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Obama asks Erdogan to combat anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism has reached alarming levels in Turkey, where public figures are calling out Jewish Turks over Israel's actions in Gaza.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators march to protest Israeli military strikes on Gaza, during a rally in central Istanbul July 13, 2014. Thousands fled their homes in a Gaza town on Sunday after Israel warned them to leave ahead of threatened attacks on rocket-launching sites, on the sixth day of an offensive that Palestinian officials said has killed at least 160 people. Militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip kept up rockets salvoes deep into the Jewish state and the worst bout of Israel-Palestinian bloodshed i
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and US President Barack Obama met for an hour and a half at the NATO summit in Wales last week. One sentence in the brief White House statement issued after the meeting caught attention: “The president and President Erdogan also discussed the importance of building tolerant and inclusive societies and combating the scourge of anti-Semitism.”

After Israel’s latest Gaza attack, anti-Semitism has skyrocketed in Turkey. The US administration is not the only party concerned with the rise of anti-Semitism there. In Turkey, the nongovernmental organization Say Stop to Racism expressed its concern about the magnitude of this issue, stating:

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