The first Jews are estimated to have settled in Anatolia in the 6th century B.C., making the Jewish community in Turkey one of the oldest in the world.
Biblical references in Isaiah 66;19 and Joel 3;4-6 testify to Jewish Presence in Anatolia, pointing to a place called Sepharad in Obadiah (1;20).In the 3th century B.C., Antiochus brought 2.000 Jews to Phrygia and Lydia, thriving civilizations in western Anatolia, and the first Synagogues in Asia minor were built during this time. Cicero informs us that the monies that Jews from Bergama had gathered for Bet Hamikdash (Holly Temple) in Jerusalem were confiscated, confirming in this context the Jewish presence at the time.
St. Paul was born in Tarsus and lived as an influential and well to do Jew until he became an apostle of Jesus Christ. Later, during his many journeys to preach the gospel, he targeted locations in Anatolia with large Jewish communities.
Sultan Bayezid II sent Kemal Reis to save the Sephardic Jews of Spain from the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 and granted them permission to settle in the Ottoman Empire.
In the first few centuries A.D. there were rich Jewish units in Hierapolis (Pamukkale) and Cappadocia in central Anatolia. During the time of Byzantine Empire, most Jewish communities were settled in western Anatolia and in Istanbul, than Istanbul called Constantinople. Jews’ rights were significantly restricted by laws enacted by Byzantine rulers Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian, and they suffered the most severe blow during the Crusades when Constantinople was temporarily occupied by the Latin Kingdom and the Jewish districts were set on fire. Thus, when Mehmet II. Conquered Constantinople in 1453.the Romaniot (Byzantine) Jewish community hailed him as a liberator.
Over the next two centuries, the country became a heaven for Jews fleeing repression and expulsion from various parts of Europe, including Hungary, France, Spain, Sicily, Salonika and Bavaria. Ottomans greatly encouraged Jewish immigration, which became a torrent When Spanish and Portuguese Jews were expelled from their homes by the Spanish Inquisition and fled to Turkey. These Jews used their international connections and linguistic skills to develop the Ottoman Empire’s foreign trade.
In the liberal atmosphere of Ottoman rule, Jewish activity flourished and many Jews held important positions. Istanbul was the home of great rabbis and scholars and one of the main centers for printing of Hebrew books. The community began to ebb in the 17’th century, reflecting the decay of the country’s international position. In the 19th century conditions for Jews to emigrate. The majority settled in the Americas. At the turn of twentieth century, about 100.000 Jews lived in Turkey. 46.000 in Istanbul, over 16.000 in Izmir, 5.700 in Edirne, 23.700 in Canakkale, Bursa and Cappadocia.
Modern Turkey emerged as a secular, democratic republic out of country’s debacle in World War I. 1992 Jewish community celebrated the 500th anniversary of arrival of first Sephardim. Today, approximately 25.000 Jews live in Turkey as a Turkish citizen. The Jewish community is officially recognized by state through its Chief Rabbinate.
Biblical era
The ancient Israelites were known to have imported honeybees from Turkey. A team of Israeli archeologists found 30 intact hives made of straw and unbaked clay, and evidence that there had been over 100-200 more, on the site of the joint Israelite-Canaanite city of Tel Rehov. According to some evidence, the bees were probably imported from Turkey after Turkish bees proved easier to handle than local bees, which had proved to be extremely aggressive.
Roman and Byzantine rule
According to Jewish scripture, Noah’s Ark landed on the top of Mount Ararat, a mountain in the Taurus range in the Republic of Turkey, near the modern borders Armenia and Iran. Flavius Josephus, Jewish historian of the first century, notes Jewish origins for many of the cities in Asia Minor, though much of his sourcing for these passages is traditional. New Testament mention of Jewish populations in Anatolia is widespread: Iconium (now: Konya) is said to have a synagogue in Acts 14:1, and Ephesus is mentioned as having a synagogue in Acts 19:1 and in Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians.
The Epistle to the Galatians is likewise directed at an area of modern Turkey which once held an established Jewish population. Based on physical evidence, there has been a Jewish community in Asia Minor since the 4th century BCE, most notably in the city of Sardis. The subsequent Roman and Byzantine Empires included sizable Greek-speaking Jewish communities in their Anatolian domains which seem to have been relatively well-integrated and enjoyed certain legal immunities.
