History of the Jews in Turkey

There have been Jewish communities in Anatolia since at least the beginning of the common era. Anatolia's Jewish population before Ottoman times primarily consisted of Greek-speaking Romaniote Jews, with a handful of dispersed Karaite communities. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, many Sephardic Jews from Spain, Portugal and South Italy expelled by the Alhambra Decree found refuge across the Ottoman Empire, including in regions now part of Turkey. This influx played a pivotal role in shaping the predominant identity of Ottoman Jews.

By the end of the sixteenth century, the Jewish population in the Ottoman Empire was double (150,000) that of Jews in Poland and Ukraine combined (75,000), far surpassing other Jewish communities to be the largest in the world. Turkey's Jewish community was large, diverse and vibrant, forming the core of Ottoman Jewry until World War I. Early signs of change included education reforms and the rise of Zionism. The community declined sharply after World War I, with many emigrating to Israel, France and the Americas. Turkish Jews in Israel became leaders of the Sephardic community, and their Ladino language was a prominent characteristic.

Today, the vast majority of Turkish Jews live in Israel, though Turkey itself still has a modest Jewish population, where the vast majority live in Istanbul, and the remainder in İzmir. Jews are one of the four ethnic minorities officially recognized in Turkey, together with Armenians, Greeks, and Bulgarians.

History

Roman and Byzantine rule

According to the Hebrew Bible, Noah's Ark landed on the top of Mount Ararat, a mountain in eastern Anatolia, in the Armenian Highlands, near the present-day borders of Turkey, Armenia, and Iran.

In the 1st century AD, Jewish historian Josephus cited records confirming the presence of diaspora Jews in Lydia and Phrygia by the late 3rd century BC, a community established through the relocation of 2000 families by Seleucid king Antiochus III. Josephus notes Jewish origins for many of the cities in Anatolia, though much of his sourcing for these passages is traditional. Descendants in Sardis and other centers gained civic privileges by the Late Republican Rome.

The New Testament has many mentions of Jewish populations in Anatolia: Iconium (now Konya) is said to have a synagogue in Acts of the Apostles 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 Galatia, which once held an established Jewish population.

Based on physical evidence, there has been a Jewish community in Anatolia since the fourth 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 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.

Jews arrived in Anatolia between the sixth century BCE and 133 BCE, when the Romans arrived. They were Romaniote Jews and first settled in Phrygia and Lydia. In 2020, a seventh-century synagogue was uncovered in Side.

Ottoman era

The first synagogue linked to Ottoman rule is "Tree of Life" (Hebrew: עץ החיים) 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 the Jews 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 that they 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 Mehmed the Conqueror's conquest of Constantinople he found the city in a state of disarray. After suffering many sieges, the devastating sack of Constantinople by Crusaders in 1204 and the arrival of the Black Death pandemic in 1347, the city was a shadow of its former glory. Since Mehmed wanted the city as his new capital, he decreed its rebuilding.

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 Empire's Romaniote Jews, from the Balkans and Anatolia, were concentrated in Constantinople, where they made up 10% of the city's population. 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, Romaniotes would be the most influential community in the Empire for a few decades, until that position would be lost to a wave of Sephardi immigrants.

The number of Romaniotes was soon bolstered by small groups of Ashkenazi Jews that immigrated to the Ottoman Empire between 1421 and 1453. Among these immigrants was Rabbi Yitzhak Sarfati, a German-born Jew of French descent (צרפתי Sarfati, meaning "French"), who became Chief Rabbi of Edirne and wrote a letter inviting European Jewry to settle in the Ottoman Empire, in which he stated, "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 Anatolia Eyalet and the Ottoman Empire occurred during the reign of Mehmed the Conqueror's successor, Bayezid II (1481–1512), after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, the Kingdom of Portugal, the Kingdom of Naples and the Kingdom of Sicily. The Sultan issued a formal invitation and refugees started arriving in the empire in great numbers. A key moment occurred in 1492, when more than 40,000 Spanish Jews fled the Spanish Inquisition. 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 Black Death, so this historical event was also significant for repopulation of the city. These Sephardi Jews settled in Constantinople, as well as Thessaloniki.

