Anthony Gad Bigio
A Sephardi Jewish Patriot:
Gad Franco in the Turmoil of the Ottoman Empire
and Turkish Republic
London: Hamilton Books, 2024. ISBN: 978-0-7618-7398-3
Reviewed by Rachel Amado Bortnick1
In this book, Anthony Gad Bigio relates the life and times of his grandfather, Gad Franco (1881-1954), who was a Turkish Jewish journalist, prominent lawyer and community leader. The title, “A Sephardi Jewish Patriot: Gad Franco in the Turmoil of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic” stresses Franco’s patriotism because of its great relevance to the story being told.
Born in Milas, Turkey, Franco (henceforth Gad, as in the book) lived most of his adult life in Izmir and Istanbul. He moved to Izmir in 1902, where he published the Ladino newspapers El Novelista for four years, and then El Comercial. In his articles, Gad expressed his concern for the welfare of Turkish Jews, promoted the education of the children, and criticized the restrictive and despotic decrees of the local rabbis. He was a fervent supporter of the CUP, Committee for Union and Progress, the group of “Young Turks” that had staged the 1908 revolution and brought constitutional government to the Ottoman Empire. The new constitution promised equal rights to all the citizens of the Empire regardless of ethnicity or religion, and Gad expounded that Jews must learn the Turkish language and participate fully as citizens of the modern Ottoman Empire. He opposed the idea of Zionism, as did journalist David Fresco, his cousin and father-in-law, along with many other Jewish intellectuals of the time.
Bigio sums up Gad‘s viewpoint as follows:
“If Jews fully embraced their new status as Ottoman citizens, they could not endorse any other national ideal, as that would amount to treachery and duplicitousness. […]He urged the Turkish Jewish community to unequivocally declare its allegiance to the empire, and forcefully reject Zionism.” (47)
After the collapse of the CUP government and the disastrous defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, parts of the Empire were invaded by foreign powers. For Gad personally, the Greek occupation of Izmir in 1919 was most distressing as the Greek army command requisitioned his spacious house in the city. The family had to live with relatives at first, and in 1920 they moved to Paris. Being fluent speakers of French and finding a community of old acquaintances there from Turkey, his wife and children adjusted quickly and enjoyed the European life. But two years later, with Turkey in the throes of becoming a republic, Gad made the fateful decision to return to Turkey.
The following section describes the motivation for and the importance of this decision in his life.
“Having remained closely in touch with family and friends in Turkey, as well as with former CUP members who were now part of Mustafa Kemal’s entourage, Gad decided to move back to Istanbul after spending two years in Paris. Unlike so many Ottoman Jews who took refuge and remained abroad for good, he made the opposite decision. This turning point in his life, when he was already forty years old, was rooted in his patriotic commitment to his homeland…” (70).
Gad believed that after the war, Turkey would become a modern nation “based on the rule of law,” and that its Jews would finally be accepted as its true citizens. However, his wife, Elise, resented having to return to Turkey and complained about it to him for the rest of her life.
Financially, Gad did very well back in Istanbul. He established his own law firm and developed contacts with the new Kemalist government, which appointed him legal advisor. He soon pursued his doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris, travelling back and forth on the Orient Express, until he received his PhD in law in 1925. His dissertation, Dévelopments constitutionels en Turquie, typically, discussed Turkey’s long struggle to achieve constitutional government.
As the Turkish Republic turned more and more nationalistic, religious minorities were excluded in its definition of Turkishness and anti-Semitic pronouncements and acts began to occur. Gad’s expectations and hopes began to crumble, but did not disappear. He continued to write and urge Jews to be more vigilant in expressing their rights as full citizens. When the terrible Varlik Vergisi (wealth tax) was imposed in 1942 he wrote an article pointing out the unconstitutionality of this law. Unfortunately, not only did his argument have no effect, but as if in vengeance, he was assessed such an exorbitant tax that he could not fully pay it even after selling all of his possessions and numerous real estate holdings. He was taken to the Ashkale labor camp where the horrid conditions broke him physically and mentally. The experience also made him change his mind about Zionism, and he wrote a heart-breaking article titled Mea Culpa, confessing his mistake in opposing the establishment of the Jewish state.
A large part of the book is devoted to the historical events that constituted the background of Gad’s life. In fact, a look at its table of contents would suggest that this is a history book, as the titles of its fifteen chapters refer to historical and political situations and developments. Gad Franco’s life story, however, could not have been told without expounding on this historical background. This information was particularly important for the English-speaking readers who may not be familiar with the history of this region. But there is much new here even for those of us who grew up in Turkey, who studied the nationalistic version of its history several times over, and who always felt that we, as Jews, had no part in it. Who knew, for example, that Gad Franco was a legal advisor to Ataturk’s government? Or that the Armenians of Izmir escaped deportation because of Gad’s friendship with the governor? For Turkish readers, A Sephardi Jewish Patriot: Gad Franco in the Turmoil of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic is not only an eye-opening source of information, but also a reconnection with the experience of their own parents or ancestors who lived in the same country and period of history.
This is not the first monograph about Gad Franco, but it is the first one published in English. As Bigio indicates in his many footnotes and lengthy bibliography, he benefitted greatly from a work published by historian Rifat Bali in Turkish in 2013. This book is very different, not only for its comprehensive history, but also for being a Gad Franco family memoir. As the grandson and namesake of Gad Franco, Bigio had access to correspondence from family members and photographs, which he includes in the book in appropriate places. These expound on the elder Gad’s personal situation within his family and his relationship with his brothers, children, and other members of his family and add to our understanding and identifying with the humanity of Franco.
One of the photographs in the book is related to the text I quoted above. On the day that Franco returned to Istanbul from France, he had taken off his European fedora, donned the Ottoman fez and went to the photographer’s studio for this picture which he sent to his family back in Paris. On the back of the photograph he wrote,
“Do you recognize him? Do you like him? Do you love him?” Istanbul, June 1922. (71).
The readers of Sephardi Jewish Patriot: Gad Franco in the Turmoil of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic, will answer each of these questions with a resounding “yes!”
1 Rachel Amado Bortnick, born and raised in Izmir, Turkey, is a retired ESL teacher living in Dallas, Texas, who has been active in the promotion of Judeo-Spanish language and culture for many decades. She is featured in the 1988 documentary film, Trees Cry for Rain: a Sephardic Journey and, in 1999, founded Ladinokomunita, the Ladino correspondence group on the Internet, which now has over 1600 members from 40 countries.