About ten years ago, caricatures of “Sultan Erdoğan” were popular in the Western European press. President Tayyip Erdoğan, who was trying to pull the Turkish Republic into the orbit of Russia and Iran with a neo-Ottoman and political Islamist policy, was seen as the antithesis of the West. The antipathy was so strong that, during
A few hours after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared a war against the “new anti-Semitism” while trying to hold back tears at the Reichenbachstrasse Synagogue in Munich on September 16, world-renowned Turkish pianist and composer Fazıl Say made a clear statement on what is meant by this “new anti-Semitism” definition. Say, who has experienced the