The size of the Jewish community was not greatly affected by the attempts of some Byzantine emperors (most notably Justinian) to forcibly convert the Jews of Anatolia to Christianity, as these attempts met with very little success. The exact picture of the status of the Jews in Asia Minor under Byzantine rule is still being researched by historians. Although there is some evidence of occasional hostility by the Byzantine populations and authorities, no systematic persecution of the type endemic at that time in western Europe (pogroms, the stake, mass expulsions, etc.) is believed to have occurred in Byzantium.
Ottoman era
The first Jewish synagogue linked to Ottoman rule is Etz ha-Hayyim (Hebrew: עץ החיים Lit.Tree of Life) in Bursa which passed to Ottoman authority in 1324. The synagogue is still in use, although the modern Jewish population of Bursa has shrunk to about 140 people.
The status of Jewry in the Ottoman Empire often hinged on the whims of the Sultan. So, for example, while Murad III ordered that the attitude of all non-Muslims should be one of “humility and abjection” and should not “live near Mosques or tall buildings” or own slaves, others were more tolerant.
The first major event in Jewish history under Turkish rule took place after the Empire gained control over Constantinople. After Sultan Mehmed II’s Conquest of Constantinople he found the city in a state of disarray. After suffering many sieges, a devastating conquest by Catholic Crusaders in 1204 and even a case of the Black Death in 1347, the city was a shade of its former glory. As Mehmed wanted the city as his new capital, he decreed the rebuilding of the city. And in order to revivify Constantinople he ordered that Muslims, Christians and Jews from all over his empire be resettled in the new capital. Within months most of the Empires Romaniote Jews, from the Balkans and Anatolia, were concentrated in Constantinople, where they made up 10% of the city’s population. But at the same time the forced resettlement, though not intended as an anti-Jewish measure, was perceived as an “expulsion” by the Jews. Despite this interpretation however, the Romaniotes would be the most influential community in the Empire for a few decades to come, until that position would be lost to a wave of new Jewish arrivals.
Ashkenazi Synagogue, Istanbul
The number of native Jews was soon bolstered by small groups of Ashkenazi Jews that immigrated to the Ottoman Empire between 1421–1453. Among these new Ashkenazi immigrants was Rabbi Yitzhak Sarfati, a German-born Jew of French descent (Hebrew: צרפתי – Sarfati, meaning: “French”), who became the Chief Rabbi of Edirne and wrote a letter inviting the European Jewry to settle in the Ottoman Empire, in which he stated that: “Turkey is a land wherein nothing is lacking” and asking: “Is it not better for you to live under Muslims than under Christians?”.
The greatest influx of Jews into Asia Minor and the Ottoman Empire, occurred during the reign of Mehmed the Conquerors’s successor, Beyazid II (1481–1512), after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain , Portugal , South Italy and Sicily. The Sultan issued a formal invitation to Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal and they started arriving in the empire in great numbers.
A key moment in Judeo-Turkic relations occurred in 1492, when more than 150,000 Spanish Jews fled the Spanish Inquisition, many to the Ottoman Empire.
At that point in time, Constantinople’s population was a mere 70,000 due to the various sieges of the city during the Crusades and the so-called Black Death of the 14th century, so this historical event was also significant for repopulation of the city. These Sephardic Jews settled in Constantinople as well as Salonika.
The Sultan is said to have exclaimed thus at the Spanish monarch’s lack of wisdom: “Ye call Ferdinand a wise king he who makes his land poor and ours rich!”. The Jews satisfied various needs in the Ottoman Empire: the Muslim Turks were largely uninterested in business enterprises and accordingly left commercial occupations to members of minority religions. They also distrusted the Christian subjects whose countries had only recently been conquered by the Ottomans and therefore it was natural to prefer Jewish subjects to which this consideration did not apply.
The Sephardi Jews were allowed to settle in the wealthier cities of the empire, especially in the European provinces (cities such as: Istanbul, Sarajevo, Salonica, Adrianople and Nicopolis), Western and Northern Anatolia (Bursa, Aydın, Tokat and Amasya), but also in the Mediterranean coastal regions (for example: Jerusalem, Safed, Damascus, Egypt). Izmir was not settled by Spanish Jews until later. The Jewish population at Jerusalem increased from 70 families in 1488 to 1,500 at the beginning of the 16th century. That of Safed increased from 300 to 2,000 families and almost surpassed Jerusalem in importance. Damascus had a Sephardic congregation of 500 families. Istanbul had a Jewish community of 30,000 individuals with 44 synagogues. Bayezid allowed the Jews to live on the banks of the Golden Horn. Egypt, especially Cairo, received a large number of the exiles, who soon out-numbered the native Jews. Gradually, the chief center of the Sephardic Jews became Salonica, where the Spanish Jews soon outnumbered their co-religionists of other nationalities and, at one time, the original native inhabitants.
