ANKARA: Cheap cover prices and a rise in nationalist sentiment have made an unlikely best-seller in Turkey of Adolf Hitler’s infamous autobiography, “Mein Kampf”. Since January, the book has sold more than 50,000 copies and is number four on the best-seller list drawn up by the D&R bookstore chain.

“Mein Kampf has always been a sleeper, a secret best-seller,” said Oguz Tektas of Mefisto editions, one of several publishing houses to re-release the book Hitler wrote while in jail in 1925.

The readership?

“Those who want to know about a man who wreaked death and destruction on the world,” Tektas said.

“Mostly young people,” said Sami Kilic, owner of the Emre publishing house, another company on the Mein Kampf bandwagon.

He linked interest in the book to Turkey’s bid to join the EU, seen by the right-wing as a desertion of national values, and rising sentiment against the United States and its ally Israel over the treatment they are perceived here as meting out to the Iraqis and the Palestinians, respectively.

“This book, which does not contain a single ounce of humanity, unfortunately appears to be taken seriously in this country,” political scientist Dogu Ergil complained in an interview.

He agreed that the unexpected popularity of Mein Kampf in this Muslim-majority country has its roots in a rise in anti-American sentiment sparked by the occupation of Iraq and anti-Semitism resulting from Israel’s Palestinian policy.

But despite what the sales may imply, Turkey has never been an anti-Semitic country — on the contrary, it has been a safe haven for Jews ever since the 15th century, when Sultan Bayezit II first took in Spanish Jews fleeing the inquisition.

Throughout Ottoman times and the republic proclaimed in 1923, Jews fleeing pogroms and extermination camps were always welcome in Turkey.

Silvyo Ovadya, the head of Turkey’s Jewish community, said he was “troubled” by the book’s popularity.

Ovadya told AFP he was “astonished a 500-page book that sows the seeds of racism and anti-Semitism can sell at such a low price.”

But, he said, his complaints to the publishers have gone unheeded.

Most of Turkey’s 22,000 Jews — out of a total population of 71 million — live in Istanbul, where there are 18 synagogues.—AFP