Reviewing a Biography of the Life of Ishak Alaton

Justin Paul

 The two-part biography of İshak Alaton is a gripping account of how resilience can overcome the capricious whims of prejudice often faced by ethnic and religious minorities.  Alaton was a well-known industrialist from the Turkish Jewish community, and these two books do his vibrant life tremendous justice.  “An Essential Man” and the longer “A Redundant Man” are both written in an accessible first-person style that resembles having a private chat with a wise man.  The sweep of the two books is tremendous as they cover aspects of his personal life, his business career, and his social and philanthropic endeavors. The major theme running through the texts is how Alaton was able to succeed professionally in the new religiously and ethnically homogenized Turkish state of the 20th century.  Alaton passed away in 2016. 

The first book starts off with a discussion of his father’s childhood in the small Jewish community of Ankara which developed in the early Republican era. Alaton’s father was deeply committed to the new Republic and did not allow the use of Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) at home. Alaton describes his father as a Turkish nationalist, who was eager to contribute to the young Republic, and with pride, mentions that his father even met Atatürk. His family also helped other Jews who found themselves marooned in Turkey.  Alaton’s sense of Jewishness was more cultural than religious, but his mother’s side of the family in Ankara always reminded them of the need to perform religious obligations. 

  The event that would shatter Alaton’s world would be what happened to his father under the so-called “Wealth Tax” in 1942, which was directed at non-Turkish minorities (Greeks, Jews and Armenians) to “Turkify” the economy. Vast arbitrary sums of money were demanded from members of these communities, which in most cases was far more than their actual income. When the tax bill was first sent to Alaton’s home his father thought it was a mistake, but to his horror, he learned that this shakedown was all too real.  Alaton’s father, like many other, was imprisoned in a labor camp at Aşkale in eastern Turkey, and Ishak says his father aged 40 years in just one year in this work camp and never truly recovered his zest for life afterwards.  Alaton was also pulled out of public schools at this time because his father felt he would experience less bigotry in a private school, so he attended Lycée Saint Michel.  This Lycee is based in the Feriköy neighborhood of Istanbul, and its founding date of 1886 makes it the 2nd youngest of the six French high schools in the city.  

Alaton credits his interest in philosophy as being cultivated during his time at Saint Michel.  However, he was not interested in a personal vendetta from this time period, as he wrote: “I don’t ask anything from anyone, I’m not a poor or oppressed man. I am bringing up this issue because I don’t want the state to carry the burden of this sin anymore.” For Alaton the cruelty of the wealth tax should not be used as a bloody rag used to denigrate Turkey as a whole, but as a lesson to prevent any arbitrary cruelty directed at minorities further. Alaton spoke fondly of his mandatory military service period in which his knowledge of French was useful for getting a position as a translator.  He also learned English through working with an American military officer stationed with the Turkish troops. 

Ishak Alaton would go on to Sweden in the 1950s to work in welding.  He would later parlay that into an engineering job before establishing his company Alarko back in Turkey.  The dark winds of ethnic chauvinism would still follow his family even after the Wealth Tax.  Alaton mentioned that his brother Bonjur left Turkey after the anti-Greek riots of 1955, and did not return.  Bonjur kept his contacts with Turkey to a minimum.  Ishak Alaton was a secular person and would “marry out,” his wife was of Swedish Lutheran descent who would assimilate into Turkish society.  Despite Alaton’s success in business, he emphasized that money was not a key to personal happiness and how it was important not to spoil his two children.  Alaton conveyed that as his own father never recovered from his post imprisonment depression, he did not convey trust or confidence to him as the years went on.  He earned from this and always tried to impart trust to his own two children.  In 1971, in the post-military coup era, Alaton was denounced by a jealous neighbor who was angry about a house he had purchased.  He was accused of being an antique smuggler because the police had confused some artifacts he had purchased as stolen property. Alaton opined that artefacts are not truly valued in Turkey, but that they have become politicized.  

The second book, “A Redundant Man,” is the longer of the two texts and it goes into more detail about his personal contacts and professional endeavours. Alaton talked with humility about the “willingness to become redundant,” by which he means the ability to pass the torch to the next generation with grace. The first portion of this book has many aphorisms about how to find personal peace and success at work.  The next portion of this book gets more interesting with more personal anecdotes.  The spirit of the wealth tax still haunts these pages, as Alaton waxed lyrically on how that tax and future Turkish governmental policies against entrepreneurship stifled economic openness until the 1950s.  He offered many interesting insights into the leaders of the Turkish political class, whom he inevitably came into contact with as a prominent businessman.  