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 Rumelia (the European provinces, cities such as Constantinople, Sarajevo, Thessaloniki, Adrianople and Nicopolis), western and northern Anatolia (Bursa, Aydın, Tokat, Tire, Manisa and Amasya), but also in the Mediterranean coastal regions (Jerusalem, Safed, Damascus, and Egypt). İzmir was not settled by Spanish Jews until later.

The Jewish population in Jerusalem increased from 70 families in 1488 to 1500 at the beginning of the 16th century. That of Safed increased from 300 to 2000 families and almost surpassed Jerusalem in importance. Damascus had a Sephardic congregation of 500 families. Constantinople 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 Eyalet, especially Cairo, received a large number of the exiles, who soon outnumbered Musta'arabi Jews. Gradually, the chief center of the Sephardi Jews became Thessaloniki, where the Spanish Jews soon outnumbered coreligionists 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 they enjoyed tolerance. Under the millet system they were organized as a community on the basis of religion alongside the other millets (e.g. Eastern Orthodox millet, Armenian Apostolic 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 haraç "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 the Conqueror's Minister of Finance (Defterdar) Hekim Yakup Paşa, his Portuguese physician Moses Hamon, Murad II's physician İshak Paşa and Abraham de Castro, 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 Naxos. Also in the first half of the 17th century the Jews were distinct in winning tax farms, Haim Gerber describes it: "My impression is that no pressure existed, that it was merely performance that counted."

Friction between Jews and Turks was less common than in the Arab territories. Some examples: During the reign of Murad IV (1623–1640), the Jews of Jerusalem were persecuted by an Arab who had purchased the governorship of that city from the governor of the province. Under Mehmed IV (1649–1687), the 1660 destruction of Safed occurred.

An additional problem was Jewish ethnic divisions. 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 claimed 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 also converted. Their descendants are today known as Dönmeh.

The history of the Jews in Turkey in the 18th and 19th 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 is 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. Emmanuel Carasso, 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 Rumelia. 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.

Rise of the Young Turks, the Committee for Union and Progress and Turkish War of Independence

Late Ottoman Dönmeh and other Jewish writers explicitly articulated an alliance between Jews and Muslims against common Christian enemies, including Armenians and Greeks. As such, several leading members of the Young Turks were Dönmeh. In the period preceding and succeeding World War I and in the Turkish War of Independence, Dönmeh and other Turkish Jews heavily supported the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) and the Turkish National Movement. They were the only non-Turkish minority in the 1912 elections which, in its majority, did not support the CUP and opposed the Freedom and Accord Party.

During World War I and the Armenian Genocide, Dönmeh and other Jews remained muted, and self-interested. However, the Jewish underground group "Nili" was a unique exception, in that it sympathized with the Armenians. Some Dönmeh and other Jewish individuals helped rescue Armenians and donated to their relief aid, but others, affiliated with Turkish nationalists, helped the perpetrators find Armenian victims and also participated in the pillaging of Armenian homes, alongside Turks.

Immediately after World War I and the Allied victory, in November 1918, the Jewish Turkish nationalist Nesim Navaro tore down the Greek flag in Smyrna. Another Jewish Turkish nationalist tore down the Greek flag in Kadifekale. After the Greek landing at Smyrna in 1919, the Dönmeh Hasan Tahsin opened fire on Greek soldiers, killing a Greek standard-bearer, for which he was killed on the spot. He is commemorated as a war hero in Turkey. In Maşatlık, the Jewish cemetery became a protest center against the Occupation of Smyrna. Boaz Menaşe, when asked if Turkish Jews wanted the city to become Greek or remain Turkish, he answered that Turkish Jews want it to remain Turkish. In Bursa, the Jewish community refused to hoist Greek flags and skipped pro-Greek meetings. Meanwhile, many Jews hid Turkish nationalist soldiers in their houses and passed on key information to them. In addition, Benjamen Katan tried to block a Greek-sponsored autonomy petition in Bergama, alongside other Jews and Turks. After the end of the war, Mustafa Kemal Pasha thanked many rabbis and Jews for their assistance.

