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Middle Eastern Studies
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Cultural Identity, Minority Position and Immigration: Turkey's Jewish Minority vs. Turkish-Jewish Immigrants in Israel Şule Toktaş Online Publication Date: 01 May 2008 To cite this Article: Toktaş, Şule (2008) 'Cultural Identity, Minority Position and Immigration: Turkey's Jewish Minority vs. Turkish-Jewish Immigrants in Israel', Middle Eastern Studies, 44:3, 511 — 525 To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/00263200802021657 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263200802021657
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Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3, 511 – 525, May 2008
Cultural Identity, Minority Position and Immigration: Turkey’s Jewish Minority vs. Turkish-Jewish Immigrants in Israel S¸ULE TOKTAS¸ Turkey and Israel are two states founded in the first half of the twentieth century in the Middle East. They have different history and roots, yet they share some commonalities: both are rare examples of democracies in the region and both to a certain extent encompass multicultural societies. Another commonality is the relevance of international migration for both countries – one being home country and the other being host country. Although Turkey is traditionally considered a Muslim country, it historically contains a Jewish minority and Israel attracted a significant portion of the Turkish Jewish minority. The migratory movement of Turkish Jews from Turkey to Israel has resulted in two inter-related communities through the split of the Jewish minority community in Turkey and the formation of a Turkish-Jewish immigrant community in Israel – the ‘El Turco’s. These two communities share many cultural characteristics due to their common origin in Turkey but they are also marked by their differences in experience due to minority and international migration issues. The identity constructions and reconstructions of these two separate but inter-related communities are illustrative of the crucial phenomenon of integration/assimilation of minority and immigrant groups 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 capacity for integration of the Turkish state and society as well as of the capability for integration of the Jewish minority itself. In a similar vein, in the case of Israel’s Turkish origin Jews, sets of identities within the pool of ‘Israeli’, ‘Jewish’, ‘Sephardim’, ‘Oriental’ and ‘El Turco – Turkish’ highlight the capacity and capability of integration in Israel, which is predominantly an immigrant country. This article explores identity constructions of two specific communities – Turkey’s Jewish minority and Turkish-Jewish immigrants in Israel – and makes a comparative analysis of these two cases for immigrant and minority groups bounded by their level of integration and assimilation into the societies that they currently live in. The article utilizes the results of an empirical research conducted in Israel and Turkey with the sample group drawn from the members of the Jewish community who were born and currently living in Turkey and the members of the first generation of Jewish immigrants who were born in Turkey but moved to Israel at some point in their lives ISSN 0026-3206 Print/1743-7881 Online/08/030511-15 ª 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/00263200802021657
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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 identity formation with regard to their experiences of being a non-Muslim minority in a Muslim majority country and of being immigrants who lived through the process of moving from one country to another. The article deals with this task in four parts. The first part provides background information on the Jewish minority in Turkey and Turkish-Jewish immigrants in Israel. It gives a brief historical background for these two communities and presents their contemporary socio-cultural outlook. The second part spotlights the empirical study conducted in order to investigate the identity formulations of the concerned communities. This part specifically elaborates the research method and techniques used in the field research. The third part discusses the results of the comparative research. It reflects on nation-building in Turkey and its impact on the Jewish community in the light of the different yet gradual process of Jewish generational assimilation to a higher ‘Turkish’ identity. With respect to the immigrant community in Israel, this part focuses on the immigrants’ cultural identity in Israel which is highly determined by their year of arrival and therefore indicative of the historical processes that nation-building has followed in Turkey and in Israel respectively. The fourth part makes a comparison of these two groups and highlights the complexity of identity formation within the dimensions of minority and international migration issues.