The most intriguing of these recollections arises in the passage in which he recounts the friendship between his business partner Üzeyir Garih and the conservative religious politician Necmettin Erbakan.  Garih had been an assistant to Erbakan when he was an engineering professor, and Alaton bluntly sums up their relationship “To Erbakan, Garih wasn’t Jewish.”  Here we see the triumph of personal relationships over narrow ideological blinders.  Alaton also addressed the fact that he never did any business with Israel.  It’s not clear that he specifically avoided Israel, only that it wasn’t at the forefront of his business plans.  But Alaton states clearly that he feels very Turkish and did not have any dual national attachment.  This stems from his overarching philosophy that rejected religious or ethnic identity politics.  

Other interesting stories include Nelson Mandela rejecting an award from Ankara because of his objections to Turkey’s policy in the Southeast. Alaton was directly involved in this as he was an honorary consul to South Africa at this time.  He then discusses how he took “an active role” in promoting Tansu Çiller as Prime Minister because he was proud to have a female leader but he said was hurt by an insulting question asked by a Turkish journalist whether he was “selling Ciller.”   There’s even a surprising story about a left-wing versus right-wing dispute at his factory between workers which was actually solved by the right-wing nationalist leader Alparslan Türkeş; who had come to the factory and admonished one of his own supporters who worked there for upsetting the balance at the factory.  The book then features a mixture of commentary about major political figures that Alaton came across in his career and public life, including Deniz Baykal, Bülent Ecevit, Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Süleyman Demirel.  What is interesting about these observations is that Alaton did not come across as gossipy or as a man trying to settle scores.  These comments reveal a man who had a deep passion for pluralism and for fostering a dynamic and inclusive Turkey.  

Alaton also took great pride in the work he did to help set up the think tank TESEV, but was hurt by anti-Jewish comments made to him after some members of the press did not like TESEV’s liberal proposals regarding the Kurdish language.  He also noted that his group got money from George Soros, that man who would go on to become a bogeyman for many conspiracies minded people around the world over the next two decades. In the ’90s, Alaton claimed that the Open Society Foundation was indeed open and transparent about its funding.  Alaton’s sense of otherness would be compounded by the reaction to the murder of his colleague and business partner Üzeyir Garih.  Garih’s murder, which was committed by his chauffeur, when Garih was visiting a Muslim cemetery was certainly unusual in its context.  Some degree of lurid speculation may have been inevitable, however unfortunate.  But the fallout and media frenzy led to chatter that Garih may have been a Muslim convert or involved in a secret Jewish society or involved on a “sexual quest.” 

All these forms of gossip and slander hurt Alaton.  Alaton emphatically decried: “A Jew is allowed to go by a grave in a Muslim cemetery.”  Some even worse gutter journalism was written to smear Garih after his murder and Alaton did not shy away from personally criticizing journalists who engaged in these smears. Alaton stated that it took him two to three years to accept Garih’s death due to the brutal manner in which he was killed. He said his sense of time was reinvigorated, and his need to feel like he wasn’t wasting time was paramount.  One contrast between the two business partners was that Garih had been more of a workaholic and had not always been able to take time off without feeling guilty.  Alaton’s sense of the need for balance was enhanced after this grisly murder of his dear friend.

Alaton continues with some interesting reflections on Turkey’s Jewish community, which he says never fully accepted him. One source of contention would emerge out of the controversy about a film that explored the trauma of the Wealth Tax.  Alaton tried to work with the filmmaker Tomris Giritlioğlu about the Wealth Tax entitled “Salkim Hanimin Tanleri” (Mrs. Salkim’s Diamonds).  He could not get the Chief Rabbinate’s permission to film in major synagogues because the Jewish community leaders were afraid of “damaging their relationship with Ankara.”  So the script was changed to make the family Armenian and not Jewish.  Of course, it is true that Turkish Armenians were hit with the same tax, but Alaton expressed frustration with the failure of the Turkish Jewish community to want to raise their voices about how they were affected.  He claimed that Turkey’s other minorities; the Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians were more vocal in raising their grievances than Turkey’s Jews. 

