Insight Turkey
Insight Turkey
Challenging ideas
On Turkish politics and International affairs

Author

İdris Demir

İdris Demir
Turkey’s Modernization: Refugees from Nazism and Atatürk’s Vision
April 1, 2009
“Turkey’s Modernization” is about the German-speaking Jewish academics and artists who looked for and found shelter along the Bosporus during the difficult times of the Third Reich and World War II. Reisman indicates that there was a brief and shining moment in the early 1930s when providence sent a group of the most active, intelligent and dedicated people alive from Germany and Austria to Istanbul to push and pull Turkey into the modern age. The story of these Jewish émigrés is one of the least known episodes of World War II in non-Turkish, non-German-speaking countries. In fact, even in Turkish and German-speaking countries, the conditions under which Turkey provided a secure base for the émigré professors and their contributions to the advances in various scientific disciplines on a world scale are not well enough appreciated.

We use cookies in a limited and restricted manner for specific purposes. For more details, you can see "our data policy". More...