comparison of jews in turkey and israel

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Cultural Identity, Minority Position and Immigration:Turkey's Jewish Minority vs. Turkish-Jewish Immigrantsin IsraelŞule Toktaş

Online Publication Date: 01 May 2008

To cite this Article: Toktaş, Şule (2008) 'Cultural Identity, Minority Position andImmigration: Turkey's Jewish Minority vs. Turkish-Jewish Immigrants in Israel',Middle Eastern Studies, 44:3, 511 — 525

To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/00263200802021657URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263200802021657

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Cultural Identity, Minority Position andImmigration: Turkey’s Jewish Minorityvs. Turkish-Jewish Immigrants in Israel

SULE TOKTAS

Turkey and Israel are two states founded in the first half of the twentieth century inthe Middle East. They have different history and roots, yet they share somecommonalities: both are rare examples of democracies in the region and both to acertain extent encompass multicultural societies. Another commonality is therelevance of international migration for both countries – one being home countryand the other being host country. Although Turkey is traditionally considered aMuslim country, it historically contains a Jewish minority and Israel attracted asignificant portion of the Turkish Jewish minority. The migratory movement ofTurkish Jews from Turkey to Israel has resulted in two inter-related communitiesthrough the split of the Jewish minority community in Turkey and the formation of aTurkish-Jewish immigrant community in Israel – the ‘El Turco’s.

These two communities share many cultural characteristics due to their commonorigin in Turkey but they are also marked by their differences in experience due tominority and international migration issues. The identity constructions andreconstructions of these two separate but inter-related communities are illustrativeof the crucial phenomenon of integration/assimilation of minority and immigrantgroups in their respective general societies. In the case of Turkey’s Jewish minority,the question of how the members of this specific community deal with the ‘Turkish’,‘Jewish’, ‘non-Muslim’ constructions and sets of identities is reflective of the capacityfor integration of the Turkish state and society as well as of the capability forintegration of the Jewish minority itself. In a similar vein, in the case of Israel’sTurkish origin Jews, sets of identities within the pool of ‘Israeli’, ‘Jewish’,‘Sephardim’, ‘Oriental’ and ‘El Turco – Turkish’ highlight the capacity andcapability of integration in Israel, which is predominantly an immigrant country.

This article explores identity constructions of two specific communities – Turkey’sJewish minority and Turkish-Jewish immigrants in Israel – and makes a comparativeanalysis of these two cases for immigrant and minority groups bounded by their levelof integration and assimilation into the societies that they currently live in. Thearticle utilizes the results of an empirical research conducted in Israel and Turkeywith the sample group drawn from the members of the Jewish community who wereborn and currently living in Turkey and the members of the first generation of Jewishimmigrants who were born in Turkey but moved to Israel at some point in their lives

Middle Eastern Studies,Vol. 44, No. 3, 511 – 525, May 2008

ISSN 0026-3206 Print/1743-7881 Online/08/030511-15 ª 2008 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/00263200802021657

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008 and were currently living in Israel. The article aims to draw out a profile of these

communities. At the same time, it aims to attach an in-depth focus on their identityformation with regard to their experiences of being a non-Muslim minority in aMuslim majority country and of being immigrants who lived through the process ofmoving from one country to another.

The article deals with this task in four parts. The first part provides backgroundinformation on the Jewish minority in Turkey and Turkish-Jewish immigrants inIsrael. It gives a brief historical background for these two communities and presentstheir contemporary socio-cultural outlook. The second part spotlights the empiricalstudy conducted in order to investigate the identity formulations of the concernedcommunities. This part specifically elaborates the research method and techniquesused in the field research. The third part discusses the results of the comparativeresearch. It reflects on nation-building in Turkey and its impact on the Jewishcommunity in the light of the different yet gradual process of Jewish generationalassimilation to a higher ‘Turkish’ identity. With respect to the immigrant communityin Israel, this part focuses on the immigrants’ cultural identity in Israel which ishighly determined by their year of arrival and therefore indicative of the historicalprocesses that nation-building has followed in Turkey and in Israel respectively. Thefourth part makes a comparison of these two groups and highlights the complexity ofidentity formation within the dimensions of minority and international migrationissues.

The Jewish presence in the Ottoman Empire and later in the Turkish Republic has along history dating back to the Byzantine Empire,1 but the roots of the Jewishpopulation lie mainly in mass migrations from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain andPortugal) starting in the late fifteenth century. Sephardic Jews experiencing violentreligious oppression under the Catholic Inquisition were expelled from Spain in 1492and from Portugal in 1497. The Ottoman state accepted the Jewish refugees, andaround 50,000 Jews immigrated to Ottoman territory.2

The religious tolerance enjoyed by the Jews under the Ottoman Millet system andthe Ottoman Empire’s immigration policies enabling the reception and naturaliza-tion of many immigrants and refugees spurred several waves of Jewish migrationfrom European countries.3 The migration of Sephardic Jews to the Ottoman Empirecontinued in the centuries following, and many Ashkenazic Jews from variousCentral and Eastern European countries, including Russia, came to join theirbrethren in the Ottoman Empire. Until its collapse in the early twentieth century, theempire maintained its status as a destination country for Jewish migrants andrefugees who had lived under religious discrimination and oppression in their homecountries.4 The oppressions that Jewry faced in most European countries gave rise tothe belief that Jews would be loyal to the Ottoman state. This seems to be the reasonwhy the Jewish Millet came to be called ‘the Millet that came by itself’ (kendi gelenMillet) or ‘the loyal Millet’ (Millet-i sadıka).5

The foremost change after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and theestablishment of Turkey with regard to non-Muslim groups took place within thelegal framework.6 The Millet system was abandoned; the Turkish nation emerged asan extension of the Muslim Millet in the Ottoman Empire; and non-Muslims – that