Nonetheless, many of Alaton’s statements and impressions display contentment and he claimed there is no systematic hostility to Jews in Turkey.  It is curious that he said this a mere two pages after mentioning that he and his partner were denied a tender for a project at Atatürk  Airport because they were Jewish.  Alaton’s ability to feel accepted despite the blowing of headwinds of bigotry spoke to his generosity of character.  There is no doubt that Turkey has been good to Alaton personally and professionally, and he stated it was his duty to improve Turkey’s image.  He also added that he was touched by the general response from the state after the 2003 synagogue bombings, in which he felt solidarity whereby the murdered Turkish Jews were accepted fully as Turks.  Alaton was not prone to self-pity, nor did he see his identity solely or primarily in religious or ethnic terms.  Even within the broader community of Turkish Jews, one senses that İshak Alaton was an outsider and he said he didn’t always feel “appreciated” by the Turkish Jewish community. As Alaton advanced in age his broader engagement with Turkish society did not shrink. He felt the business group TÜSİAD should be used to promote liberal reforms within society and sometimes was criticized for his dedication to these principles.  

Alaton also used his platform to bring to light some of the hidden tragic quarters of history.  Most touching was his involvement in raising awareness of the Struma.  This was a ship from the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta, consisting largely of Romanian and Bulgarian Jews with a Bulgarian crew, that was denied landing permission in Istanbul during World War II.  It was not allowed to go to British Mandatory Palestine because proper approval was not given by London to the Turkish authorities for its transfer.  As competing bureaucracies dithered, time ran out for the poor refugees. The ship was towed out into the Black Sea and then exploded, most likely due to a Soviet torpedo.  Most of the people on board were killed in the blast, but 100 or more drowned in the cold waters.  Alaton actively helped a British documentary crew who made a film about this in 2001.  He invited the only survivor of this ship, a man named David Stoliar to Turkey.  Stoliar had settled in Bend, a small town in central Oregon, and had never been back to the site of the tragedy.  It was an emotional reunion for him to come back to the scene of his unlikely solitary survival, but quite meaningful. For Alaton, this was coming full circle, as he was a teenager when the ship sank and he and his community vividly remembered the event. 

Today the Turkish government has an annual commemoration for the Struma and we can infer that Alaton’s work in bringing this tragic event back into the light helped contribute to that.  At the same time, Alaton notes with regret that the British documentary on the Struma did not air on Turkish TV.  When discussing this event, Alaton also mentioned the tragedy of 146 Azeri dissidents who were deported back to the Soviet Union by the Ismet İnönü government.  They would later be killed by the totalitarian Soviet state. Its intriguing juxtaposition shows Alaton was always aware of various forms of suffering across multiple communities.  He did not try to make one form of suffering of a community more important or more worthy of commemoration than others.  In an era when many engage in tribal moral bookkeeping by creating a hierarchy of victims, İshak Alaton’s broad-mindedness offers a refreshing counterpoint to this trend.  

The book ends with general reflections in which Alaton reiterated that goods and property are not real legacies, but books are because they continue imparting knowledge.  At age 85 he stated he wanted to “steer the rudder of his sailboat towards eternity.”  The lessons of Alaton’s life are manifold and the way he was able to thrive in a society despite being a member of a minority group is impressive.  These books illustrate that he aged with a graceful philosophy without falling prey to melancholy.  Alaton kept hoping for a liberal pluralist Turkey, and he was not jaded despite personally facing prejudice on the basis of being a minority in his own life.

The two books share a format of small headers before each section, which enhances its accessibility. “An Indispensable Man” and “A Redundant Man” chronicle İshak Alaton’s journey with depth and breadth and thanks to Nicole Pope’s translation we have a wonderful look in English at one of the most remarkable figures in 20th-century Turkish public life.  He wrestled with life’s challenges and achieved success whilst retaining a warmth, humility and deeply compassionate humanist outlook.  There are those today who are keen to besmirch and smear Turkey’s Jewish community.  They might begin to reconsider their toxic biases by reading this book and learning from Alaton’s words and deeds about this extraordinary man’s genuine social commitment and love for Turkish society.

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Justin Paul has a background in History, Law, and English Language Teaching. Originally from Milwaukee, he lived most recently in St. Paul, Minnesota, and then in Kadikoy municipality of Istanbul. He is currently based in Columbus, Ohio.