The Jewish presence in the Ottoman Empire and later in the Turkish Republic has a long history dating back to the Byzantine Empire,1 but the roots of the Jewish population lie mainly in mass migrations from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) starting in the late fifteenth century. Sephardic Jews experiencing violent religious oppression under the Catholic Inquisition were expelled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. The Ottoman state accepted the Jewish refugees, and around 50,000 Jews immigrated to Ottoman territory.2 The religious tolerance enjoyed by the Jews under the Ottoman Millet system and the Ottoman Empire’s immigration policies enabling the reception and naturalization of many immigrants and refugees spurred several waves of Jewish migration from European countries.3 The migration of Sephardic Jews to the Ottoman Empire continued in the centuries following, and many Ashkenazic Jews from various Central and Eastern European countries, including Russia, came to join their brethren in the Ottoman Empire. Until its collapse in the early twentieth century, the empire maintained its status as a destination country for Jewish migrants and refugees who had lived under religious discrimination and oppression in their home countries.4 The oppressions that Jewry faced in most European countries gave rise to the belief that Jews would be loyal to the Ottoman state. This seems to be the reason why the Jewish Millet came to be called ‘the Millet that came by itself’ (kendi gelen Millet) or ‘the loyal Millet’ (Millet-i sadıka).5 The foremost change after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of Turkey with regard to non-Muslim groups took place within the legal framework.6 The Millet system was abandoned; the Turkish nation emerged as an extension of the Muslim Millet in the Ottoman Empire; and non-Muslims – that
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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 of Lausanne. The treaty covered a broad range of general issues, but Articles 37–45 specifically regulated the status and rights of non-Muslims living in Turkey. Accordingly, only three non-Muslim groups – the Armenians, Greeks and Jews, who made up the Ottoman Empire’s major non-Muslim Millets – were recognized as minorities, and therefore were granted the right to use their own language, the right of political and civic equality, the right to establish religious, educational and social welfare institutions, and the freedom of religion, travel and migration. Since that time, there have been few revisions or additional pacts challenging the minority rights laid out by Lausanne, and even today the treaty is considered the legal cornerstone structuring the general framework of issues related to non-Muslim minorities.7 However, events such as the 1934 Thrace incidents, the 1942 Capital Tax, the 6–7 September 1955 incidents, the 1984 bombing of Neve S¸alom synagogue and the bombings of two more synagogues in 2003 threatened the security and the wellbeing of the Jewish community.8 The Turkish nation-building process emphasizing the Muslim aspect in its use of Turkishness made the non-Muslims and hence the country’s Jews hard to place in the mainstream identification category.9 By the same token, the number of Jews decreased over time mainly due to immigration to various European, South and North American countries. With the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, Israel became the main place of attraction for Turkey’s Jews, and a large number migrated from Turkey to Israel.10 The 1927 national census counted 81,872 Jews within the country but this number declined significantly over time and when it came to the 2000s, the community sources estimate that no more than 25,000 Jews 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 of the overall trend towards urbanization and metropolitanization in Turkey starting with the 1950s. The biggest community exists in Istanbul with around 17,500–20,000 Jews, followed by around 1,500–2,500 Jews in Izmir. There are also very small communities in Ankara, Adana, Antakya, Bursa, C¸anakkale and S¸anlıurfa. All of the Jews in Turkey are represented by the Chief Rabbinate in Istanbul. There are two councils under the Chief Rabbinate. The council Bet-Din deals mainly with religious matters related to Judaism. Elections are held for synagogue councils, general communal council, for the boards of directors of the various communal institutions and the Chief Rabbi. The secular council, on the other hand, is mainly composed of the community’s notable figures and generally deals with societal affairs. Ninety-six per cent of the Jews in Turkey are Sephardic and the rest are Ashkenazic.12 Almost all of the Jews speak Turkish. Ladino is currently spoken only by some of the older generations among themselves at home.13 The community is one of the most westernized and modernized segments of the Turkish population. The education level is higher than among the rest of the population.14 Knowledge of foreign languages is widely spread among the community with English replacing French, especially since the 1980s. Most of the Jews are concentrated in the private sector and are mainly involved in merchandising, retail, marketing and international trade.15 Jews in Turkey tried to integrate into Turkish society. Yet at the same time they were able to keep their cultural, ethnic and religious identities without restrictions by