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008 is only the Greeks, Armenians and Jews – were granted minority status under a new

minority rights scheme whose fundamental principles were set by the 1923 Treaty ofLausanne. The treaty covered a broad range of general issues, but Articles 37–45specifically regulated the status and rights of non-Muslims living in Turkey.Accordingly, only three non-Muslim groups – the Armenians, Greeks and Jews, whomade up the Ottoman Empire’s major non-Muslim Millets – were recognized asminorities, and therefore were granted the right to use their own language, the rightof political and civic equality, the right to establish religious, educational and socialwelfare institutions, and the freedom of religion, travel and migration. Since thattime, there have been few revisions or additional pacts challenging the minorityrights laid out by Lausanne, and even today the treaty is considered the legalcornerstone structuring the general framework of issues related to non-Muslimminorities.7

However, events such as the 1934 Thrace incidents, the 1942 Capital Tax, the 6–7September 1955 incidents, the 1984 bombing of Neve Salom synagogue and thebombings of two more synagogues in 2003 threatened the security and the wellbeingof the Jewish community.8 The Turkish nation-building process emphasizingthe Muslim aspect in its use of Turkishness made the non-Muslims and hence thecountry’s Jews hard to place in the mainstream identification category.9 By the sametoken, the number of Jews decreased over time mainly due to immigration to variousEuropean, South and North American countries. With the establishment of a Jewishstate in Palestine, Israel became the main place of attraction for Turkey’s Jews, and alarge number migrated from Turkey to Israel.10 The 1927 national census counted81,872 Jews within the country but this number declined significantly over time andwhen it came to the 2000s, the community sources estimate that no more than 25,000Jews remained in Turkey who were born in Turkey and held Turkish citizenship.11

Today, most of the Jews are mainly concentrated in Istanbul and Izmir as part ofthe overall trend towards urbanization and metropolitanization in Turkey startingwith the 1950s. The biggest community exists in Istanbul with around 17,500–20,000Jews, followed by around 1,500–2,500 Jews in Izmir. There are also very smallcommunities in Ankara, Adana, Antakya, Bursa, Canakkale and Sanlıurfa. All ofthe Jews in Turkey are represented by the Chief Rabbinate in Istanbul. There are twocouncils under the Chief Rabbinate. The council Bet-Din deals mainly with religiousmatters related to Judaism. Elections are held for synagogue councils, generalcommunal council, for the boards of directors of the various communal institutionsand the Chief Rabbi. The secular council, on the other hand, is mainly composed ofthe community’s notable figures and generally deals with societal affairs. Ninety-sixper cent of the Jews in Turkey are Sephardic and the rest are Ashkenazic.12 Almostall of the Jews speak Turkish. Ladino is currently spoken only by some of the oldergenerations among themselves at home.13 The community is one of the mostwesternized and modernized segments of the Turkish population. The educationlevel is higher than among the rest of the population.14 Knowledge of foreignlanguages is widely spread among the community with English replacing French,especially since the 1980s. Most of the Jews are concentrated in the private sector andare mainly involved in merchandising, retail, marketing and international trade.15

Jews in Turkey tried to integrate into Turkish society. Yet at the same time theywere able to keep their cultural, ethnic and religious identities without restrictions by

Turkey’s Jewish Minority vs. Turkish-Jewish Immigrants in Israel 513

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008 the Turkish state. They have not experienced overt racism or widespread anti-

Semitism as did their counterparts in Europe, especially during the Second WorldWar, with the exception of a few small-scale incidents. However, anti-Semiticdiscourse is frequently utilized by extreme right- or left-wing political groups andmovements as well as the nationalist and Islamist media.16 Islamists via the politicaldiscourse of the movement or through media representations often deal with anti-Semitic themes.17

Jewish emigration to Israel is one of the major mass movements out of Turkey.18

Turkish Jews immigrated to Israel not as part of an exchange of populations. Thelargest wave of immigration from Turkey to Israel occurred between the years 1948and 1951 in the immediate aftermath of the foundation of Israel, known as the ‘greatwave’. However, the movement of the Jewish masses continued in the followingdecades but showed fluctuations from time to time.

In the great wave of 1948–51, a total of 34,547 Jews – making up nearly 40 per centof the Jewish community in Turkey at the time – emigrated from Turkey to Israel.19

A large portion of the immigrants came from the lower classes which were influencedby the attraction of Israel being a new state for the Jews.20 They were mainlyinvolved in low-skill occupations, crafts or industry, and hoped for an economicallybetter standard of life in Israel. The lower-class emigrants had a strong Jewishidentification deeply rooted in the traditional and religious institutions of the Jewishcommunity. Most of the emigrants did not speak Hebrew, nor had they anyknowledge of the conditions they would face upon their arrival in Israel.

Among the immigrants during the great wave, there were also upper-middle andmiddle-class youth who were motivated to emigrate mainly by Zionist idealism. Theyhad a strong sense of Jewish identity influenced by the recent Holocaust in Europe.Some other youngsters immigrated to Israel for educational purposes. With the hopeof attaining posts in state administration of Israel, they went to Israel to pursueuniversity education. The young women, however, moved to Israel for marriage. Asin the 1940s drahoma (dowry) was still a dominant tradition in the Jewish communityof Turkey, low-income families encouraged their daughters to go to Israel. Anothersubset among emigrant youth were males at or near the age of conscription. Thesemen wanted to avoid being drafted by the Turkish military.21

Migrants from Turkey to Israel in the great wave of 1948–51 were settled invarious kibbutzim, moshavim, small villages or migrant camps. There was a culturaldivide between the immigrants from Turkey and other immigrant groups. Workopportunities were also very limited and priority was given to Ashkenazic Jews. Onlya small number of the immigrants in the great wave stayed in the moshavim orkibbutzim, as most of them moved to small towns where they found work and smallhouses to settle in. Through their immigration, Turkish Jews carved themselves out aplace in two sectors they had never been involved in while still in Turkey: agricultureand the military. In Turkey, Jews were never involved in these occupations but aftertheir immigration to Israel they became involved in agriculture and others becameprofessional soldiers in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).22

After the emigration of 34,547 Turkish Jews to Israel in the 1948–51 period, up to2001 another 27,473 made their way to the Jewish state, a grand total of 62,020Turkish Jews having moved to Israel since its foundation to 2001.23 The subsequentmigrations were smaller in both scope and number but continue even today.

