As I have mentioned before, one of the denialist arguments against the Armenian genocide is that Ottoman Turkey saved Jews from Spain in the 15th century and that Turkey has always been a haven for Jews and saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. Mentioning this information, some nationalist Turks say that the Armenian genocide did not happen. Moreover, some deniers even go to the point to say that Armenians killed Jews during the Armenian genocide!!!

Yale Professor Seyla Benhabib: “My maternal Grandfather – Yehoshua Benhabib – suffered a stroke in the Bazaar when the Sultan’s soldiers chopped off the heads of his [Armenian] colleagues and friends.”

On 4 March 2006, I received a group e-mail from Yale University Professor Seyla Benhabib, who happens to be a Sephardic Jew from Istanbul, whose roots go back to Zamorra, Spain in the 15th century.

Let us see what Professor Benhabib has to say:

Throughout my childhood and youth in Istanbul (1950-1970), I experienced and was taught a deep
solidarity with the Armenian people. Not only did I attend schools
with many Sevans, Sandras and Masises, but also, the story of the Armenian
genocide, about which our Armenian friends chose not to talk, was more
or less openly discussed in my family.

My Mother often recounted that my maternal Grandfather – Yehoshua
Benhabib- suffered a stroke in the Bazaar when the Sultan's soldiers
chopped off the heads of his [Armenian] colleagues and friends and "for days blood
flowed in the streets." My Mother is gone now and I still cannot
figure out what year exactly she was referring to (my Grandfather died around
1932).

Furthermore, there were other stories of Jewish helplessness, to
parallel Armenian victimization: yes, as Stephen Feinstein noted, not
only did the Sultan not give Theodor Herzl land in Palestine but also
humiliated him; so too, did the Turkish state refuse to help Jewish
refugees of the Holocaust escaping Europe in the ship EXODUS on their
way to Palestine. My family was quite sick after seeing the movie
version of Leon Uris's novel.