Table Of ContentJewish Life in
21
st-Century Turkey
New Anthropologies of Europe
Daphne Berdahl, Matti Bunzl, and Michael Herzfeld,
founding editors
Indiana Series in Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies
Harvey E. Goldberg and Matthias Lehmann, editors
Jewish Life in
21
st-Century Turkey
The Other Side of Tolerance
Marcy Brink-Danan
Indiana University Press
Bloomington & Indianapolis
This book is a publication of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street Manufactured in the United States of
Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA America
iupress.indiana.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931 Brink-Danan, Marcy.
Jewish life in twenty-first-century Tur-
© 2012 by Marcy Brink-Danan key : the other side of tolerance / Marcy
All rights reserved Brink-Danan.
p. cm. — (New anthropologies of
No part of this book may be reproduced Europe) (Indiana series in Sephardi and
or utilized in any form or by any means, Mizrahi studies)
electronic or mechanical, including Includes bibliographical references and
photocopying and recording, or by any index.
information storage and retrieval system, ISBN 978-0-253-35690-1 (cloth : alk.
without permission in writing from the paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-22350-0 (pbk. :
publisher. The Association of American alk. paper) 1. Jews—Turkey—Istanbul—
University Presses’ Resolution on Permis- History—21st century. 2. Jews—Turkey—
sions constitutes the only exception to Istanbul—Identity. 3. Istanbul (Turkey)—
this prohibition. Ethnic relations. I. Title.
DS135.T8B75 2012
The paper used in this publication 305.892’40561—dc23
meets the minimum requirements of 2011021187
the American National Standard for
Information Sciences—Permanence of 1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13 12
For Sagi, Ari, Eitan, and Zohar
Contents
Preface: The Ends and Beginnings of 1992 / ix
Acknowledgments / xv
Introduction / 1
1 Tolerance, Difference, and Citizenship / 33
2 Cosmopolitan Signs: Names as Foreign and Local / 63
3 The Limits of Cosmopolitanism / 83
4 Performing Difference: Turkish Jews on the National Stage / 106
5 Intimate Negotiations: Turkish Jews Between Stages / 125
6 The One Who Writes Difference: Inside Secrecy / 144
Conclusion / 166
Notes / 175
References / 185
Index / 209
Preface
The Ends and Beginnings of 1992
“Jews?” Mete Tapan, Istanbul city planner, had to think for a minute.
“One knows they are there but they don’t even comprise 1% of the
population. No one knows how they vote or what their interests
would be. They don’t count.”
—Fleminger 2003
Although there has not been an official census of Jews in Turkey since
the 1960s, recent population estimates range from 18,000 to 25,000 (Tu-
val 2004:xxxiii; Toktaş 2006a:123), making Turkey today home to the
highest number of Jews outside Israel in the lands that once comprised
the Ottoman Empire. Jews in Turkey constitute a negligible fraction
of Turkey’s overall population of approximately seventy million people
and, as described by the city planner, Turkish Jews don’t “count” for
much in the polling booth. Nonetheless, over the past few decades Jews
in Turkey have taken on an increasingly public role, brokering Turk-
ish diplomatic ties with Israel. As Turkey’s model minority, they also have
advocated for the republic as it has vied for European Union ac ces sion.
During the early years of the Turkish Republic, the process of be-
coming Turkish and the fear of not being perceived as Turkish enough
engendered a profusion of effacing social practices among Jews and
other minorities in Istanbul (Bali 2001). Just over half a century later,
European Union overtures set the stage for Jews to stand symbolically
(and publicly) for the tolerated “Other” in Turkish society. This role was
consolidated in 1992 with a Turkish-led international celebration of the
five-hundred-year anniversary of Jews finding refuge from the Spanish
Inquisition in the lands of the Ottoman Empire. According to the state-
ment of purpose of the Quincentennial Foundation, an organization led
by Jewish and Muslim Turkish elites, the commemor ation
x preface
not only celebrates the 500th anniversary of the arrival of the Sephardic
[Spanish] Jews on Turkish soil in 1492, but also the remarkable spirit
of tolerance and acceptance which has characterized the entire Jewish
experience in Turkey. This spirit is not an insulated instance of humani-
tarianism; throughout its history Turkey has welcomed people of different
creeds, cultures and backgrounds. The Jewish community of Turkey is a
part of this tradition.1
This description, with its claim that Turkey’s national spirit is in-
fused with a cosmopolitan regard for others, set the agenda for a public
awareness campaign to improve Turkey’s international image. If, due to
their small numbers and historically low profile, Turkish Jews were pre-
viously not considered meaningful players in the Turkish political scene,
this campaign, with its museums, academic treatises, and heritage tours,
offered them a public platform from which to count as a quintessentially,
and quincentennially, tolerated minority. In 1991, Turkey had officially
upgraded relations with Israel to the embassy level (Elazar and Wein-
feld 2000:367); Quincentennial celebrations, attended by Turkish and
Israeli politicians, gathered momentum at the same time that Turkey’s
relations with Israel were warming. In parallel, the 1990s witnessed an
increase in Jewish contributions to Turkish efforts to court Europeans,
who made Turkish officials’ recognition of their country’s own hetero-
geneous population a central condition for Turkey’s acceptance into the
European Union.
Partially due to the Foundation’s sponsorship and energetic activi-
ties, academic publication about Ottoman and Turkish Jewry experi-
enced a florescence around the Quincentennial.2 Stanford Shaw’s Jews of
the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic is dedicated to “the Muslim
and Jewish Turks of the Republic of Turkey, in celebration of five hundred
years of brotherhood and friendship 1492–1992” (1991:frontispiece). Shaw
ends his book with reference to the Quincentennial Foundation and its
activities and officials, as if Turkish Jewry ceased to exist after this date.
Shaul Tuval’s ha-Kehilah ha-Yehudit be-Istanbul, 1948–1992 (The Jewish
Community in Istanbul, 1948–1992) (2004) collects, for the first time, com-
prehensive demographic and statistical research about modern Turkish
Jewry, yet the Quincentennial year likewise ends his story. The cover of
his book borrows the Foundation’s imagery (a painting of Spanish exiles
arriving at the empire) and its motto: “An Example to Humanity.”
