“A Sephardi Turkish Patriot: Gad Franco in the Turmoil of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic”, by Anthony Gad Bigio* — book review

Anthony “Tony” Gad Bigio has written a spellbinding book. What began as a simple family history project, ended with a book that weaves the life story of his grandfather, Gad Franco, into a broader tale of Turkey’s tumultuous political transition from empire to republic in the first half of the 20^th century.

Through an impressive exercise in archival research, Tony has turned a family history project into a profound reflection on questions of identity and belonging for minority populations everywhere. Tony is the only grandchild of Gad Franco, a member of the Sephardic Jewish diaspora which had settled in the Ottoman Empire. He became a respected lawyer, outspoken journalist (in Ladino, French and Turkish), social activist, leader of the Jewish community, and a member of the secular Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) Party which spearheaded the 1908 Young Turks Revolution. For decades, he vehemently opposed the nascent Zionist movement as antithetical to Jews fully integrating into multiethnic, democratic polities worldwide.

From exile in France, Gad returns to Turkey in 1922 as Ataturk’s victory heralded the end of the Ottoman empire and the beginning of a secular and democratic Turkish Republic. Gad becomes an integral member of the negotiating team for the 1923 international Peace Treaty of Lausanne which enshrined “the protection of the life and liberty of all inhabitants of Turkey without distinction of birth, nationality, language, race, or religion” as well as freedom of movement and emigration, full civil and political rights for all citizens and freedom of language for commerce, press and private use.

In the decades to follow, he remains a champion of legal, judicial, and economic reform, celebrating, for example, the 1926 adoption by Turkey of the liberal Swiss civil code, producing a four-volume Guidebook of Civil Law over the next ten years, and publishing the Journal of Juridical Studies into the 1940s.

However, Ataturk’s initial vision of a secular and modernized Turkey is soon overshadowed by his authoritarian consolidation of power and by countervailing conservative forces of ethno-nationalism. This leads to increasing dirigisme and discrimination against minorities throughout the 1930s, including purging university faculty and the civil service, as well as cracking down on minority schooling and language use. Despite exceptional closeness to the dominant Muslim community, the Jewish community is not spared.  Nonetheless, Gad “clung to the defense of the rule of law as the most cherished achievement of the Republic” according to his grandson.

In 1942, Parliament passes a Wealth Tax Law with highly discriminatory rates for minority populations (e.g. 179% of revenues for Jews, 232% for Armenians). Ostensibly to crack down on illegal activities, the Wealth Tax actually is designed to destroy minority businesses and seize their assets. An inability to make full payment and vocal resistance lead to Gad’s arrest at age 60, followed by a torturous stint in a forced labor camp, shoveling snow for hours on end.

Eventually, under US pressure, Turkey releases Gad and the other minority prisoners. He returns to Istanbul a broken man, described by his son as “morally, financially and physically finished.”

In these final chapters of Gad Franco’s life, he is bitter and disillusioned. Denied an exit visa for three years, Gad travels to Palestine in 1946. In ill-health, he later returns to Istanbul where he dies in 1954. Before his demise he publishes an article entitled “Mea Culpa” in which he repudiates his early stance against creation of a Jewish state.  He writes:

“…I thought that the adoption of the Constitution would be a sufficient guarantee against all injustice and arbitrary acts, and that consequently minorities in general and Jews in particular would have found in the Constitution a solution to all their problems…”

He then looks at the events of WWII and the political evolution of Turkey and concludes “…no written law would ever be sufficient guarantee against racial and religious discrimination, and that consequently, the idea of a national refuge for the Jewish people represented the only solution.”

Thus, he comes full circle in believing that he—and Turkey’s dwindling Jewish community—will never be allowed to fully integrate into their homeland.

Gad never meets his namesake, his only grandson. In researching his life, Tony has written an important story.  I, as an Ashkenazi Jew—steeped in the history of the European Holocaust—found this to be an essential and complementary narrative: an eye-opening history of the Sephardic Jewish community in Turkey. Beyond this, it speaks to the repression of other ethnic minorities throughout Turkey’s modern history. And it raises important questions about identity and belonging for minority populations around the world, particularly with democracy in retreat and populism on the rise once again.

I loved this book and learned a great deal of history. I highly recommend it. If I have one further wish, it would be that the author reflect more towards the end of the book on how his grandfather’s journey shaped his own sense of identity and belonging, as well as his perspectives on democracy and rule of law. But isn’t this how a wonderful book should end: leaving the reader intrigued and wanting more?

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* Anthony Gad Bigio has served as a senior urban specialist at the World Bank for two decades and as a lead author for the IPCC. Subsequently a graduate professor of urban planning at George Washington University and an international urban advisor, he now pursues his personal writing projects.

** Ellen Goldstein is a former Country Director in Europe and Asia who writes, teaches, and coaches on foreign aid policy and leadership in development.

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KEYWORDS   biography, discrimination, minorities, Sephardi, Turkey