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008 Post-1951 emigrants from Turkey to Israel were different from those of the great

wave of 1948–51. Jews who emigrated after 1951 were mainly from the middle- orupper-middle class. In occupational terms they were mostly tradesman, but therewere also many professionals. These emigrants were able to continue in similaroccupations as those they held in Turkey with the advantage of fitting intopreviously established communities of Turkish emigres.

Economic factors were also important in these subsequent migrations. Yet someof the young Jews who immigrated to Israel in the late 1960s did so to attain a bettereducation.24 From the 1960s until the 1980 military coup in Turkey, there weresevere ideological clashes between the right and left that frequently flared intoviolence, a factor spurring emigration. Especially in 1979–80, emigrants weredominated by families with high socio-economic status who believed Israel wouldoffer a more secure life. The mass emigration of 1948–51 caused splits in family tieswith the remaining Jews. Therefore, in the subsequent migrations, those who hadstayed in Turkey but then chose to emigrate did so for reasons of family unification.Although the newcomers had more information about Israel than previousimmigrants from Turkey, they were still not prepared in terms of knowing Hebrew.25

It is estimated that around 100,000–150,000 Turkish Jews including the offspringof the first generation of immigrants live in Israel today.26 The current number ofJewish immigrants from Turkey living in Israel who have not given up their Turkishcitizenship is estimated at around 20,000.27 These immigrants live in Israel eitherwith residence permits or have dual citizenship, both Turkish and Israeli. Althoughthey are dispersed throughout the country, Bat-Yam, Ramat-Aviv, Rishon Le-Ziyon, Ramat Gan, Herzeliya, central Tel Aviv, Haifa and Yahud are the mainplaces of concentration.

In general, Turkish Jews, despite their year of arrival in Israel, integrated intoIsraeli society and became ‘invisible’ – that is, undistinguishable from otherIsraelis.28 As a specific immigrant group they avoided involvement in massmovements, protests and political parties but rather conformed to the generalmilieu. Although mainly Sephardim, they do not affiliate themselves to otherSephardic groups but rather to Turkey and Turkish culture. The process ofmigration to Israel transformed the Jews of Turkey into Israeli Turks in Israel.29 TheTurkish Jews in Israel consider themselves a Turkish Diaspora and try to retain theirTurkish culture. They have positive feelings towards Turkey, even those whoimmigrated due to discrimination there. Most of them maintain ties with relatives inTurkey and even if these are lacking, they keep an interest in the Turkish news andcustoms and a desire to revisit. They have formed various immigrant associationsthrough which they have contact with other immigrants from Turkey and maintainan identification with the Israeli-Turkish community.30

Generally Turkish Jews, and especially the first generation migrants who arrivedafter the 1970s, speak Turkish at home and with other Turkish Jews in Israel today.The immigrants of the great wave generally spoke Ladino within their communitiesand families. However, the subsequent immigrants, who were more integrated intoTurkish society at the time of their move, knew Turkish better than Ladino, andtherefore they spoke more Turkish amongst themselves or in their households. Withregard to Hebrew, most Turkish Jews now living in Israel did not know Hebrewwhen they first arrived. The immigrants who arrived in the wave of 1948–51 learned


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008 Hebrew in the migration camps. Immigrants in subsequent years learned the

language in the Ulpanim, which are special boarding or day schools expresslyestablished for adult learners of Hebrew. However, since their efforts to learn to readand write Hebrew were not as great as those of some other immigrant groups inIsrael, their Hebrew fluency is less than that of other Israelis.31

The field study in Israel and in Turkey took place between March 2002 andSeptember 2003 and was composed of 65 survey interviews in total. The interviewswere in-depth in focus and semi-structured in technique – that is, some of the ques-tions were prepared before the interviews but some others arose during thequestioning, depending on the flow of the conversation, varying according to thepersonal histories of the respondents. The questions covered various aspects ofintegration/assimilation, with a focus on being minority in the Turkish case and onbeing immigrant in the Israeli case. All of the interviews were conducted in Turkish.The respondents were contacted by a combination of various means such assnowballing or visiting communal/immigrant institutions. Diversity in terms ofsocio-economic background was sustained as much as possible. The duration of theinterviews varied from a minimum of 40 minutes to a maximum of 230 minutes, witha total average of 80 minutes.

In Turkey, 31 interviews were conducted in Istanbul. The sample group coveredthe Jews in Turkey who had Turkish citizenship by birth, who had lived in Turkeyfor many years and who had families of Jewish origin. As to the age of therespondents when they were questioned, the youngest was 20, the oldest was 89, andthe mean ratio of the total was 52. Fifteen of the respondents were women and theremaining half was men. Most of the respondents who were married had Jewishspouses. The male respondents were employed in mostly white-collar jobs or wereself-employed, generally in trade, or retired. The female respondents were mostlyhousewives but there were some students among them. The education level of the 31respondents also varied. Two of the respondents had no schooling during childhoodbut learned literacy on their own later in life, two had finished elementary school,three had finished junior high school, 12 were high school graduates, one hadfinished two years of school beyond high school (college), six were universitygraduates, four had master’s degrees and one had a doctorate. The socio-economicbackground of the 31 respondents reflected more of a middle-class orientation interms of social class stratification. The respondents were Sephardic Jews except oneAshkenazic. The mother tongues of the respondents were as follows: two hadFrench, 15 had Ladino and 14 had Turkish as their mother tongue. All of therespondents knew Ladino, although their level of proficiency varied by age, with theolder generations more comfortable in the tongue.

