About the Jews of Turkey 

      Jews have lived in the geographic area of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) for more than 2,400 years. In the later Middle Ages, Ashkenazi Jews migrating to the Byzantine Empire and Ottoman Empire supplemented the original Jewish population of Asia Minor. At the end of the 15th century, a large number of Sephardic Jews fleeing persecution in Spain and Portugal settled in Asia Minor on the invitation of the Ottoman Empire. Despite emigration during the 20th century, modern day Turkey continues to have a small Jewish population.

      The history of the Jews in Anatolia started many centuries before the migration of Sephardic Jews. Remnants of Jewish settlement from the 4th century B.C.E. have been uncovered in the Aegean region, where Jews lived and traded in the ancient cities of Ephesus, Sardis, Pergamon, and Smyrna (renamed Izmir by the Turks). The historian Josephus Flavius relates that Aristotle "met Jewish people with whom he had an exchange of views during his trip across Asia Minor."

      Second and third century Greek inscriptions tell of a flourishing Jewish community in Smyrna. Ancient synagogue ruins have also been found in Sardis, near Izmir, dating from 220 B.C.E. and traces of other Jewish settlements have been discovered near Bursa, in the southeast and along the Aegean, Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. A bronze column found in Ankara confirms the rights the Emperor Augustus accorded the Jews of Asia Minor.

      Jewish communities in Anatolia flourished and continued to prosper through the Turkish conquest. When the Ottomans captured Bursa in 1324 and made it their capital, they found a Jewish community oppressed under Byzantine rule. The Jews welcomed the Ottomans as saviours. Sultan Orhan gave them permission to build the Etz ha-Hayyim (Tree of Life) synagogue which remained in service until 50 years ago.

      Early in the 14th century, when the Ottomans had established their capital at Edirne, Jews from Europe, including Karaites, migrated there.1 Similarly, Jews expelled from Hungary in 1376, from France by Charles VI in September 1394, and from Sicily early in the 15th century found refuge in the Ottoman Empire. In the 1420s, Jews from Salonika then under Venetian control fled to Edirne.2

      Ottoman rule was much kinder than Byzantine rule had been. In fact, from the early 15th century on, the Ottomans actively encouraged Jewish immigration. Western European Jews received three invitations to settle in the Ottoman Empire. Two were from Muslim sultans, Muhammad (Mehmet) II in the middle of the 15th century and Bayazid II in 1492. The third came in a letter sent by Rabbi Yitzhak Sarfati (from Edirne) in 1454 to Jewish communities in Europe in the first part of the century that "invited his coreligionists to leave the torments they were enduring in Christiandom and to seek safety and prosperity in Turkey."3 Rabbi Sarfati wrote that “here every man dwells at peace under his own vine and fig tree.”3

      When Mehmet II "the Conqueror" took Constantinople in 1453, he encountered an oppressed Romaniot (Byzantine) Jewish community which welcomed him with enthusiasm. Sultan Mehmet II issued a proclamation to all Jews "... to ascend the site of the Imperial Throne, to dwell in the best of the land, each beneath his Dine and his fig tree, with silver and with gold, with wealth and with cattle...".4

      There has been a Jewish community in Turkey (Asia Minor) since the 4th century B.C. such as in Sardis. According to the Old Testament, the prophet Abraham was born in Ur in Chaldea. Near the Euphrates (Firat) river, there is a historic and ancient city called Sanliurfa whose initial name was Ur. Jewish communities in Asia Minor continued to prosper throughout the Turkish conquest under Seljuks and Ottomans.

      In modern times after the Republic, in the late 1930's and early 1940’s, Turkey again opened its homes and universities to Jews who had fled from Nazi oppression and persecution. In 1933 Ataturk invited to Turkey many university professors of Jewish origin who were threatened by Nazi cruelty. In the beginning of the 19th Century Turkey was home to more than 100,000 Jews.

      Today Turkey's total Jewish population is around 26,000 (the second largest Jewish community in a Muslim country, being the first is Iran), with a great majority living in Istanbul. In 1992 the community celebrated the 500th anniversary of its existence in Turkey since the spring of 1492, when they came to Istanbul and accepted by the sultan Beyazit II shortly after the Moors were driven out of Granada, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain expelled all the Jews from their lands and ended the largest Jewish settlement in Europe. The community is 96% Sephardi, the rest is Ashkenazis. There are also about 100 Karaites live in Turkey, but usually they don't consider themselves a part of the Jewish community and don't take any part in its activities.

      The Jewish people in Turkey contributed immensely to the economic, cultural and political life during the times of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic after the War of Liberation led by Ataturk.
The Jewish community of Turkey is recognized by the State through its Chief Rabbinate, and Chief Rabbi is called "Haham Basi" in Turkish.