Why is Dr. Oz Silent As Erdogan Calls Jews Nazis?

My friend Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is running for Senate in Pennsylvania, could at once silence all critics of his relationship with the world’s most vocal antisemite, Turkish President Recep Tayipp Erdogan, with a single tweet of exactly 280 characters:

I’m proud of being Turkish-American & possibly the first Muslim Senator in US history. While I applaud Pres Erdogan’s new outreach to Israel, I repudiate & utterly condemn his prior antisemitic comments especially likening Israel’s leaders to Hitler & calling Israel a Nazi state.

With that the Jewish community would know definitively that we have nothing to worry about with regards to Dr. Oz’s years-long relationship with the Turkish tyrant who regularly calls Jews “Hitler.”

The great mystery is why Mehmet won’t get anywhere near criticizing Erdogan.

Dr. Oz is arguably the first candidate in American history to run for the Senate as a citizen both of the United States (he was born in Cleveland) and a foreign nation, Turkey. For me, there is nothing wrong with his dual citizenship even as Dr. Oz has, under immense pressure during the Republican primary, said that he would renounce his Turkish citizenship if elected.

While he claims to have been unaware of this fact, Ted Cruz was a citizen of Canada, but once elected gave up that citizenship. No one was particularly troubled by Cruz being a Canadian. Canada’s Prime Minister never calls Israel a Nazi state and does not falsely accuse Israel of a holocaust of the Palestinians. Canada is not an oppressive Islamist theocracy. But the people of Turkey, a once proud Islamic democracy that was a model to the world, now suffer under the brutality of one of the most world’s most oppressive regimes.

Likewise, the Turkish people always showed friendship to Israel and the Jewish community. They are not responsible for Erdogan’s evil. Indeed, they are its victims. Dr. Oz, who is running to be a Senator in the freest country on earth, has a responsibility to be their champion and to be Israel’s friend.

Yet he steadfastly refuses to condemn the brutality inflicted by Erdogan on Turkey.

For the Jewish community, more importantly, why hasn’t Dr. Oz, who has a long relationship with Erdogan, not made it clear he utterly repudiates his repulsive, nauseating and stomach-turning antisemitism?

Mehmet, who voted in the Turkish election in New York is 2018 and has held public dinners with Erdogan in New York, suddenly went silent on his prior support for Israel throughout his nearly entire Senate campaign until the very day, literally, that Erdogan re-established ties with Israel.

Was Mehmet afraid to cross Erdogan? Is that also why he won’t recognize the Armenian genocide, which is now the law of the United States?

We don’t know. And we won’t know, until Mehmet sends out just a single tweet denouncing Erdogan’s antisemitism. Let him choose his own language in how he wishes to say it. Let him soften the criticism of Erdogan.

But for some reason, he refuses. And it is irresponsible for Jewish organizations to support Mehmet until he does.

We need to know if, once elected Senator, Mehmet will stand up to the Turkish tyrant whose regular comparisons of Jews to Hitler and Israel to Nazis are dangerous. And if Mehmet doesn’t do so now, as both an American and a Turkish citizen running to be a United States Senator, it does not bode well for the future.

We need to know if, once elected Senator, Mehmet will stand up to the Turkish tyrant whose regular comparisons of Jews to Hitler and Israel to Nazis are dangerous.

How bad is Erdogan?

In July of 2014 Erdogan compared Israel to Nazis, something he does with great regularity. But this time he said the Jews are much more barbarous than even the Nazis. “[Israelis] have no conscience, no honor, no pride. Those who condemn Hitler day and night have surpassed Hitler in barbarism.”

In July of 2018 he suggested that Israel is a reincarnation of Hitler. “The spirit of Hitler, which led the world to a great catastrophe, has found its resurgence among some of Israel’s leaders,” he added, referring to Germany’s Nazi leader in the lead-up to and during World War II and the Holocaust.

Don’t be shocked. This is only the beginning.

In December of 2018 Erdogan compared Israel to Nazi Germany and said that Israel was guilty of a holocaust against the Palestinians. He accused the Jewish state of committing “cultural genocide” against the Palestinian people. He said, “Today, the Palestinians are subjected to pressures, violence and intimidation policies no less grave than the oppression done to the Jews during WWII. To us, it does not matter who the perpetrator is. Both of these are massacres, atrocities and oppressions. Shelling with bombs the children playing on the beach of Gaza is as serious a crime against humanity as the inhumane crime called the Holocaust.”

Erdogan regularly compares Israel to Hitler, as he did in the summer of 2014, during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, where Erdogan said, “Just like Hitler, who sought to establish a race free of all faults, Israel is chasing after the same target.”

He wasn’t finished yet. He said further of Israel, that “they kill women so that they will not give birth to Palestinians; they kill babies so that they won’t grow up; they kill men so they can’t defend their country … They will drown in the blood they shed.”

In May of 2021, Erdogan said, “A former Israeli prime minister in the past told me that he had the highest pleasure in his life by killing Palestinians while he was a general. He told me that while I was visiting Israel as a PM. That’s part of their nature, they only get satisfaction by sucking blood.”

In February of 2013, Erdogan said that Zionism is a “crime against humanity,” comparing it to Islamophobia, antisemitism and fascism. In this case, Erdogan is telling Jews that creating a Jewish state to protect the Jewish people is itself antisemitic.

During Israel’s 2014 war with the Hamas terrorists, Erdogan said that Israel was conducting “state terrorism” and its efforts were a “genocide attempt” against the Palestinians  He also warned that “if Israel continues with this attitude, it will definitely be tried at international courts.”

Likewise, after the Gaza war Erdogan again compared Israel to the Nazis and said the Jewish state is guilty of a holocaust. In an address to summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, he compared Israel to Nazi Germany, saying that “there is no difference between the atrocity faced by the Jewish people in Europe 75 years ago and the brutality that our Gaza brothers are subjected to.”  He repeated the comparison later again, adding that the leadership of a people “who were subjected to all kinds of torture in the concentration camps during World War II is attacking the Palestinians with methods similar to the Nazis”, adding that “I will say openly and clearly that what Israel is doing is banditry, brutality and state terror.

Finally, in last year in May of 2021, Erdogan said of Jews, “They are murderers, to the point that they kill children who are five or six years old. They only are satisfied by sucking their blood.” The Biden State Department and the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism condemned Erdogan’s remarks as openly antisemitic, with the task force adding they are “tantamount to blood libel against the Jewish people.”

Imagine that. Biden, a Democrat, condemned Erdogan. Six months after these comments, Dr. Oz. would officially launch his campaign for Senate, but as a Turkish citizen who has witnessed firsthand what Erdogan has done to a once great Islamic democracy, he has remained utterly silent.

A few months back, I pushed Dr. Oz and his campaign to publicly acknowledge the Armenian genocide. After Mehmet refused to do so, one of his top lieutenants and someone who is extremely close to him, told me that no one in America, and no one in the Jewish community, cares about the Armenian genocide. I was disgusted by his comment and told him so.

All it takes for Dr. Oz to put all this to rest is 280 characters on Twitter.

Dr. Oz, it’s time to push “send.”

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whom the Washington Post describes as “the most famous Rabbi in America,” served as Oprah Winfrey’s relationships expert on “Oprah and Friends” and is the international best-selling author of “Kosher Sex,” “Kosher Lust,” and “The Kosher Sutra.” Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @RabbiShmuley.