In Israel, 34 respondents who migrated from Turkey to Israel in various yearsbetween 1948 and 1980 and currently living in Israel were interviewed. They werefirst generation, Turkish-born immigrants who moved to Israel as adults or juveniles.At the time of the interviews, the youngest was 54, the oldest 79, and the average agewas 61. The mean ratio of age at the time of immigration from Turkey to Israel was24. Half of the respondents were female and the majority of those who were marriedhad mainly Turkish-Jewish spouses. With respect to citizenship status, eight of the

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008 respondents out of the total 34 had dual citizenship – Turkish and Israeli; five had

Turkish citizenship only and the remaining 21 respondents had Israeli citizenshiponly. The respondents were living mainly in Bat-Yam, Herzeliya, Ramat Hasharon,Ramat-Aviv, Rishon Le-Ziyon, Yahud or central Tel Aviv.

Out of all 34 respondents, 18 were employed at the time of the interviews; six outof the total 18 working respondents were employed mostly in white-collar jobs, andthe remaining 12 were self-employed. A little less than half, 16 out of the total 34,were not employed at the time of the interviews; they were generally women. Byeducation level: a single respondent had no schooling at all, three had finishedelementary school, six had finished junior high school, 13 were high schoolgraduates, three of them had finished two years of education beyond high school(college), six were university graduates, one had a master’s degree, and one had adoctorate. The socio-economic status of the respondents in terms of education andincome levels was mainly in the middle range. All of the 34 respondents wereSephardic Jews. Two of the respondents had French as their mother tongue, 20 hadLadino and 12 had Turkish, but all knew both Hebrew and Turkish. Almost all ofthe respondents knew Ladino very well, except two who knew none at all.

The cultural, educational and social reforms initiated in the early years of theRepublic contributed to the Jews’ integration into the society at large. The findingsof the field research on Jews in Turkey reflected a gradual process of integrationvarying across different generations. The older respondents had the self-perceptionthat they were Jews, and ‘Turk’ as an identity was an exclusive category. ‘Turk’ forthem was referring more to a Muslim person than a Jewish one. The samerespondents thought that ‘Turk’ could be used to refer to the Jewish community inTurkey to a limited extent owing to the fact that the community members were bornand currently living in Turkey. With the middle-aged respondents and even morewith the younger ones, the research pointed to a deeper level of integration markedby a super-identity of ‘Turk’ squeezing out the Jewish identity. Although most of therespondents below 60 years of age stressed the existence of dual identity – bothTurkish and Jewish – the younger ones between 20 and 40 tended to overemphasizetheir Turkish identity whereas the middle-aged ones frequently mentioned the needfor maintaining Jewish identity and at the same time integrating into Turkish society.One of the young respondents defines herself as follows: ‘I define myself as a Turk. Imean, a Turkish Jew. But Turkish comes before Jewish and not vice versa. I’m firstof all a Turk and then a Jew’ (23 years old, student).

Despite the older respondents’ inclusion of Islamic elements in the definition ofTurk, for the respondents of younger ages the term referred to a civic categorizationand mainly to citizenship status. Turk, according to them, covered the nation’scitizens who were born in Turkey, were living in Turkey, spoke Turkish and sharedthe same culture and history. The following excerpt reflects the understanding ofTurkishness:

The citizens of Turkey are Turks. I don’t believe people who say Turks cameoriginally from Central Asia. These are just made-up stories. In my opinion,‘Turk’ doesn’t mean the same as ‘Muslim’. Of course, 99 per cent of the Turks inTurkey are Muslims but when someone mentions a Turk, I don’t immediatelythink that that person is a Muslim. ‘Turk’ sounds like a secular adjective, one


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008 separate from religious identity. In my opinion, a Turk is a citizen of the state of

Turkey. (45 years old, lawyer)

In a similar vein, the term ‘Jew’ for the older respondents above their 60s covered areligious-national identity across the globe, whereas for younger ones it correlated toreligion. As follows: ‘For me, Judaism is a religion. I’m not so religious, so I see it partlyas a religion and partly as a culture. I’m a Jew’ (27 years old, procurement specialist).

On the whole, it was argued that religious belief is a matter between God and theindividual, making third party interference of any form (i.e., other people,communities, institutions, or the state itself) wholly unacceptable. The field researchfound that Turkey’s Jewish community adopted secular norms of Judaism andgenerally did not approve of strict adherence to religious norms and principles indaily life. Among the interviewees, it was found that the practice of Judaism haddiminished over the generations. The elderly seemed to practice Judaism more, andin contrast a loose practice of religion seemed to be more prevalent among theyounger respondents. For instance, the frequency of fasting, visiting synagogues andpraying, and performing religious rituals was higher among the older respondentsthan the younger ones.

The findings obtained in the interviews revealed that secularism played asignificant role in curbing the religious identities in Turkey. The principle ofsecularism, since the establishment of modern Turkey, has provided a barrier againstthe influx of Islamic norms in the public sphere. Although the prohibition of Islam inthe public sphere enabled a more secure and liberated environment for non-Muslims,one free from the threat of an Islamic order, such restrictions on Islam and all otherreligions in the public sphere also curbed the religious identity of the Jews. Undersecularism, symbols of Judaism itself were also restricted from appearing in thepublic sphere. Secularism served the secularization of Judaism paving a path forthe confinement of religion to the homes of Jews and thus pushing for a moremoderate practice of Judaism. For instance, the wearing of religious attire in thepublic sphere was allowed only for leaders of the religious communities.Consequently, as for Muslims wearing the turban was disallowed, the wearing ofthe common religious skullcap known as the kipah (or yarmulke), normally worn byordinary Jews on the streets, was restricted.

