Spanning through the tip of southeastern Europe and through Asia Minor, the modern Republic of Turkey is enormous in comparison to all of its Balkan neighbours taken collectively. It has been the home of some of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. Some of the earliest date back to the 4th century BCE. Literature, history and archaeology indicate the existence of Romaniote communities in places like Ephesus, Konya and Sardis. In the 15th century what is now Turkey was the hub of the Ottoman Empire. The sultan invited thousands of Jews booted out of Spain and Portugal by their reigning Christian monarchs. Jews landed in Constantinople (today's Istanbul), Smyrna (today's Izmir) and Salonika (today's Thessaloniki in Greece) whence they started onward journeys to bigger and lesser towns and provinces.
Under the Ottomans, Jews enjoyed relatively calm lives. The change came in the early years of the 19th century when Jews were targeted by the increasingly nationalistic peoples within the empire that were starting their struggles for independence. Still, half a million Jews remained in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the 20th century. Up to the Great War, the Ottomans controlled the whole of Palestine, including Jerusalem.
The Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 were set off by the Christian nations in the Balkans over the remaining possessions of the Ottomans in southeastern Europe. They were followed by the First World War. The Ottomans sustained heavy losses and the whole empire collapsed. The modern Republic of Turkey was born. Consequently, the number of Jews dwindled. In 1933, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Father of Modern Turkey, announced he would accept Jewish scholars and professionals disenfranchised by the Nazi regime in Germany and Austria. However, under Nazi pressure and notwithstanding local nationalisms, the antisemitic sentiments gained momentum and resulted in a pogrom in Thrace, in 1934. In 1942, Jews alongside other non-Muslim minorities in Turkey were subject to a "wealth tax." Some 30,000 Jews left.
At the same time Turkey, which remained neutral throughout the Second World War, emerged as a major gateway for Jewish emigration towards British Palestine.
In 1949, after the State of Israel was found- ed, many Turkish Jews made the aliyah. The numbers vary, but as many as 35,000 Jews, or 40 percent of the total number of Jews in Turkey, left for Israel.
The 1950s saw a new wave of antisemitism in Turkey. The Istanbul Pogrom on the night
of 6-7 September 1955 was originally meant against the Greeks, but Jews and Armenians were also targeted. As a result, 10,000 Jews left the country. Since then anti-Jewish sentiments have flared up periodically, contingent upon the state of relations between Turkey and Israel. In 1986 and 2003 a number of bomb attacks were carried out at synagogues in Istanbul.
The general tendency in the 20th century was for smaller Jewish communities to disappear as a result of emigration to the bigger towns, Israel, the United States and Western Europe. Therefore the number of remaining communities in 2020 is small and few of them are vibrant.
In the 2000s the Turkish government started on a major programme to preserve and renovate historical – including Jewish – properties, including the grand synagogue of Edirne, on the Bulgarian and Greek border.
English
Български