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the Turkish state. They have not experienced overt racism or widespread antiSemitism as did their counterparts in Europe, especially during the Second World War, with the exception of a few small-scale incidents. However, anti-Semitic discourse is frequently utilized by extreme right- or left-wing political groups and movements as well as the nationalist and Islamist media.16 Islamists via the political discourse of the movement or through media representations often deal with antiSemitic 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. The largest wave of immigration from Turkey to Israel occurred between the years 1948 and 1951 in the immediate aftermath of the foundation of Israel, known as the ‘great wave’. However, the movement of the Jewish masses continued in the following decades 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 cent of 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 influenced by the attraction of Israel being a new state for the Jews.20 They were mainly involved in low-skill occupations, crafts or industry, and hoped for an economically better standard of life in Israel. The lower-class emigrants had a strong Jewish identification deeply rooted in the traditional and religious institutions of the Jewish community. Most of the emigrants did not speak Hebrew, nor had they any knowledge of the conditions they would face upon their arrival in Israel. Among the immigrants during the great wave, there were also upper-middle and middle-class youth who were motivated to emigrate mainly by Zionist idealism. They had a strong sense of Jewish identity influenced by the recent Holocaust in Europe. Some other youngsters immigrated to Israel for educational purposes. With the hope of attaining posts in state administration of Israel, they went to Israel to pursue university education. The young women, however, moved to Israel for marriage. As in the 1940s drahoma (dowry) was still a dominant tradition in the Jewish community of Turkey, low-income families encouraged their daughters to go to Israel. Another subset among emigrant youth were males at or near the age of conscription. These men wanted to avoid being drafted by the Turkish military.21 Migrants from Turkey to Israel in the great wave of 1948–51 were settled in various kibbutzim, moshavim, small villages or migrant camps. There was a cultural divide between the immigrants from Turkey and other immigrant groups. Work opportunities were also very limited and priority was given to Ashkenazic Jews. Only a small number of the immigrants in the great wave stayed in the moshavim or kibbutzim, as most of them moved to small towns where they found work and small houses to settle in. Through their immigration, Turkish Jews carved themselves out a place in two sectors they had never been involved in while still in Turkey: agriculture and the military. In Turkey, Jews were never involved in these occupations but after their immigration to Israel they became involved in agriculture and others became professional soldiers in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).22 After the emigration of 34,547 Turkish Jews to Israel in the 1948–51 period, up to 2001 another 27,473 made their way to the Jewish state, a grand total of 62,020 Turkish Jews having moved to Israel since its foundation to 2001.23 The subsequent migrations were smaller in both scope and number but continue even today.
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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- or upper-middle class. In occupational terms they were mostly tradesman, but there were also many professionals. These emigrants were able to continue in similar occupations as those they held in Turkey with the advantage of fitting into previously established communities of Turkish e´migre´s. Economic factors were also important in these subsequent migrations. Yet some of the young Jews who immigrated to Israel in the late 1960s did so to attain a better education.24 From the 1960s until the 1980 military coup in Turkey, there were severe ideological clashes between the right and left that frequently flared into violence, a factor spurring emigration. Especially in 1979–80, emigrants were dominated by families with high socio-economic status who believed Israel would offer a more secure life. The mass emigration of 1948–51 caused splits in family ties with the remaining Jews. Therefore, in the subsequent migrations, those who had stayed in Turkey but then chose to emigrate did so for reasons of family unification. Although the newcomers had more information about Israel than previous immigrants 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 offspring of the first generation of immigrants live in Israel today.26 The current number of Jewish immigrants from Turkey living in Israel who have not given up their Turkish citizenship is estimated at around 20,000.27 These immigrants live in Israel either with residence permits or have dual citizenship, both Turkish and Israeli. Although they are dispersed throughout the country, Bat-Yam, Ramat-Aviv, Rishon LeZiyon, Ramat Gan, Herzeliya, central Tel Aviv, Haifa and Yahud are the main places of concentration. In general, Turkish Jews, despite their year of arrival in Israel, integrated into Israeli society and became ‘invisible’ – that is, undistinguishable from other Israelis.28 As a specific immigrant group they avoided involvement in mass movements, protests and political parties but rather conformed to the general milieu. Although mainly Sephardim, they do not affiliate themselves to other Sephardic groups but rather to Turkey and Turkish culture. The process of migration to Israel transformed the Jews of Turkey into Israeli Turks in Israel.29 The Turkish Jews in Israel consider themselves a Turkish Diaspora and try to retain