Anti-Turkish sentiment

Bishop Johann Faber of Vienna claimed, "There are no crueler and more audacious villains under the heavens than the Turks, who spare no age or sex and mercilessly cut down young and old alike and pluck unripe fruit from the wombs of mothers.

[9] Martin Luther, the German leader of the Protestant Reformation, took advantage of these fears by asserting that the Turks were "the agents of the Devil who, along with the Antichrist located in the heart of the Catholic Church, Rome, would usher in the Last Days and the Apocalypse".

[12] Spurred by this argument, the Portuguese Empire, seeking to capture more land in East Africa and other parts of the world, used any encounter with the "Terrible Turk" as "a prime opportunity to establish credentials as champions of the faith on par with other Europeans".

A book by the parish priest Erland Dryselius of Jönköping, published in 1694, was titled Luna Turcica eller Turkeske måne, anwissjandes lika som uti en spegel det mahometiske vanskelige regementet, fördelter uti fyra qvarter eller böcker ("Turkish moon showing as in a mirror the dangerous Mohammedan rule, divided into four quarters or books").

In a Swedish schoolbook published in 1795, Islam was described as "the false religion that had been fabricated by the great deceiver Muhammad, to which the Turks to this day universally confess".

The second, intended for use against the Muslim Ottomans, fired square bullets, designed by Kyle Tunis, which were believed to be more damaging and would, according to Puckle's patent, convince the Turks of the "benefits of Christian civilization".

As Bernard Lewis expressed it: "In the Imperial society of the Ottomans the ethnic term Turk was little used, and then chiefly in a rather derogatory sense, to designate the Turcoman nomads or, later, the ignorant and uncouth Turkish-speaking peasants of the Anatolian villages."

He is no Turk, no savage, he will assure you, but an Ottoman subject of the Sultan, by no means to be confounded with certain barbarians styled Turcomans, and from whom indeed, on the male side, he may possibly be descended."

[33] In 1924, the Iraqi Turkmen were seen as a disloyal remnant of the Ottoman Empire, with a natural tie to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's new Turkish nationalist ideology emerging in the Republic of Turkey.

[38] Several presidential decrees and directives from state security and intelligence organizations indicate that the Iraqi Turkmen were a particular focus of attention during the assimilation process during the Ba'th regime.

The largest concentration of Iraqi Turkmen tended to be in the de facto capital of Erbil, a city in which they had assumed prominent administrative and economic positions.

[49] In March 2000, the Human Rights Watch reported that the KDP's security attacked the offices of the ITF in Erbil, killing two guards, following a lengthy period of disputes between the two parties.

[65] Syrian Turkmen occupied a low rung on the societal ladder, as reported by Al Bawaba, it was stated that Assad always sought to benefit his politically dominant Shiite religious minority.

Emirati diplomat Anwar Gargash then added, "The sectarian and partisan view is not an acceptable alternative, and the Arab world will not be led by Tehran or Ankara.

[70] According to Fatma Müge Göçek the main reasons for anti-Turkish sentiment in Western Europe are Armenian genocide denial and the role of Turkish migrant workers in the economy.

[80] On 25 December 1984, close to the town of Benkovski, some 3,000 Turkish protesters from the nearby smaller villages confronted Bulgarian security forces and demanded to have their original identification papers back.

In a report by Atanas Kadirev the head of the Ministry of Interior Forces in Kardzhali stated "It was interesting how they endured the entire water from the fire fighters' cisterns".

[87] These events led to the beginning of the revival of the Turkish minority identity in Bulgaria and protests took place in some of the bigger settlements in the southern and northern Turk enclaves.

[79] This led, a few years later, to the biggest exodus in Europe since World War II: After the Bulgaria–Turkey border was opened in June 1989, approximately 350,000 Turks left Bulgaria on tourist visas in the span of three months.

[94] The vice president of the Party of European Socialists, Jan Marinus Wiersma, said Borisov had "crossed the invisible line between right wing populism and extremism".

[139] The report also noted that "the tone of Dutch political and public debate around integration and other issues relevant to ethnic minorities has experienced a dramatic deterioration".

Its commander Ratko Mladić made his infamous statement at the same day, which has been used against him during International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, while he and his entourage posing for cameras with the town in the background:[162][163][164] Here we are, on July 11, 1995, in Serb Srebrenica.

Finally, after the Rebellion against the Dahis, the time has come to take revenge on the Turks in this region.Anti-Turkism first appeared in the United States during World War I, when the Armenian genocide began and was reported by American newspapers.

[165] These reports had reinforced a sense of solidarity to Armenians and increasingly anti-Turkish rhetorics in the United States, with the Turks being equally seen as a barbaric people.

[166][167] As a result of the increasing Anti-Zionist and antisemitic sentiment by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and growing Israeli assertiveness, in particular toward the issue over the Armenian genocide, Turkish-Israeli relations have been greatly damaged.

[170][172] On 10 February 2023, Israeli top rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu claimed that the earthquake that devastated Turkey was "a divine punishment" because the Turkish government had "defamed" Israel.

[182] The film has been accused of Islamophobia for the vilification of Mehmed II and for portraying the figure of Vlad the Impaler as a hero even though, according to Turkish journalist Elest Ali Korkmaz, he "indiscriminately killed Turks and Bulgarians" in real history.

In her 1991 book Turkish Reflections: A Biography of Place, Mary Lee Settle wrote: 'The Turks I saw in Lawrence of Arabia and Midnight Express were like cartoon caricatures, compared to the people I had known and lived among for three of the happiest years of my life.

'[184] Pauline Kael, in reviewing the film for The New Yorker, commented, 'This story could have happened in almost any country, but if Billy Hayes had planned to be arrested to get the maximum commercial benefit from it, where else could he get the advantages of a Turkish jail?

)'[185] One reviewer, writing for World Film Directors, wrote: "Midnight Express is 'more violent, as a national hate-film than anything I can remember', 'a cultural form that narrows horizons, confirming the audience's meanest fears and prejudices and resentments'.