istanbul | In the backyard of the Etz Ahayim synagogue in Turkey’s largest city, Yusuf Arslan hollers pleasantries as he mingles with other members of the small congregation.
He shouts to be heard over the deafening sound of a sudden downpour hitting the blast-proof glass ceiling that stretches over the synagogue’s spacious yard. Installed after Istanbul’s deadly 2003 synagogue bombings, the shield is meant to prevent grenades from exploding in the complex should anyone hurl them over its formidable walls and past the guard post where several armed men stand watch under a Turkish flag.
Arslan, a real estate developer, says the tight security “neither poses a real obstacle for communal life nor differs greatly from other at-risk communities, say in France or Britain.”
Turkey’s government, he said, “protects its Jews.” His view reflects the party line of Turkey’s small Jewish community, whose estimated 15,000 to 20,000 members generally have been careful not to appear ungrateful to a government they believe protects them from growing radicalism in a predominantly Muslim society.
But that long tradition of self-censorship is fading as Turkish Jews grow increasingly uneasy with the hostile rhetoric emanating from the mouths of officials in Turkey’s ruling Islamist AKP party, especially President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“Erdogan and AKP use blatant anti-Israel rhetoric for votes, and this comes back to us as anti-Semitic hatred,” said Denis Ojalvo, a Jewish expert on international relations living in Istanbul. “Ordinary Turks are unable to make the distinction between Israeli and Jew.”
A report this year by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noted that Turkish Jews are reporting mounting harassment and are “increasingly fearful of violence” amid “rising anti-Semitism in society, in the media and in occasional derogatory comments by government officials.”
Cefi Kamhi, a former lawmaker and prominent Turkish Jew, accuses Erdogan of “pandering to populism” at the Jewish community’s expense. As a result, he said, “young Turkish Jews are now planning their future, teaching their children foreign languages, liquidating their assets.”
The shift is a marked change for Turkey’s Jews, who historically have maintained a low profile, steered clear of conflicts and stayed put despite Turkey’s Islamic drift. Erdogan’s rhetoric has changed that.
In 2013, Erdogan fulminated against “the interest rate lobby [that] believes it can threaten Turkey with stock market speculation” — an allusion seen by critics as referencing rich foreign Jews. In 2014, he accused protesters angered by his handling of a mining tragedy of being “spawns of Israel,” and the pro-government Yeni Akit newspaper criticized the mine owner for having a Jewish son-in-law.
Anti-Semitic rhetoric spiked last summer during Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, during which hundreds of Turkish protesters stormed the Israeli Embassy and the ambassador’s residence in Ankara. Erdogan accused Israel of “Hitler-like fascism” and of perpetrating a “systemic genocide every Ramadan” against Palestinians.
In January, Ankara’s mayor, Melih Gökçek, who is a member of Erdogan’s AKP, or Justice and Development Party, accused Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency of orchestrating the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket attacks in Paris that were perpetrated by Muslim extremists.
These days in Turkey, classic anti-Semitic motifs regularly surface in television shows and movies.
Many say the turning point came after the May 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, when nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists were killed after Israeli troops stormed the Gaza-bound ship with which they were attempting to break Israel’s Gaza blockade. The incident aboard the vessel, the Mavi Marmara, poisoned Turkish-Israel relations and unleashed a flood of anti-Semitic statements from officialdom that shocked many Turkish Jews.
Turkey’s government also has made some pro-Jewish moves, such as helping to fund the reopening of the Edirne Great Synagogue in March and organizing Holocaust commemorations in Istanbul annually since 2011 and in Ankara this year.
But Kamhi, the Jewish former lawmaker, dismisses these actions as “symbolism meant to deflect foreign criticism over the creeping state anti-Semitism.” He said, “They sound good on CNN and have absolutely no coverage in Turkey.”
For now, Turkey’s Jews are not seeing significant emigration. Turkish immigrants to Israel numbered only 204 in the years 2012-2014, a 50 percent decrease from the 416 people who came in 2009-2011.
Who are Turkey’s Jews?
For centuries, Turkey served as a safe haven for Jews fleeing anti-Semitism.
The earliest records of Jews in Turkey date back to 220 BCE, but the area saw a major Jewish influx in the early 14th century, when Jews expelled from Hungary, France, Sicily and elsewhere migrated to Turkey. Their positive impact on trade convinced the land’s Ottoman rulers to welcome more Jews.
When Spain and Portugal expelled their Jews during the 15th and 16th centuries, tens of thousands of Sephardic refugees landed on Turkey’s turquoise shores. This displaced elite boosted Ottoman diplomacy, finance and literature and transformed Istanbul into one of the Jewish world’s most important centers, whose creativity and diversity rivaled that of the Golden Age of Spain.
Turkish Jewry reached its population height of 200,000 members on the eve of World War I, according to the Society for Research on Jewish Communities. The loss of land following the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I halved that number. Most of those who remained immigrated to Israel by 1950, according to Arkadash–the Turkish Community in Israel.
Despite protection by Turkish authorities, the country’s modern Jewish community suffered two deadly attacks in the past 30 years: A shooting in 1986 by Palestinian terrorists that left 22 people dead at Istanbul’s Neve Shalom synagogue, and car bombings in 2003 that left 27 dead — most of them not Jewish — outside the same synagogue and the Bet Israel synagogue.
Today, Turkish Jewry is estimated at 15,000 to 20,000. Almost all live in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city. — cnaan liphshiz