their Turkish culture. They have positive feelings towards Turkey, even those who immigrated due to discrimination there. Most of them maintain ties with relatives in Turkey and even if these are lacking, they keep an interest in the Turkish news and customs and a desire to revisit. They have formed various immigrant associations through which they have contact with other immigrants from Turkey and maintain an identification with the Israeli-Turkish community.30 Generally Turkish Jews, and especially the first generation migrants who arrived after 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 communities and families. However, the subsequent immigrants, who were more integrated into Turkish society at the time of their move, knew Turkish better than Ladino, and therefore they spoke more Turkish amongst themselves or in their households. With regard to Hebrew, most Turkish Jews now living in Israel did not know Hebrew when they first arrived. The immigrants who arrived in the wave of 1948–51 learned
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Hebrew in the migration camps. Immigrants in subsequent years learned the language in the Ulpanim, which are special boarding or day schools expressly established for adult learners of Hebrew. However, since their efforts to learn to read and write Hebrew were not as great as those of some other immigrant groups in Israel, their Hebrew fluency is less than that of other Israelis.31
The field study in Israel and in Turkey took place between March 2002 and September 2003 and was composed of 65 survey interviews in total. The interviews were in-depth in focus and semi-structured in technique – that is, some of the questions were prepared before the interviews but some others arose during the questioning, depending on the flow of the conversation, varying according to the personal histories of the respondents. The questions covered various aspects of integration/assimilation, with a focus on being minority in the Turkish case and on being immigrant in the Israeli case. All of the interviews were conducted in Turkish. The respondents were contacted by a combination of various means such as snowballing or visiting communal/immigrant institutions. Diversity in terms of socio-economic background was sustained as much as possible. The duration of the interviews varied from a minimum of 40 minutes to a maximum of 230 minutes, with a total average of 80 minutes. In Turkey, 31 interviews were conducted in Istanbul. The sample group covered the Jews in Turkey who had Turkish citizenship by birth, who had lived in Turkey for many years and who had families of Jewish origin. As to the age of the respondents when they were questioned, the youngest was 20, the oldest was 89, and the mean ratio of the total was 52. Fifteen of the respondents were women and the remaining half was men. Most of the respondents who were married had Jewish spouses. The male respondents were employed in mostly white-collar jobs or were self-employed, generally in trade, or retired. The female respondents were mostly housewives but there were some students among them. The education level of the 31 respondents also varied. Two of the respondents had no schooling during childhood but 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 had finished two years of school beyond high school (college), six were university graduates, four had master’s degrees and one had a doctorate. The socio-economic background of the 31 respondents reflected more of a middle-class orientation in terms of social class stratification. The respondents were Sephardic Jews except one Ashkenazic. The mother tongues of the respondents were as follows: two had French, 15 had Ladino and 14 had Turkish as their mother tongue. All of the respondents knew Ladino, although their level of proficiency varied by age, with the older generations more comfortable in the tongue. In Israel, 34 respondents who migrated from Turkey to Israel in various years between 1948 and 1980 and currently living in Israel were interviewed. They were first 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 age was 61. The mean ratio of age at the time of immigration from Turkey to Israel was 24. Half of the respondents were female and the majority of those who were married had mainly Turkish-Jewish spouses. With respect to citizenship status, eight of the
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respondents out of the total 34 had dual citizenship – Turkish and Israeli; five had Turkish citizenship only and the remaining 21 respondents had Israeli citizenship only. 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 out of the total 18 working respondents were employed mostly in white-collar jobs, and the 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. By education level: a single respondent had no schooling at all, three had finished elementary school, six had finished junior high school, 13 were high school graduates, 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 a doctorate. The socio-economic status of the respondents in terms of education and income levels was mainly in the middle range. All of the 34 respondents were Sephardic Jews. Two of the respondents had French as their mother tongue, 20 had Ladino and 12 had Turkish, but all knew both Hebrew and Turkish. Almost all of the respondents knew Ladino very well, except two who knew none at all. The cultural, educational and social reforms initiated in the early years of the Republic contributed to the Jews’ integration into the society at large. The findings of the field research on Jews in Turkey reflected a gradual process of integration varying across different