In 1923, during the compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the Dönme of Thessaloniki were classified as Muslims and relocated to Istanbul. There, a smaller but influential community emerged, including businessmen, newspaper publishers, industrialists, and diplomats, many of whom continued to thrive in Turkish society. In 1932, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported 15,000 Dönme in Istanbul.

Early republic

The Jewish population of Ottoman Empire had reached nearly 200,000 at the start of the 20th century. The territories lost between 1829 and 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 secular nation state after 1923, however, had a negative effect on the size of all remaining minorities, including the Jews. After the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Mustafa Kemal Pasha's (Atatürk since 1934) Turkish nationalist policies, which had left ethnic and religious minorities in the lurch, were accompanied by antisemitic propaganda by nationalist publishers in the 1930s and 1940s.

One of the leaders of the supposed İzmir plot to assassinate President Atatürk in İzmir after the establishment of the Turkish Republic was a Dönme named Mehmed Cavid Bey, a founding member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and the former Minister of Finance of the Ottoman Empire. Convicted after a government investigation, Cavid Bey was hanged on 26 August 1926 in Ankara.

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.

In 1933, Turkey accepted more than 1000 Jews, most of whom were intellectuals and scientists, into Istanbul, contributing to the academia. They restructured the newly established Istanbul University, introducing European-style academic standards, research methods, and pedagogical practices. These émigrés trained a new generation of Turkish academics, doctors, lawyers, and engineers, significantly raising the quality of education and professional expertise. Beyond the sciences, they influenced cultural life, helping to modernize arts, architecture, and music education, and brought international intellectual perspectives that shaped public administration and social sciences. Ernst Hirsch, an exiled Jewish scholar and lawyer, helped the Turkish authorities in modernising Turkish contemporary law, which still carried some substantial remnants from the Ottoman code. He authored several textbooks that were used for years after the second world war. The acceptance of these intellectuals wasn't so much a humanitarian effort as it was the Turkish government's efforts to modernize and Westernize.

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. Before the start of the pogroms, İbrahim Tali Öngören, the Inspectorate General of the Trakya Inspectorate General, suggested to remove the Jews from the region as they presented an economic threat to the Muslim population. In 1934, the Turkish government expelled all the Jews from Edirne and the Straits.

The effect of the 1942 Varlık Vergisi ("Wealth Tax") was solely 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, it most intensely affected non-Muslims. The "wealth tax" is still remembered as a "catastrophe" among the non-Muslims of Turkey and it had one of the most detrimental effects on the population of Turkish Jews. Many people unable to pay the exorbitant taxes were sent to labor camps and in consequence about 30,000 Jews emigrated. The tax was seen as a racist attempt to diminish the economic power of religious minorities in Turkey.

World War II

During World War II, Turkey was officially neutral although it maintained strong diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany. During the war, Turkey denaturalized 3,000 to 5,000 Jews living abroad; 2,500 Turkish Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Sobibor and other extermination camps. When Nazi Germany encouraged neutral countries to repatriate their Jewish citizens, Turkish diplomats received instructions to avoid repatriating Jews even if they could prove their Turkish nationality. Turkey was also the only neutral country to implement anti-Jewish laws during the war. More Turkish Jews suffered as a result of discriminatory policies during the war than were saved by Turkey. Although Turkey has promoted the idea that it was a rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust, this is considered a myth by historians. This myth has been used to promote Armenian genocide denial.

Turkey served as a transit for European Jews fleeing Nazi persecution during the 1930s and 1940s.

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 died during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.

According to Rıfat 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 Israel then-Palestine.

