Buy Turkey’s submission

Wars are not only fought with bullets and rockets. They can be very successfully fought by something you carry with you every day. Even if you’ve never worn a military uniform in your life.

Your wallet.

Turkish Jews arrested for being related to an Israeli

On Erev Yom Yerushalaim, 4th June, the story broke that three Jewish citizens of Turkey were taken into police custody and interrogated for nine hours. Their alleged crime? They were related to a Jewish Israeli border policewoman living in Israel. There are now calls for Turkey to enact draconian laws that strip dual Turkish-Israeli citizens of their Turkish citizenship, and that they be immediately deported for life, alternatively given lifetime prison sentences.

For being related to an Israeli Jew.

The Turkish regime has a long history of vicious antisemitism, disgraceful anti-Israel policies, and overt attempts to subvert Israeli sovereignty – the infamous attempted invasion of Israeli maritime and land borders by the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara is just one such case of many.

Economic blockades can work both ways. Make sure they do.

Last month the Turkish regime announced a total blockade on all exports to and imports from Israel. In direct contravention of legally binding agreements. As always when it comes to Islamist regimes, agreements are only upheld as long as they favor the Islamists.

The time has come to fight back. Robustly.

And it does not require a single bullet, rocket, missile or other act of violence.

Your weapon: not a gun, but your wallet

Use your wallet and credit card with care. The already teetering Turkish economy, which is reeling from record-breaking inflation and mass unemployment, will collapse as a result of your response. Provided every one of you reading this piece does what is right by the democracy that is Israel, to counter the onslaught of the autocratic theocracy that is Turkey.
Just follow a simple list of Do’s and Dont’s.

Do:

Buy Israeli-made products – foods, airline travel, hotel stays, software, cosmetics, wines, award-winning single malt whiskies (yes, you read right) clothing, footwear and much, much more of internationally renowned quality. Come to Israel and spend both your holiday and your money here and you’ll be spoiled for choice with good-quality Israeli-made alternatives.

Don’t:

Buy anything made in Turkey. You may be shocked at just how much you can impact the Turkish regime’s economy by making morally empowered choices.

Don’t fly Turkish Airlines. However attractive the price. For every ticket you buy from them, you are literally pumping more money into the racist enterprise that is the Turkish regime. The regime that openly supports the mass-murdering Islamist Hamas terror organization while ostracizing both the democratic Jewish state of Israel and individual Jews because they have relatives in Israel.

Don’t just avoid Turkish products – tell the sales staff you won’t buy from a racist state.

Don’t buy your next car without carefully checking it isn’t made in Turkey. This includes models made by Renault, Dacia, Ford, Hyundai, Toyota and others. Once you have verified that the model you were intending to buy is made in Turkey, such as the Toyota Corolla or C-HR, don’t just choose a different model – make sure to tell the salesperson that you are actively going to choose a different make or model because you do not wish to support the racist state of Turkey. Choose wisely and you can often buy the exact model of your choice but made in a different country, just not Turkey – all you have to do is to take the trouble to check the build origin.

Don’t buy any white goods – refrigerators, freezers, ovens, stoves, air-conditioners, fans, electronic gadgets etc – with a Bosch, Siemens, Beko, Indesit or Silverline label without first checking where they were actually made. Made in Germany? Fine, buy it. Made in Turkey? Leave it – but only after telling the salesperson why you couldn’t possibly support products from a racist country.

Don’t buy clothes with a Zara, H&M, Mango, Adidas, Nike, Gap, Levi’s, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Marks & Spencer (M&S) or Next label without first checking exactly where the item was manufactured. Again, if it was made in Turkey, leave it and look for an alternative product or one of these same brands but made in a different country, always telling the sales staff that you could not bring yourself to buy products made in a state run by a racist regime.

Don’t buy any fruits or vegetables grown or packaged in Turkey. Tomatoes, dates, cucumbers, figs, quince, artichokes, grapes – the list is endless. And your ability to decimate the sale of Turkish produce is also endless – just use your wallet or credit card wisely. What’s important is not just where the produce was grown – even if it was grown elsewhere but packaged in Turkey, avoid it. You want to impact every single aspect of Turkish industry.

Above all, don’t visit Turkey for a holiday. Not least, because your personal security as a citizen of a democratic Western nation cannot be guaranteed in this Islamist mob-ruled state.

Buying non-Turkish isn’t complicated, and it takes mere seconds

Buying non-Turkish isn’t complicated. It isn’t even particularly time-consuming. The country of origin is clearly labelled on the packaging or the product. Whether you are in the market for a pair of sneakers or a car, it’ll add mere seconds or minutes to your purchasing process. And you will come away knowing that you have made a moral choice that supports democracy and undermines a racist autocratic theocracy.

In Turkey, you wouldn’t be allowed to read this blog

In case none of the above arguments is convincing enough: After China (population 1.4 billion), Turkey (population 85 million) has the dubious distinction of imprisoning the highest per capita number of journalists in the world. This means that if the Turkish regime had its way, you wouldn’t be reading this blog.

Because I would be in prison, jailed for being a Jew with family in Israel. A crime made exponentially worse by the fact that I am criticizing the Turkish regime – a capital crime.

Hold onto your wallet until you make wise moral choices. Buy Israeli, don’t buy anything Turkish. Check the labels carefully before wielding that credit card.

Use your wallet with moral discretion

As Jews, as people of moral and principle, as believers in democracy and ethics, we should buy from democracies where rule of law is the norm. Democracies like Israel. We should not spend a single cent in a regime where racism, misogyny, terrorism, blackmail and the illegal occupation of Cyprus are the power base of a band of hatred-mongers.

Collectively we can crush the aggressive power base of the racist Turkish regime. It’s up to each and every one of us to decide whether this existential threat is one we wish to fight, or whether we’ll turn a blind eye to the steadily encroaching Turkish hegemony over increasing aspects of our Jewish and democratic lives, even as they constantly increase their pressure on us as Jews and believers in democracy.