generations. The older respondents had the self-perception that they were Jews, and ‘Turk’ as an identity was an exclusive category. ‘Turk’ for them was referring more to a Muslim person than a Jewish one. The same respondents thought that ‘Turk’ could be used to refer to the Jewish community in Turkey to a limited extent owing to the fact that the community members were born and currently living in Turkey. With the middle-aged respondents and even more with the younger ones, the research pointed to a deeper level of integration marked by a super-identity of ‘Turk’ squeezing out the Jewish identity. Although most of the respondents below 60 years of age stressed the existence of dual identity – both Turkish and Jewish – the younger ones between 20 and 40 tended to overemphasize their Turkish identity whereas the middle-aged ones frequently mentioned the need for 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. I mean, a Turkish Jew. But Turkish comes before Jewish and not vice versa. I’m first of all a Turk and then a Jew’ (23 years old, student). Despite the older respondents’ inclusion of Islamic elements in the definition of Turk, for the respondents of younger ages the term referred to a civic categorization and mainly to citizenship status. Turk, according to them, covered the nation’s citizens who were born in Turkey, were living in Turkey, spoke Turkish and shared the same culture and history. The following excerpt reflects the understanding of Turkishness: The citizens of Turkey are Turks. I don’t believe people who say Turks came originally 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 in Turkey are Muslims but when someone mentions a Turk, I don’t immediately think that that person is a Muslim. ‘Turk’ sounds like a secular adjective, one
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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 a religious-national identity across the globe, whereas for younger ones it correlated to religion. As follows: ‘For me, Judaism is a religion. I’m not so religious, so I see it partly as 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 the individual, making third party interference of any form (i.e., other people, communities, institutions, or the state itself) wholly unacceptable. The field research found that Turkey’s Jewish community adopted secular norms of Judaism and generally did not approve of strict adherence to religious norms and principles in daily life. Among the interviewees, it was found that the practice of Judaism had diminished over the generations. The elderly seemed to practice Judaism more, and in contrast a loose practice of religion seemed to be more prevalent among the younger respondents. For instance, the frequency of fasting, visiting synagogues and praying, and performing religious rituals was higher among the older respondents than the younger ones. The findings obtained in the interviews revealed that secularism played a significant role in curbing the religious identities in Turkey. The principle of secularism, since the establishment of modern Turkey, has provided a barrier against the influx of Islamic norms in the public sphere. Although the prohibition of Islam in the 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 other religions in the public sphere also curbed the religious identity of the Jews. Under secularism, symbols of Judaism itself were also restricted from appearing in the public sphere. Secularism served the secularization of Judaism paving a path for the confinement of religion to the homes of Jews and thus pushing for a more moderate practice of Judaism. For instance, the wearing of religious attire in the public sphere was allowed only for leaders of the religious communities. Consequently, as for Muslims wearing the turban was disallowed, the wearing of the common religious skullcap known as the kipah (or yarmulke), normally worn by ordinary Jews on the streets, was restricted. In terms of the language used by the Jewish community in Turkey, Turkish as the mother tongue has replaced Ladino over time since the establishment of the Republic. Even more, most of the respondents were of the belief that in a country there 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. As one 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 speak whatever language you like at home but on the streets communication between people needs to be in Turkish. (23 years old, designer) They also stressed that the nation’s Jews, especially older members of the Jewish community who lacked Turkish or preferred not to use it, should speak Turkish in
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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 gradual transition. As one of the respondents said: No one ever warned me to speak Turkish because I knew how. But people raised in Jewish neighbourhoods didn’t know any Turkish. They would have spoken Turkish if they had known any but they didn’t. They tried speaking but after a certain age they couldn’t learn well. They were speaking very funny Turkish. Those who wanted Turkish to be spoken were right but those who couldn’t speak Turkish were right as well. Today nobody can compel others to speak a certain language. But those times [the 1940s] were different. In those times the state was pulling itself up. (77 years old, retired/artist) The research showed that no matter how much the community encourages and even opts for integration, it also tries to resist the eventual, gradual and inevitable consequence of integration which is assimilation. As Turkey’s Jewish community lives through integration into the general society, it also risks assimilation