In terms of the language used by the Jewish community in Turkey, Turkish as themother tongue has replaced Ladino over time since the establishment of theRepublic. Even more, most of the respondents were of the belief that in a countrythere needs to be one dominant language known by everybody living in that country.They considered Turkish as one of the essential norms of public life in Turkey. Asone respondent said:

Everybody should speak Turkish in the streets. When people visit the grocer,they shouldn’t ask for a kilo of potatoes in some other language. You can speakwhatever language you like at home but on the streets communication betweenpeople needs to be in Turkish. (23 years old, designer)

They also stressed that the nation’s Jews, especially older members of the Jewishcommunity who lacked Turkish or preferred not to use it, should speak Turkish in

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008 the public sphere and in relations with people outside the community. Yet for them it

need not be imposed by force or pressure but rather could be part of a gradualtransition. As one of the respondents said:

No one ever warned me to speak Turkish because I knew how. But peopleraised in Jewish neighbourhoods didn’t know any Turkish. They would havespoken Turkish if they had known any but they didn’t. They tried speaking butafter a certain age they couldn’t learn well. They were speaking very funnyTurkish. Those who wanted Turkish to be spoken were right but those whocouldn’t speak Turkish were right as well. Today nobody can compel others tospeak a certain language. But those times [the 1940s] were different. In thosetimes the state was pulling itself up. (77 years old, retired/artist)

The research showed that no matter how much the community encourages andeven opts for integration, it also tries to resist the eventual, gradual and inevitableconsequence of integration which is assimilation. As Turkey’s Jewish communitylives through integration into the general society, it also risks assimilation evidencedby the rise of intermarriage especially since the 1980s and 1990s. As a manoeuvre forresisting assimilation, there is collective pressure on the younger generations not tomarry gentiles but to marry within the community and, if that is not possible, tomarry within other Jewish communities living abroad. The following excerpt fromthe interview of a single young woman shows this anxiety about intermarriage:

I have a Muslim boyfriend and difference in religion affects our relationship.Especially with the families of course. I can’t introduce my boyfriend to myfamily. My family would not favour me marrying a Muslim person. I do notthink they would even be tolerant with a Muslim boyfriend. (24 years old,student)

Almost all of the respondents called themselves both Jews and Israelis but ofTurkish origin. There was a difference of stress on the Turkish origin part:immigrants who arrived in the great wave emphasized their Turkish roots less, whilethose who arrived later emphasized them more strongly and frequently. Thedifference in the degree of emphasis on Turkishness seemed to be reflected in the levelof interaction with other immigrants from Turkey in Israel as well. Those whoarrived in the great wave seemed to have social networks with other Jewishimmigrants from various countries. Those who arrived in subsequent decades forgedsocial networks primarily with other Turkish Jews. However, across all immigrationperiods, immigrants from Turkey in Israel maintained ties with their relatives whostayed behind in Turkey. Either their relatives in Turkey came to visit them in Israel,or vice versa. What one of the immigrants said reflects identification withTurkishness: ‘I see myself as a Jew of Turkish origin, because we were born andgrew up in Turkey, and this didn’t leave us. We’ve been here for thirty years and thisis how we still are. We never lost our Turkishness’ (1970 immigrant, accountant).

The degree of stress on Turkishness reflects the history of integration of the Jewsin Turkey. The ones who moved to Israel in the great wave were the ones who hadnot been deeply integrated into Turkish society at large since it was the time of early


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008 nation-building. The ones who arrived at later stages had a stronger affiliation with

Turkish identity because the impact of Turkification and nation-building had beengreater for these Jews and they migrated to Israel more as Turkish Jews. In a similarvein, by the 1970s there was a shift in Israel’s immigrant absorption policies in termsof its nation-building process. In the early years, the ‘melting pot’ model for socio-cultural integration was the dominant norm, but this gradually gave way to a morepluralistic notion of Israeli culture. This shift to the acknowledgement ofmulticulturalism corresponds to the identification of Jews from Turkey as TurkishJews. With respect to affiliation with other Sephardic groups in Israel, most of therespondents said that in Turkey they had been unaware that they were SephardicJews but after their arrival in Israel they discovered a distinction between Ashkenazicand Sephardic Jews.

As the Israelis grew more familiar with native Turkish culture, they began to get toknow Israel’s own Turkish Jews better, seeing in the process what this group hadinherited from its former homeland. Furthermore, diplomatic ties between Turkeyand Israel strengthened after the 1980s, and cooperation in a host of fields had apositive influence on the perception of Israelis towards Turkey and immigrants fromTurkey in Israel. Such a change in the Israeli perception of Turkish Jews coincided,again, with the general profile of the immigrants by year of arrival. As therespondents related, Turkish Jews were initially seen as Oriental Jews coming fromthe lower socio-economic strata. However, the post-1970s aliya brought with it animproved image of Turkish-origin Jews. Below is a quotation summarizing how theIsraeli perception of Turkish Jews changed over time:

Turkish Jewry’s sick and jobless came to Israel – that’s how it was in the firstyears. They left a negative mark on the image of Turkish Jewry. When othersstarted to come in the 1970s, the Israelis got confused because these peopledidn’t look like the earlier immigrants from Turkey. These newcomers, whowere mostly educated professionals, changed the image of Turkish Jews. (1950immigrant, doctor)

Most of the respondents said that they were not as religious as they had been inTurkey, they added they were opposed to any form of religious fundamentalism.Although respondents from the great wave seemed to practise religion more, whichmay be due to their advanced age, immigrants who arrived in later decades reportedless observance. Migration to Israel, a Jewish-majority country, seemed to be themajor reason for the declining religious observance. In Israel, the food sold outside iskosher, resting and praying was already reserved officially for the Shabbat andwedding ceremonies were not held in synagogues but in secular entertainmentsettings. One of the respondents spoke about the change in religious practice thus:

We only go to synagogues on Yom Kippur (fasting day) and Bar Mitzvahceremonies. The marriages aren’t held in synagogues here. We used to go tosynagogues more often when we were in Turkey. If we had stayed there andhadn’t migrated to Israel, we would have gone to synagogues more in order tokeep our religion and to be able to transmit our religious culture to our children.But here in Israel, everybody is Jewish so we don’t feel obligated to transmit

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008 Judaism to our children. We’re among Jews here and that’s enough I guess.