Important Turkish diplomats during the Holocaust

• Necdet Kent
• Selahattin Ülkümen
• Namık Kemal Yolga

Emigration from Turkey to Israel

When the Republic of Turkey was established in 1923, Aliyah was not particularly popular amongst Turkish Jewry; migration from Turkey to Palestine was minimal in the 1920s.

Between 1923 and 1948, approximately 7,300 Jews emigrated from Turkey to Mandatory Palestine. After the 1934 Thrace pogroms following the 1934 Turkish Resettlement Law, it is estimated that 521 Jews left for Palestine from Turkey in 1934 and 1,445 left in 1935. However, although the Law on Settlement may well have actually provoked the incidents’ outbreak, the national authorities did not side with the attackers but immediately intervened in the incidents. After order was restored, the governors and mayors of the provinces involved were removed from office.

Immigration to Palestine was organized by the Jewish Agency and the Palestine Aliya Anoar Organization. The Varlık Vergisi, a capital tax which occurred in 1942, was also significant in encouraging emigration from Turkey to Palestine; between 1943 and 1944, 4,000 Jews emigrated.

The Jews of Turkey reacted very favorably to the creation of the State of Israel. Between 1948 and 1951, 34,547 Jews immigrated to Israel, nearly 40% of the Turkish Jewish population at the time. Immigration was stunted for several months in November 1948, when Turkey suspended migration permits as a result of pressure from Arab countries.

In 1949, Turkey officially recognized Israel, becoming the first Muslim-majority country to do so. Migration permits were reinstated and emigration continued, with 26,000 emigrating within the same year. The migration was entirely voluntary, and was primary driven by economic factors given the majority of emigrants were from the lower classes. In fact, the migration of Jews to Israel is the second largest mass emigration wave out of Turkey, the first being the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey.

After 1951, emigration of Jews from Turkey to Israel slowed perceptibly.

In the mid-1950s, 10% of those who had moved to Israel returned to Turkey. A new synagogue, the Neve Şalom, was constructed in Istanbul in 1951. Generally, Turkish Jews in Israel have integrated well into society and are not distinguishable from other Israelis. However, they maintain their Turkish culture and connection to Turkey, and are strong supporters of close relations between Israel and Turkey.

Democratic Party period

On the night of 6/7 September 1955, the Istanbul Pogrom was unleashed. Although primarily aimed at the city's Greek population, the Jewish and Armenian communities of Istanbul were also targeted to a degree. The damage caused was mainly material (over 4,000 shops and 1,000 houses belonging to Greeks, Armenians and Jews were destroyed) it deeply shocked minorities throughout the country.

21st century

The present size of the Jewish community was estimated at 17,400 in 2012 according to the Jewish Virtual Library. The vast majority, approximately 95%, live in Istanbul, with a community of about 2,500 in İzmir, and until the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquake, much smaller communities in Antakya and İskenderun. Sephardi Jews make up approximately 96% of Turkey's Jewish population, while the rest are primarily Ashkenazi Jews and Jews from Italian extraction. There is also a small community of Romaniote Jews and the community of the Constantinopolitan Karaites who are related to each other.

The city of Antakya, was home to ten Jewish families, numbering 20 members in 2014, many of whom were Syrian Jews of Mizrahi Jewish extraction, having originally come from Aleppo, Syria, 2,500 years ago. Figures were once higher but families have left for Istanbul, Israel and other countries.

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. 35 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. The Istanbul community also has 16 synagogues and well kept and guarded cemetery.

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 500th anniversary of the arrival of the Sephardic Jews to the Ottoman Empire.

The Turkish-Jewish population is experiencing a population decline, due to both large-scale immigration to Israel out of fear of antisemitism, but also because of natural population decline. Intermarriage with Turkish Muslims and assimilation have become common, and the community's death rate is more than twice that of its birth rate.

As of 2022, the Jewish population in Turkey is around 14,500.

In the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquake, the leaders of the Jewish community of Antakya were killed, the Antakya Synagogue was badly damaged, and the entire Jewish community, numbering 14 members, was evacuated from Antakya.