed, was "to make
money," which they did by slashing the cover price.
-
- "Mein Kampf," published by about a dozen companies
over the years, always sold at a fairly steady annual rate of about 20,000
at some 20 New Turkish Lira (YTL -- 11.3 euros or 15 dollars) a copy.
-
- The Mefisto edition retails at 5.90 YTL (3.3 euros or
4.5 dollars) and sold 23,000 copies in two months.
-
- The readership?
-
- "Those who want to know about a man who wreaked
death and destruction on the world," Tektas said.
-
- "Mostly young people," said Sami Kilic, owner
of the Emre publishing house, another company on the "Mein Kampf"
bandwagon, which sold 26,000 copies from a run of 31,000 released in late
January.
-
- "The times we live in have a definite impact on
sales," Kilic said. "It is an astonishing phenomenon."
-
- He linked interest in the book to Turkey's bid to join
the European Union, seen by the right-wing as a desertion of national values,
and rising sentiment against the United States and its ally Israel over
the treatment they are perceived here as meting out to the Iraqis and the
Palestinians, respectively.
-
- "This book, which does not contain a single ounce
of humanity, unfortunately appears to be taken seriously in this country,"
political scientist Dogu Ergil complained in a recent newspaper interview.
-
- He agreed that the unexpected popularity of "Mein
Kampf" in this Muslim-majority country has its roots in a rise in
anti-American sentiment sparked by the occupation of Iraq and anti-Semitism
resulting from Israel's Palestinian policy.
-
- "Nazism, buried in the dustbin of history in Europe,
is beginning to re-emerge in Turkey," he warned.
-
- But despite what the sales may imply, Turkey has never
been an anti-Semitic country -- on the contrary, it has been a safe haven
for Jews ever since the 15th century, when Sultan Bayezit II first took
in Spanish Jews fleeing the inquisition.
-
- Throughout Ottoman times and the republic proclaimed
in 1923, Jews fleeing pogroms and extermination camps were always welcome
in Turkey.
-
- Silvyo Ovadya, the head of Turkey's Jewish community,
said he was "troubled" by the book's popularity.
-
- Ovadya told AFP he was "astonished a 500-page book
that sows the seeds of racism and anti-Semitism can sell at such a low
price."
-
- But, he said, his complaints to the publishers have gone
unheeded.
-
- Most of Turkey's 22,000 Jews -- out of a total population
of 71 million -- live in Istanbul, where there are 18 synagogues.
-
- In November 2003, two of them were targeted by car bombs
blamed on an Al-Qaeda linked organisation, killing 25 people and wounding
hundreds of others.
|