(1979 immigrant, shop owner)

The respondents not only saw the Turkish Jews in Israel bearing a distinctivecultural and historical inheritance but also made a distinction between them andIsrael’s Orthodox Jewry, the former being more secular and moderate in terms ofreligion and the latter being strict in religious observance. The Haredim, an ultra-Orthodox group in Israel which strongly advocates Messianic belief and questionsthe sovereignty of the state, were frequently mentioned as exemplifying thedistinction. Secularism as a principle was seen as a requirement of moderndemocracy in both Turkey and Israel. Most of the respondents said that they wereuncomfortable with the rise of Islamism in Turkey and were closely watching itsconservative government (as of the autumn 2002 general elections). For Israel, theyseemed to have similar concerns about fundamentalist Jews and argued that theseextreme religious groups threatened not only Israel’s democracy but also theharmony of Israeli society. Some of the respondents were even of the belief thatTurkey was a secular country but Israel was not.32 They believed that religion was amatter best confined to the private sphere and that political abuses of religious beliefsshould be prohibited by law, as is the case in Turkish democracy. To illustrate:

There is secularism in Turkey – religion and the state are separated. But theydon’t separate them here that much. I think secularism is a problem in Israel.For example, if someone wants to get married, the marriage has to be religious.El Al [the Israeli national airline] doesn’t fly on Saturdays [the Sabbath]. There’sno public transportation on Saturdays. These are all contrary to secularism. Butrecently we’ve seen some opposition. In the last elections, the religious partiesdidn’t attract many votes. (1973 immigrant, shop owner)

The mother tongues of Turkish Jews varied according to their year of migration.The Jews who migrated to Israel in the great wave of 1948–51 mainly had Ladino astheir mother tongue, with a limited use of Turkish. These early immigrants learnedHebrew in Israel and continued to speak mainly Ladino amongst themselves, thoughTurkish was also used when needed. The Jews who arrived in the 1970s, however,had Turkish as their mother tongue. Although their level of Ladino was also high,the Turkish tongue had been more dominant in their lives in Turkey. Most of therespondents follow news related to Turkey and tune into Turkish television channels.

Most of the respondents from across the migration waves think that all membersof a nation should learn and speak the country’s dominant language: Turkish inTurkey and Hebrew in Israel. Some of the respondents even criticized the Russianimmigrants in Israel for using Russian in public and not Hebrew: ‘It annoys me whenI hear a Russian [immigrant] speaking Russian. I believe that in one country thelanguage that everybody understands should be spoken’ (1974 immigrant, house-wife).

Migration to Israel, as a process, also seems to have impacted on attitudes towardsintermarriage. The respondents in Israel related how while in Turkey theircommunity tried to avoid intermarriage. When they arrived in Israel such concernsvanished, as the former minority group members overnight became members of the


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008 majority group – Israel’s Jews. Since Jews are the majority in Israel, the respondents

said that their children would most probably marry other Israeli Jews. In this regard,there was no problem of intermarriage for Turkish Jews in Israel as there had beenwith Turkey’s Jewish minority, who regarded intermarriage as a threat to thesurvival of their group’s cultural characteristics.

The research demonstrated that the meaning of intermarriage changed during thecourse of migration. Prior to immigration, it meant marrying a gentile in Turkey.However, after moving into a Jewish majority, intermarriage seemed to have earnedan additional meaning for the respondents – marriage among fellow Jews who yethad different ethno-cultural backgrounds. Almost all of the respondents wouldprefer their children to marry Turkish Jews. The immigrants said that they raisedtheir children as Israelis yet maintained Turkish culture to a certain extent, and thatif their offspring were to marry other Jews of Turkish origin – including Jewscurrently living in Turkey – they would get along better as the food, values and dailyhabits would be similar. The closest culture to that of the Turkish Jews was seen tobe the other Sephardic Jews from Iran, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. The followingquotation is an example of preference for marriage among Turkish Jewry:‘Everybody is Jewish here. There is no risk [of interfaith marriage]. We prefer ourchildren to marry among Turkish Jewry. Some of us even tried to play matchmakerwith the children’ (1979 immigrant, housewife).

Identity seems to be a determining factor in defining the boundaries of minority andimmigrant groups. Turkey’s Jews seemed to identify themselves with being ‘Jewish’and ‘Turkish’. The Jewish community in Turkey seems to be fighting for survival,and its religious life is diminishing while intermarriage and assimilation areincreasing. In order to preserve their Jewish identity, several measures are takenby the community, yet the forces of assimilation and the domination of supra-Turkish culture create pressure for inclusion, which especially for the youngergenerations is hard to resist.

The endeavour of preserving Jewish identity seems to be replaced by Turkishidentity in the group of immigrants in Israel. Even the level of religious observanceseemed to decrease among Turkish Jews with migration to Israel. As Bhatia setsforth regarding several cases in international migration, the immigrants, rather thanmoving from the culture of the home country into the culture of the host country mixcultures in the process of moving.33 Furthermore, over time, many immigrant groupsdevelop cultural hybridism – that is mixing the culture of their home countries withthe ones adopted from the host culture.34 Similarly, with the experience of migration,the Turkish Jews in Israel seem to combine the culture inherited in the home countrywith the one adopted in the host country.