Although the status of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire may have often been exaggerated, it is undeniable that the tolerance was enjoyed. Under the millet system they were organized as a community on the basis of religion, alongside the other millets (e.g. Orthodox millet, Armenian millet, etc.). In the framework of the millet they had a considerable amount of administrative autonomy and were represented by the Hakham Bashi, the Chief Rabbi. There were no restrictions in the professions Jews could practice analogous to those common in Western Christian countries. There were restrictions in the areas Jews could live or work, but such restrictions were imposed on Ottoman subjects of other religions as well. Like all non-Muslims, Jews had to pay the harac (“head tax”) and faced other restrictions in clothing, horse riding, army service etc., but they could occasionally be waived or circumvented.
Jews who reached high positions in the Ottoman court and administration include Mehmed II’s minister of Finance (“defterdar”) Hekim Yakup Pasa, his Portuguese physician Moses Hamon, Murad II’s physician Ishak Pasha and Abraham de Castro, the master of the mint in Egypt.
During the Classical Ottoman period (1300–1600), the Jews, together with most other communities of the empire, enjoyed a certain level of prosperity. Compared with other Ottoman subjects, they were the predominant power in commerce and trade as well in diplomacy and other high offices. In the 16th century especially, the Jews were the most prominent under the millets, the apogee of Jewish influence could arguably be the appointment of Joseph Nasi to Sanjak-bey (governor, a rank usually only bestowed upon Muslims) of the island of Naxos. Also in the first half of the 17th century the Jews were distinct in winning Tax farms, Haim Gerber describes it as: “My impression is that no pressure existed, that it was merely performαnce that counted.”
Friction between Jews and Turks was less common than in the Arab territories. Some examples: During Murad IV (1623–40) the Jews of Jerusalem were persecuted by an Arab who had purchased the governorship of that city from the governor of the province. In 1660, under Mehmet IV (1649–1687), Safat was destroyed by the Arabs. In 1678, Mehmet IV ordered the banishment of the Jews of Yemen to the Mawza Desert, an event which remains in the collective memory of Yemeni Jews as a great tragedy.
An additional problem was the lack of unity among the Jews themselves. They had come to the Ottoman Empire from many lands, bringing with them their own customs and opinions, to which they clung tenaciously, and had founded separate congregations. Another tremendous upheaval was caused when Sabbatai Zevi proclaimed to be the Messiah. He was eventually caught by the Ottoman authorities and when given the choice between death and conversion, he opted for the latter. His remaining disciples converted to Islam too. Their descendants are today known as Donmeh.
The history of the Jews in Turkey in the eighteenth and nineteenth century is principally a chronicle of decline in influence and power; they lost their influential positions in trade mainly to the Greeks, who were able to “capitalize on their religio-cultural ties with the West and their trading diaspora”. An exception to this theme is that of Daniel de Fonseca, who was chief court physician and played a certain political role. He is mentioned by Voltaire, who speaks of him as an acquaintance whom he esteemed highly. Fonseca was involved in negotiations with Charles XII of Sweden.
Ottoman Jews held a variety of views on the role of Jews in the Ottoman Empire, from loyal Ottomanism to Zionism. Emanuel Karasu of Salonika, for example, was a founding member of the Young Turks, and believed that the Jews of the Empire should be Turks first, and Jews second.
As mentioned before, the overwhelming majority of the Ottoman Jews lived in the European-provinces of the Empire. As the Empire declined however, the Jews of these region found themselves under Christian rule. The Bosnian Jews for example came under Austro-Hungarian rule after the occupation of the region in 1878, the independence of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia further lowered the number of Jews within the borders of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkish Republic
The Jewish population of Ottoman Empire had reached nearly 200,000 at the start of the 20th century. The territories lost between 1829–1913 to the new Christian Balkan states, significantly lowered this number.
