The Thrace Riots were a series of anti-Jewish incidents that occurred in some of the cities of western Turkey in 1934. Although Turkey disapproved of the Nazi government in Germany in 1933, and welcomed Jewish academicians who fled from Nazi Germany, small racist and anti-Jewish groups emerged in various parts of the country. Cevat Rıfat Atilhan, a Nazi sympathizer who went to Germany to garner support, defended the Nazi program in his journal Milli İnkilap (National Revolution).
The first fruit of the anti-Jewish campaign was a boycott in Çanakkale in mid-June 1934. Numerous Jews …