The research illustrated that Turkish Jews in Israel experienced an identity crisiswhich can be correlated to the one that Turkey has been experiencing. Turkey isneither oriental nor western; neither developed nor underdeveloped; neitherEuropean nor Middle Eastern. By the same token, the first generation of TurkishJews in Israel cannot identify themselves fully with other immigrant groups in Israel.They see themselves as belonging neither to the Ashkenazi Jewry nor to the OrientalJewry; showing characteristics of neither the upper stratum of Israeli society nor of

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008 the lower stratum; and having neither European origin nor Middle Eastern origin.

They see themselves as ‘in between’ these categories, yet they mentioned that Israelisociety in general had a false perception of Turkish Jews and saw them belonging tothe latter set of categories: Oriental, lower stratum and Middle Eastern. TurkishJews in Israel have a greater variety of sources of identification, varying from‘Jewish’, ‘Turkish’, ‘Israeli’ to ‘Sephardim’.

Both the groups defined themselves as Turkish. Turkishness, for them, resultedprimarily from being born in Turkish lands. In addition to this territorial definition,the respondents in Israel and Turkey suggested that the title ‘Turkish’ enclosed adistinguished culture having various features that include way of looking at life,manners, values, aesthetic preferences, styles of raising children, food, songs, etc.which were identifiable with respect to other countries’ cultures. Even some religioushabits of fasting or not eating pork are attributed as a commonality in Islam andJudaism. The minority group also emphasizes sharing the same history as adeterminant of Turkishness, which is not much recalled by the immigrant group, yetthey emphasize socialization at a young age to become a Turk. Both of the groupsadmit that majority of Turks are Muslims but add that not every Muslim was a Turknor every Turk a Muslim. They make a distinction in the Islamic world betweenArabs and Turks and argue that the real Islam, a holy religion, is that of Turks andnot of Arabs. The ‘extreme Islamists’ in Turkey are exemplified as people who areunder the influence of dogmatic Islam exercised in the Middle East. Muslim Turks,in their opinion, are people who interpret Islam according to the needs of thecontemporary age.

Secularism emerged as a common theme for respondents in Turkey and Israel.Almost all of the respondents strongly advocated secularism and defined it as amajor democratic principle. The respondents seemed not to be satisfied withsecularism in the countries where they live. The minority group mentioned that theywere uneasy with the rise of Islamism in Turkey and added that they did not want tohave worries about secularism after the change of government at every election. Theimmigrant group, on the other hand, considered Turkey as a country wheresecularism is firmly established with strong roots and raised questions aboutsecularism in Israel. Most of the respondents in Israel mentioned that they feltuneasy with the rise of Jewish fundamentalism in Israel.

The research indicated that the experiences in modes of integration/assimilation ofTurkish Jews in Israel and Jews in Turkey pinpoint similar historical trends in nation-building processes in both countries. In the Israeli case, the Zionist vision of the‘melting pot’ in which various Jewish identities from different countries would betransformed into an Israeli one, over time, left its place for a more limited insistenceon Hebrew as the common language and for a more pluralistic vision of Israeli cultureand society.35 This shift is actually the transformation from an assimilationist to amulticultural regime of integration that started in 1970s and speeded up after 1980s.36

A similar nation-building process has occurred in Turkey. Since its establishment,the official ideology rested on a unifying concept of Turkishness by which diversity ofsociety in terms of ethnicity, religion or language or existence of minority groups waspersistently ignored. Assimilation of sub-groups was directed ‘from above’, whichcreated pressures from time to time. With regard to the Jewish minority, althoughthey were given formal recognition, their assimilation was also promoted. After


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008 1980s, multiculturalism started to become pronounced and was identified as an asset

of Turkey after the 1990s. Jews were acculturated to a large extent when it came to1980s and the gap between the ‘Turkish’ majority and the Jewish minority hadbecome minimal. Furthermore, the European Union accession process put pressureon Turkey. General society became interested in non-Muslims and Jews in returnbegan to articulate their Jewish identity more easily in public as compared toprevious decades. An interest in Ladino as a language to be protected has gainedweight among the Jewish community. Discussions on past record of policies towardsnon-Muslims in Turkey attracted wide attention, evidenced by the proliferation ofpublications on them. Intermarriage speeded up and conversion to Islam no longeroccurs as had been the case with intermarriage before 1980s. Now, spouses maintaintheir own religion after marriage.

Notes

The author gratefully acknowledges the support and assistance of the Department of International

Relations at Isik University during the research and writing of this article. The research was funded by the

Scientific Research Project Programmes of Isik University.

1. A. Galanti, Turkler ve Yahudiler [The Turks and the Jews] (Istanbul: Gozlem Gazetecilik Basın ve

Yayın A.S. [reprint, Istanbul: Tan Matbaası, 1949], 1995), p.16.

2. H. Gerber, The Jews of the Ottoman Empire in the XVI and XVII Centuries: Economy and Society

(Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1982).

3. K. Kirisci, ‘Disaggregating Turkish Citizenship and Immigration Practices’, Middle Eastern Studies,

Vol.36, No.3 (2000), p.3.

4. G. Veinstein, ‘L’Empire Ottoman dupuis 1492 jusqua la fin du XIXeme siecle’, in H. Mechoulam (ed.),

Les Juifs D’Espagne: Histoire d’une diaspora 1492–1992 (Paris: Liana Levi, 1992).

5. H. Alkan, 500 Yıllık Seruven: Belgelerle Turkiye Yahudileri I [An Adventure of 500 Years: Jews in

Turkey in Documents] (Ankara: Gunce Yayıncılık, 2000), p.182.

6. S. Toktas, ‘The Conduct of Citizenship in the Case of Turkey’s Jewish Minority: Legal Status, Identity

and Civic Virtue Aspects’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Vol.26,

No.1 (2006), pp.121–33.