evidenced by the rise of intermarriage especially since the 1980s and 1990s. As a manoeuvre for resisting assimilation, there is collective pressure on the younger generations not to marry gentiles but to marry within the community and, if that is not possible, to marry within other Jewish communities living abroad. The following excerpt from the 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 my family. My family would not favour me marrying a Muslim person. I do not think 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 of Turkish origin. There was a difference of stress on the Turkish origin part: immigrants who arrived in the great wave emphasized their Turkish roots less, while those who arrived later emphasized them more strongly and frequently. The difference in the degree of emphasis on Turkishness seemed to be reflected in the level of interaction with other immigrants from Turkey in Israel as well. Those who arrived in the great wave seemed to have social networks with other Jewish immigrants from various countries. Those who arrived in subsequent decades forged social networks primarily with other Turkish Jews. However, across all immigration periods, immigrants from Turkey in Israel maintained ties with their relatives who stayed 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 with Turkishness: ‘I see myself as a Jew of Turkish origin, because we were born and grew up in Turkey, and this didn’t leave us. We’ve been here for thirty years and this is 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 Jews in Turkey. The ones who moved to Israel in the great wave were the ones who had not been deeply integrated into Turkish society at large since it was the time of early
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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 been greater for these Jews and they migrated to Israel more as Turkish Jews. In a similar vein, by the 1970s there was a shift in Israel’s immigrant absorption policies in terms of its nation-building process. In the early years, the ‘melting pot’ model for sociocultural integration was the dominant norm, but this gradually gave way to a more pluralistic notion of Israeli culture. This shift to the acknowledgement of multiculturalism corresponds to the identification of Jews from Turkey as Turkish Jews. With respect to affiliation with other Sephardic groups in Israel, most of the respondents said that in Turkey they had been unaware that they were Sephardic Jews but after their arrival in Israel they discovered a distinction between Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews. As the Israelis grew more familiar with native Turkish culture, they began to get to know Israel’s own Turkish Jews better, seeing in the process what this group had inherited from its former homeland. Furthermore, diplomatic ties between Turkey and Israel strengthened after the 1980s, and cooperation in a host of fields had a positive influence on the perception of Israelis towards Turkey and immigrants from Turkey 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 the respondents related, Turkish Jews were initially seen as Oriental Jews coming from the lower socio-economic strata. However, the post-1970s aliya brought with it an improved image of Turkish-origin Jews. Below is a quotation summarizing how the Israeli perception of Turkish Jews changed over time: Turkish Jewry’s sick and jobless came to Israel – that’s how it was in the first years. They left a negative mark on the image of Turkish Jewry. When others started to come in the 1970s, the Israelis got confused because these people didn’t look like the earlier immigrants from Turkey. These newcomers, who were mostly educated professionals, changed the image of Turkish Jews. (1950 immigrant, doctor) Most of the respondents said that they were not as religious as they had been in Turkey, they added they were opposed to any form of religious fundamentalism. Although respondents from the great wave seemed to practise religion more, which may be due to their advanced age, immigrants who arrived in later decades reported less observance. Migration to Israel, a Jewish-majority country, seemed to be the major reason for the declining religious observance. In Israel, the food sold outside is kosher, resting and praying was already reserved officially for the Shabbat and wedding ceremonies were not held in synagogues but in secular entertainment settings. One of the respondents spoke about the change in religious practice thus: We only go to synagogues on Yom Kippur (fasting day) and Bar Mitzvah ceremonies. The marriages aren’t held in synagogues here. We used to go to synagogues more often when we were in Turkey. If we had stayed there and hadn’t migrated to Israel, we would have gone to synagogues more in order to keep 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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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 distinctive cultural and historical inheritance but also made a distinction between them and Israel’s Orthodox Jewry, the former being more secular and moderate in terms of religion and the latter being strict in religious observance. The Haredim, an ultraOrthodox group in Israel which strongly advocates Messianic belief and questions the sovereignty of the state, were frequently mentioned as exemplifying the distinction. Secularism as a principle was seen as a requirement of modern democracy in both Turkey and Israel. Most of the respondents said that they were uncomfortable with the rise of Islamism in Turkey and were closely watching its conservative government (as of the autumn 2002 general