How would you like your judge? Zionist or patriotic?

After a judge declared on his Facebook account that he loves Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, among other reasons, “because Zionists and their conspirators don’t love him” (“Why we must love our prime minister,” this column, April 16), the prime minister did not leave the passionate gesture unrequited. 

According to Mr. Erdoğan, the judge, who had earlier arrested six police officers because they belonged to Mr. Erdoğan’s phantom-like enemies within, was a “patriot.” The judge had admirably put these “spies and traitors” into jail, but another judge presiding over a higher court released, meaning he had to be immediately transferred to another town. 

That’s the 21st-century Turkish administrative reflex to punish Zionist judges. The patriotic judge can wait for a few more years before he climbs up to the top echelons of the judicial bureaucracy and, who knows, perhaps deservedly become the justice minister. Other future candidates should watch out for this challenge and develop similar tactics to come to Mr. Erdoğan’s attention as a patriot. A modest tip from this columnist to counter-challenge the attack: The patriotic judge’s Facebook share on March 30, the election night, was neat, compact and precise: The losers are Zionists and their conspirators. 

So, the Zionists again. According to the vote count on March 30, a simple calculation would put the number of Zionists in Turkey at slightly above 43 million people – those Turkish citizens who, judging from their voting preferences, do not love Mr. Erdoğan as dearly as the patriotic judge does. That’s bad news for the Turkish patriots since they have to fight about 5.4 times more Zionists in Turkey than in Israel. When and how so many Zionists infiltrated “99 percent Muslim” Turkey remains a curiosity. 

It’s the old (overwhelmingly but not necessarily exclusive) Islamist habit. It was not a coincidence that recent research revealed that only 4 percent of Turks viewed Jews favorably. It was not a coincidence either that another study determined that 41 percent of Turks believed Judaism is “the world’s most violent religion,” or that only 9 percent thought that Arab groups had carried out 9/11.

No doubt, those findings give a broader perspective than more individual examples. But individual examples complement the picture. In 2009, a group of Turkish teachers (yes, teachers) commemorated Hitler in Kayseri in scenes that brought to mind the famous Turkish-Islamist slogan “Now I understand Hitler!” And last year, at a United Nations event devoted to dialogue between the West and Islam, Erdoğan suggested that “Zionism was a crime against humanity.” 

So, should anyone be terribly surprised that Mr. Erdoğan’s patriotic judge so dearly loves Mr. Erdoğan because Zionists do not love him? Or that he thought on March 30 that the Zionists and their conspirators lost? Who do you think the “teachers” who commemorated Hitler in the notorious Erdoğan stronghold  of Kayseri voted for on March 30? The Turkish Communist Party? 

Yet it is still conspicuous that in the patriotic judge’s thinking there is a bizarre kind of inexplicable logic beyond the figure of the 43 million or so Zionists in Muslim Turkey. The honorable judge wrote that he loves Mr. Erdoğan because the prime minister loves the Turkish nation, because “he is one of them.”

Now that makes all things Turkish a little bit more curious. If the judge is right, we do not only have 43 million or so Zionists living in Turkey but also 43 million or so Turks who do not love the Turkish nation – 43 million or so Turks who are not of the Turkish nation. 

What’s the next move? A new census to “correct” the official Turkish population to put it at 33 million instead of 76? I have come to think that it must be painful for the patriotic judge to belong to a minority in his own country.

Mr. Erdoğan may have failed to convince the international community that Zionism is a crime against humanity. But he can always pass legislation in Turkey to illegalize it. With judges who loves him and whom he thinks are patriots, he should first build prisons enough to accommodate 43 million or so convicts.