7. Ibid.

8. In 1934, several Jewish neighbourhoods in Thracian cities were attacked by mobs provoked by

extreme nationalists. In 1942, the government at the time initiated a one time tax called the Capital

Tax. Accordingly, the non-Muslims were made to pay higher taxes than their Muslim counterparts. In

1955, shops owned by non-Muslims were attacked by civilian groups. In 1984, the biggest synagogue

of Istanbul was bombed by a foreign Arab and in 2003 two more synagogoes were attacked this time

by Turkish nationals who were affiliated with radical Islamist groups. For more information on these

cases, see R.N. Bali,Musa’nın Evlatları Cumhuriyet’in Yurttasları [The Children of Moses, the Citizens

of the Republic] (Istanbul: _Iletisim Yayınları, 2001); S. Toktas, ‘Perceptions of Anti-Semitism among

Turkish Jews’, Turkish Studies, Vol.7, No.2 (2006), pp.203–23.

9. R.N. Bali, Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Turkiye Yahudileri: Bir Turklestirme Seruveni [Jews in the

Republican Era: A Story of Turkification] (Istanbul: _Iletisim Yayınları, 2000); S. Toktas, ‘Citizenship

and Minorities: A Historical Overview of Turkey’s Jewish Minority’, The Journal of Historical

Sociology, Vol.18, No.4 (2005), pp.394–429.

10. R.N. Bali, Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Turkiye Yahudileri: Aliya – Bir Toplu Gocun Oykusu 1946–1949 [The

Jews in Turkey During the Republican Years: Aliyah – The Story of Mass Migration 1946–1949]

(Istanbul: _Iletisim Yayınları, 2003).

11. F. Dundar, Turkiye Nufus Sayımlarında Azınlıklar [Minorities in Censuses in Turkey] (Istanbul:

Civiyazıları, 2000), p.154; A.W. Liberles, ‘The Jewish Community of Turkey’, in D.J. Elazar, H.P.

Friedenreich, B. Hazzan and A.W. Liberles (eds.), The Balkan Jewish Communities: Yugoslavia,

Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey (New York and London: University Press of America, 1984), pp.127–70.

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008

12. Due to lack of official statistical figures, the exact population or composition of Turkish Jewry is

indefinite. Some estimates claim that almost all of the Turkish Jews are Sephardic but around 100

Ashkenazic Jews live in today’s Turkey. Please see O. Oehring, ‘Human Rights in Turkey –

Secularism¼Religious Freedom?’ (Aachen: Internationales Katholisches Missionswerk e.V. Human

Rights Office, 2002), http://www.missio-aachen.de/Images/MR%20T%C3%BCrkei%20englisch_

tcm14-11238.pdf, p.12.

13. E. Franz, Population Policy in Turkey: Family Planning and Migration between 1960 and 1992

(Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut, 1994), p.330.

14. Liberles, ‘The Jewish Community of Turkey’, p.139.

15. S. Toktas, ‘Turkey’s Jews and Their Immigration to Israel’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.42, No.3

(2006), pp.505–19.

16. Toktas, ‘Perceptions of Anti-Semitism among Turkish Jews’, pp.203–23.

17. Ibid.

18. C. Geray, ‘Turkiye’de Gocmen Hareketleri ve Gocmenlerin Yerlestirilmesi’ [Immigration Movements

and the Settlement of Migrants in Turkey], Amme _Idaresi Dergisi, Vol.3, No.4 (1970), pp.8–36.

19. State of Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel 2002, No. 53 (2003), http://

www.cbs.gov.il.

20. _I. Tekeli, ‘Osmanlı _Imparatorlu�gu’ndan Gunumuze Nufusun Zorunlu Yer De�gistirmesi ve _Iskan

Sorunu’ [Forced Migration and the Question of Settlement from the Ottoman Empire to Date],

Toplum ve Bilim, No.50 (1990), pp.49–71; W.F. Weiker, Unseen Israelis: The Jews from Turkey in

Israel (London: The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Center for Jewish Community Studies, 1988).

However, it must also be noted that Jews migrated to countries other than Israel as well. According to

one estimate, between 1948 and 1973, around 20,000 Jews emigrated to countries like France, Austria

and American continents. See Liberles, ‘The Jewish Community of Turkey’, p.141.

21. Bali, Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Turkiye Yahudileri, p.266.

22. Weiker, Unseen Israelis, p.81.

23. State of Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel 2002.

24. Toktas, ‘Turkey’s Jews and their Immigration to Israel’, p.509.


26. C. Yetkin, Turkiye Devlet Yasamında Yahudiler [Jews in the Turkish State] (Istanbul: Gozlem

Gazetecilik Basın ve Yayın A.S., 1996), p.56.



29. Bali, Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Turkiye Yahudileri, p.341.



32. Some of the issues casting doubt on Israel’s secular status are the legal sanction for public sphere

observance of the Sabbath and Jewish holidays; the almost exclusive jurisdiction granted religious

courts over matters of family law; state support for religious educational institutions largely

autonomous of the general educational system; and various privileges granted Orthodox individuals,

most importantly, the exemption from compulsory military service for Orthodox women and

Orthodox yeshiva students.

33. S. Bhatia, ‘Acculturation, Dialogical Voices and the Construction of the Diasporic Self’, Theory and

Psychology, Vol.12, No.1 (2002), p.56.

34. L. Remennick, ‘Transnational Community in the Making: Russian Jewish Immigrants of the 1990s in

Israel’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol.28, No.3 (2002), pp.515–30.

35. R. Baubock, International Migration and Liberal Democracies: The Challenge of Integration, Working

Papers Series, No. 17 (2001), Osterreichische Akademie Der Wissenschaften; Orit Ichilov, ‘Citizenship

Perceptions of Soviet Immigrants in Israel’, International Review of Sociology, Vol.12, No.1 (2002),

p.6.

36. D. Abraham, ‘Citizenship Solidarity and Rights Individualism: On the Decline of National

Citizenship in the U.S., Germany and Israel’, Working Paper, No.53 (San Diego: The Centre for

Comparative Immigration Studies, 2002).