elections). For Israel, they seemed to have similar concerns about fundamentalist Jews and argued that these extreme religious groups threatened not only Israel’s democracy but also the harmony of Israeli society. Some of the respondents were even of the belief that Turkey was a secular country but Israel was not.32 They believed that religion was a matter best confined to the private sphere and that political abuses of religious beliefs should 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 they don’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’s no public transportation on Saturdays. These are all contrary to secularism. But recently we’ve seen some opposition. In the last elections, the religious parties didn’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 as their mother tongue, with a limited use of Turkish. These early immigrants learned Hebrew in Israel and continued to speak mainly Ladino amongst themselves, though Turkish 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 the respondents follow news related to Turkey and tune into Turkish television channels. Most of the respondents from across the migration waves think that all members of a nation should learn and speak the country’s dominant language: Turkish in Turkey and Hebrew in Israel. Some of the respondents even criticized the Russian immigrants in Israel for using Russian in public and not Hebrew: ‘It annoys me when I hear a Russian [immigrant] speaking Russian. I believe that in one country the language that everybody understands should be spoken’ (1974 immigrant, housewife). Migration to Israel, as a process, also seems to have impacted on attitudes towards intermarriage. The respondents in Israel related how while in Turkey their community tried to avoid intermarriage. When they arrived in Israel such concerns vanished, as the former minority group members overnight became members of the
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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 been with Turkey’s Jewish minority, who regarded intermarriage as a threat to the survival of their group’s cultural characteristics. The research demonstrated that the meaning of intermarriage changed during the course of migration. Prior to immigration, it meant marrying a gentile in Turkey. However, after moving into a Jewish majority, intermarriage seemed to have earned an additional meaning for the respondents – marriage among fellow Jews who yet had different ethno-cultural backgrounds. Almost all of the respondents would prefer their children to marry Turkish Jews. The immigrants said that they raised their children as Israelis yet maintained Turkish culture to a certain extent, and that if their offspring were to marry other Jews of Turkish origin – including Jews currently living in Turkey – they would get along better as the food, values and daily habits would be similar. The closest culture to that of the Turkish Jews was seen to be the other Sephardic Jews from Iran, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. The following quotation is an example of preference for marriage among Turkish Jewry: ‘Everybody is Jewish here. There is no risk [of interfaith marriage]. We prefer our children to marry among Turkish Jewry. Some of us even tried to play matchmaker with the children’ (1979 immigrant, housewife).
Identity seems to be a determining factor in defining the boundaries of minority and immigrant 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 are increasing. In order to preserve their Jewish identity, several measures are taken by the community, yet the forces of assimilation and the domination of supraTurkish culture create pressure for inclusion, which especially for the younger generations is hard to resist. The endeavour of preserving Jewish identity seems to be replaced by Turkish identity in the group of immigrants in Israel. Even the level of religious observance seemed to decrease among Turkish Jews with migration to Israel. As Bhatia sets forth regarding several cases in international migration, the immigrants, rather than moving from the culture of the home country into the culture of the host country mix cultures in the process of moving.33 Furthermore, over time, many immigrant groups develop cultural hybridism – that is mixing the culture of their home countries with the 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 country with the one adopted in the host country. The research illustrated that Turkish Jews in Israel experienced an identity crisis which can be correlated to the one that Turkey has been experiencing. Turkey is neither oriental nor western; neither developed nor underdeveloped; neither European nor Middle Eastern. By the same token, the first generation of Turkish Jews 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 Oriental Jewry; showing characteristics of neither the upper stratum of Israeli society nor of
