Enrico Macias said he was surprised and saddened by the decision, which the Turkish official said would trigger protests over Israel’s “genocide.”
By Canaan Lidor, JNS
The Istanbul Governor’s Office on Wednesday announced the cancelation of a planned concert by French-Jewish singer Enrico Macias, citing concerns over protests against what it called Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza.
Macias, 86, was scheduled to perform in Istanbul’s Şişli district on Friday.
The “despicable perpetuation of genocide by the terrorist state of Israel in Gaza and its supporters will place our young people in an unjust legal position and cause them grievances,” the Governor’s Office wrote.
Macias, a longtime supporter of Israel and Jewish causes, told AFP: “I have had the privilege of singing in Istanbul and Izmir for more than 60 years, cities I particularly cherish for their extraordinary audiences. I am deeply surprised and saddened not to be able to meet my public, with whom I have always shared values of peace and fraternity.”
Born in Constantine, Algeria, in 1938 to a Jewish family, Macias left the country in 1961 and has not returned since. “I still hold hope. If destiny allows me to return to Algeria, I will not refuse,” he said in an interview in 2023.
Istanbul Gov. Davut Gül has served in several roles under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who appointed him to his current position.
Erdoğan called Israel a “terror state,” accused it of committing genocide and urged Muslim nations to unite against it.
Under Erdoğan, who faces mounting domestic opposition from liberal forces, Turkish officials labeled Israel the “main regional threat” to Turkey and the broader Middle East.
Israel’s government, U.S. officials and the American Jewish Committee, among others, have in the past accused Erdoğan of antisemitism.
Erdoğan has a record of using what his critics decry as blood libels against Israel and Jews.
In June, Erdoğan said in a speech to members of his AK Party that, “The world is watching the barbarity of … a psychopath, a vampire who feeds on blood called Netanyahu, and they are watching it on live broadcast.”
In November 2023, he reiterated at least two libels that he had previously used against Israel. On Nov. 12, 2023, he said that “Israel is now a baby-killer country.” Later that week, he told his party conference, “I say with a clear conscience that Israel is a terrorist state.”
Erdoğan was reacting to Israel’s attacks on Hamas following the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, and the kidnapping of 251 others.
The Turkish leader also inveighed against Israel in 2021, during a previous round of hostilities between Israel and Hamas that the terrorist group initiated.
Following a Cabinet meeting, he delivered a rambling speech in Ankara in which he used “Jews” and “Israelis” interchangeably.
“They are murderers, to the point that they kill children who are five or six years old. They are murderers, to the point they drag women on the ground to their death and they are murderers, to the point they kill old people. … They only are satisfied by sucking their blood,” he said.
The U.S. State Department spokesperson at the time, Ned Price, said “the United States strongly condemns President Erdoğan’s recent antisemitic comments regarding the Jewish people and finds them reprehensible.”