Turkish Jews and Their Diasporas: Entanglements and Separations

Opening remarks by

• Aron Rodrigue (Stanford University)

Participating editors

• İpek Kocaömer Yosmaoğlu (Northwestern University)
• Kerem Öktem (Università Ca' Foscari)

Contributing authors

• Özgur Kaymak (Istanbul University)
• Duygu Atlas (Onlyherstory)

While their numbers have been dwindling rapidly due to emigration or Aliyah, Turkish Jews have recently experienced a heightened and not always welcome level of visibility in Turkey. Even though much-talked about TV series like ‘The Club’ have humanized what used to be caricaturized and unsympathetic depictions of Jews in Turkey's popular culture, Anti-Semitism has reached hitherto unseen levels in political debates and in everyday interactions. Why have Turkish Jews become suddenly so visible in Turkey, after decades of being absent from the public debate? And how much of Jewish life and Jewish futures is left under the conditions of ‘New Turkey’ and Islamist authoritarianism?

The edited volume Turkish Jews and their Diasporas seeks answers to these questions by revisiting the past and present of Jewish life in Turkey and Turkish Jewish diaspora communities in Israel, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. It surveys the history of Jews in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, examining the survival of Jewish communities during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and their emigration to America, Europe, and Israel.

In the cases discussed, members of these communities often sought and seek close connections with Turkey, even if those ‘ties that bind’ are rarely reciprocated by the Turkish government. Contributors also explore Turkish Jewishness today, as it is lived in Israel and Turkey, and as it is found in ‘places of memory' in cities in Turkey, where Jews no longer exist.