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the lower stratum; and having neither European origin nor Middle Eastern origin. They see themselves as ‘in between’ these categories, yet they mentioned that Israeli society in general had a false perception of Turkish Jews and saw them belonging to the latter set of categories: Oriental, lower stratum and Middle Eastern. Turkish Jews 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, resulted primarily from being born in Turkish lands. In addition to this territorial definition, the respondents in Israel and Turkey suggested that the title ‘Turkish’ enclosed a distinguished 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 religious habits of fasting or not eating pork are attributed as a commonality in Islam and Judaism. The minority group also emphasizes sharing the same history as a determinant of Turkishness, which is not much recalled by the immigrant group, yet they emphasize socialization at a young age to become a Turk. Both of the groups admit that majority of Turks are Muslims but add that not every Muslim was a Turk nor every Turk a Muslim. They make a distinction in the Islamic world between Arabs and Turks and argue that the real Islam, a holy religion, is that of Turks and not of Arabs. The ‘extreme Islamists’ in Turkey are exemplified as people who are under 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 the contemporary 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 a major democratic principle. The respondents seemed not to be satisfied with secularism in the countries where they live. The minority group mentioned that they were uneasy with the rise of Islamism in Turkey and added that they did not want to have worries about secularism after the change of government at every election. The immigrant group, on the other hand, considered Turkey as a country where secularism is firmly established with strong roots and raised questions about secularism in Israel. Most of the respondents in Israel mentioned that they felt uneasy with the rise of Jewish fundamentalism in Israel. The research indicated that the experiences in modes of integration/assimilation of Turkish Jews in Israel and Jews in Turkey pinpoint similar historical trends in nationbuilding processes in both countries. In the Israeli case, the Zionist vision of the ‘melting pot’ in which various Jewish identities from different countries would be transformed into an Israeli one, over time, left its place for a more limited insistence on Hebrew as the common language and for a more pluralistic vision of Israeli culture and society.35 This shift is actually the transformation from an assimilationist to a multicultural 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 of society in terms of ethnicity, religion or language or existence of minority groups was persistently ignored. Assimilation of sub-groups was directed ‘from above’, which created pressures from time to time. With regard to the Jewish minority, although they were given formal recognition, their assimilation was also promoted. After
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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 to 1980s and the gap between the ‘Turkish’ majority and the Jewish minority had become minimal. Furthermore, the European Union accession process put pressure on Turkey. General society became interested in non-Muslims and Jews in return began to articulate their Jewish identity more easily in public as compared to previous decades. An interest in Ladino as a language to be protected has gained weight among the Jewish community. Discussions on past record of policies towards non-Muslims in Turkey attracted wide attention, evidenced by the proliferation of publications on them. Intermarriage speeded up and conversion to Islam no longer occurs as had been the case with intermarriage before 1980s. Now, spouses maintain their 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, Tu¨rkler ve Yahudiler [The Turks and the Jews] (Istanbul: Go¨zlem 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. Kiris¸ c¸i, ‘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 XIXe`me sie`cle’, in H. Mechoulam (ed.), Les Juifs D’Espagne: Histoire d’une diaspora 1492–1992 (Paris: Liana Levi, 1992). 5. H. Alkan, 500 Yıllık Seru¨ven: Belgelerle Tu¨rkiye Yahudileri I [An Adventure of 500 Years: Jews in Turkey in Documents] (Ankara: Gu¨nce 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 Yurttas¸ları [The Children of Moses, the Citizens _ of the Republic] (Istanbul: Iletis¸ im 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 Tu¨rkiye Yahudileri: Bir Tu¨rkles¸tirme Seru¨veni [Jews in the _ Republican Era: A Story of Turkification] (Istanbul: Iletis¸ im 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 Tu¨rkiye Yahudileri: Aliya – Bir Toplu Go¨c¸u¨n O¨yku¨su¨ 1946–1949 [The Jews in Turkey During the Republican Years: Aliyah – The Story of Mass Migration 1946–1949] _ (Istanbul: Iletis¸ im Yayınları, 2003). 11. F. Du¨ndar, Tu¨rkiye Nu¨fus Sayımlarında Azınlıklar [Minorities in Censuses in Turkey] (Istanbul: C¸iviyazıları, 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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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 – Secularism ¼ Religious 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, ‘Tu¨rkiye’de Go¨c¸men Hareketleri ve Go¨c¸menlerin Yerles¸ tirilmesi’ [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. _ Tekeli, ‘Osmanlı Imparatorlu _ _ 20. I. gu’ndan Gu¨nu¨mu¨ze Nu¨fusun Zorunlu Yer De gis¸ tirmesi 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 Tu¨rkiye 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. 25. Weiker, Unseen Israelis, p.31. 26. C¸. Yetkin, Tu¨rkiye Devlet Yas¸amında Yahudiler [Jews in the Turkish State] (Istanbul: Go¨zlem Gazetecilik Basın ve Yayın A.S¸., 1996), p.56. 27. Toktas¸ , ‘Turkey’s Jews and their Immigration to Israel’, p.516. 28. Weiker, Unseen Israelis, p.10. 29. Bali, Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Tu¨rkiye Yahudileri, p.341. 30. Toktas¸ , ‘Turkey’s Jews and their Immigration to Israel’, p.518. 31. Weiker, Unseen Israelis, p.88. 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. Baubo¨ck, International Migration and Liberal Democracies: The Challenge of Integration, Working Papers Series, No. 17 (2001), O¨sterreichische 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).