The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Jews in Turkey During WW I

Jews in Turkey During WW I
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Friday, September 24 2010, 16:13:57 (UTC)
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Damn...I fogot to copy the source for this...I googled "historians on Jews in Turkey, 1918"...I always add "historians" to avoid taxi drivers and wikipedia especially....

"In the 19th century as the Ottoman empire lost territories in the Balkans, many Jews were forced to flee with the Ottomans. The Ottoman authorities helped to resettle these refugees. Jews remembered all of the Turkish hospitality that had been extended to them through the centuries with great celebrations in 1892, commemorating the fourth centennial of the expulsion of Jews from Spain. They were the sultan’s loyal subjects until the end of the empire.

Jews and Turks in the Twentieth Century
Dr. Heath Lowry, Executive Director of the Institute of Turkish Studies in Washington, D.C., spoke about the Jewish-Turkish relationship in the twentieth century. He stressed the good relations between Jews and Turks during the years of the Turkish revolution of 1920-1923 which led Mustafa Kemal, the founder of modern Turkey to declare, in a speech in Izmir on February 2, 1923:

"There are one people who have tied their destiny together with the Turkish nation. These are the Jews who have proven their loyalty to this nation and this land."

The Jews had harbored no movement of nationalism or engaged in struggles for national entity from the Turks as had the Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, Rumanians and others. During the Greek occupation of Izmir (1919-1922) they had refused to lend support to the occupying forces and celebrated the liberation of the area by the Turks, The Jews feared for the safety of their coreligionists who had come under Christian rule as the result of the successful revolutionary wars against the Turks at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. They continued to believe that Turkish rule was the best protection against Christian anti-Semitism. Turkey never allowed anti-Semitic behavior.

The focus of the newly-emerged state of Turkey in 1923 was nationalism and linguistic unity. It took some time for the Jews of Turkey to fit comfortably into the new society since most of them still spoke the Judeo-Spanish language of their ancestors. Not because of anti-Semitism but because of the fervor of the newly-established Turkish nationalism, Jews suffered in some anti-minority incidents including the unfair capital gains tax which was instituted in 1944, and rescinded after a few months. However, Dr. Lowry stressed that Jewish life among the Turks continued to be one of safety, harmony and good relations between the two peoples. Especially, he noted the Turkish rescue of Jews from France and Greece during World War II serving as a passageway for European Jewry to Palestine. Jerusalem’s Mayor Teddy Kollek was active in the Jewish Agency at this time and witnessed Turkish resistance to Nazi pressure. Later, Turkey became a refuge for Jews from Iran.

Today’s Jewish population in Turkey is smaller, about 25 thousand within a Moslem population of 54 million, but has stabilized—no longer as a separate minority but rather as an integral part of the country. Thanks to the encouragement of such Jewish intellectuals as Henri Soriano, Moise Franco and Abraham Galante to learn Turkish, Jews are now successful businessmen and industrialists. They have 14 synagogues, 16 rabbis, a chief rabbi (and his council of 30 lay leaders), a mikvak, two parochial schools, three social clubs, a special hospital, home for the elderly and a Jewish newspaper.

The Jewish community in Turkey is presently engaged in preparations for the celebration of the 500th anniversary of their welcome into the Ottoman Empire. In conclusion, Dr. Lowry expressed the hope that in the next hundred years their descendants and ours will be on hand to mark the 600th anniversary as well.



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