The troubled history of Turkey during the 20th century and the process of transforming the old Ottoman empire into a modern Western nation state after 1923, however, had a negative effect on the size of all remaining minorities, including the Jews.
After 1933, a new law put into effect in Nazi Germany for mandatory retirement of officials from non-Aryan race. Thus, the law required all the Jewish scientists in Germany to be fired. Unemployed scientists led by Albert Einstein formed an association in Switzerland. Professor Schwartz, the general secretary of the association, met with the Turkish Minister of Education in order to provide jobs for 34 Jewish scientists in Turkish universities especially in Istanbul University.
However, the planned deportation of Jews from East Thrace and the associated anti-Jewish pogrom in 1934 was one of the events that caused insecurity among the Turkish Jews.
The effect of the 1942 Varlık Vergisi (“Wealth Tax”) was the greatest on non-Muslims who still controlled the largest portion of the young republic’s wealth even though in principle it was directed against all wealthy Turkish citizens. The “wealth tax” is still remembered as the “catastrophe” among the non-Muslims of Turkey and it had probably the most detrimental effect on the numbers of the Jewish community. Many people unable to pay the taxes were sent to labor camps and about 30,000 Jews emigrated. The tax was seen as a racist attempt to diminish the economic power of minorities in Turkey.
World War II
Turkey served as a transit for European Jews fleeing Nazi persecution during the 1930s and 1940s.
Even though Turkey remained neutral during World War II (until its symbolic declaration of war on Nazi Germany on 23 February 1945) and officially forbade granting visas to German Jews, individual Turkish diplomats (such as Necdet Kent, Namık Kemal Yolga, Selahattin Ülkümen and Behiç Erkin) did work hard to save Jews from the Holocaust. Stanford Shaw claims that Turkey saved 100,000, while another historian Rifat Bali claims Turkey saved 15,000 and another historian Tuvia Friling, an Israeli expert on the Balkans and the Middle East 20,000. In his book Arnold Reisman, accepts a figure of 35,000 comprising 15,000 Turkish Jews from France, and approximately 20,000 Jews from Eastern Europe.
A memorial stone with a bronze epitaph was inaugurated in 2012, as the third of individual country memorials (after Poland and the Netherlands) at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp for eight Turkish citizens killed during the Nazi regime in the said camp. The Turkish Ambassador to Berlin, Hüseyin Avni Karslıoğlu stated in an inauguration speech that Germany set free 105 Turkish citizens, held in camps, after a mutual agreement between the two countries, and these citizens returned to Turkey in April 1945, although there is no known official record for other Turkish jews who may have died during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.
According to Rifat Bali, Turkish authorities bear some responsibility for the Struma disaster, killing about 781 Jewish refugees and 10 crew, due to their refusal to allow the Jewish refugees on board to disembark in Turkey. William Rubinstein goes further, citing British pressure on Turkey not to let Struma’s passengers disembark, in accordance with Britain’s White Paper of 1939 to prevent further Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Today
The present size of the Jewish Community was estimated at 23,000 according to the World Jewish Congress. The vast majority, approximately 95%, live in Istanbul, with a community of about 2,500 in İzmir and other much smaller groups located in Adana, Ankara, Bursa, Çanakkale, Iskenderun and Kirklareli. Sephardi Jews make up approximately 96% of Turkey’s Jewish population, while the rest are primarily Ashkenazi Jews. There is also a small community of Romaniote Jews.
Turkish Jews are still legally represented by the Hakham Bashi, the Chief Rabbi. Rabbi Ishak Haleva, is assisted by a religious Council made up of a Rosh Bet Din and three Hahamim. Thirty-five Lay Counselors look after the secular affairs of the Community and an Executive Committee of fourteen, the president of which must be elected from among the Lay Counselors, runs the daily affairs.
In 2001, the Jewish Museum of Turkey was founded by the Quincentennial Foundation, an organisation established in 1982 consisting of 113 Turkish citizens, both Jews and Muslims, to commemorate the five-hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the Sephardic Jews to the Ottoman Empire.
The Turkish-Jewish population is experiencing a population decline, and has dwindled to 17,000 in a few years from an original figure of 23,000. This is due to both large-scale emigration to Israel out of fear of antisemitism, but also because of natural population decline. Currently, the community’s death rate is twice that of its birth rate. Between September and April 2011, for example, 129 Turkish Jews died and only 60 were born.
Jewish Heritage,