Jews in Turkey

The history of the Jews in Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye Yahudileri, Turkish Jews; Hebrew: יהדות טורקיה‎, Ladino: Djudios Turkos) covers the 2,400 years that Jews have lived in what is now Turkey. There have been Jewish communities in Asia Minor since at least the 5th century BCE and many Spanish and Portuguese Jews expelled from Spain were welcomed into the Ottoman Empire (including regions part of modern Turkey) in the late 15th century, 20 centuries later, forming the bulk of the Ottoman Jews.

Today, the majority of Turkish Jews live in Israel, while modern-day Turkey continues to host a modest Jewish population.

History

Biblical era

The ancient Israelites were known to have imported honeybees from Anatolia, the Asian part of present-day Turkey. A team of Israeli archaeologists found some 30 intact hives made of straw and unbaked clay, and evidence that there had been over 100-200 more, on the site of the joint Israelite-Canaanite city of Tel Rehov. According to some evidence, the bees were probably imported from the region because they were easier to handle than the bees of the Israelites, which had proved to be extremely aggressive.

Jews

The Jews (/dʒuːz/;Hebrew: יְהוּדִים ISO 259-3 Yehudim, Israeli pronunciation [jehuˈdim]), also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation, while its observance varies from strict observance to complete nonobservance.

The Jews trace their ethnogenesis to the part of the Levant known as the Land of Israel. The discovery of the Merneptah Stele confirms the existence of the people of Israel in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. Since then, while maintaining rule over their homeland during certain periods—such as under the Kingdom of Israel, the Kingdom of Judah, the Hasmonean Dynasty, and the Herodian Kingdom—Jews also suffered various exiles and occupations from their homeland—from Ancient Egyptian Occupation of the Levant, to Assyrian Captivity and Exile, to Babylonian Captivity and Exile, to Greek Occupation and Exile, to the Roman Occupation and Exile. These events subjected Jews to slavery, pogroms, cultural assimilation, forced expulsions, genocide, and more, scattering Jews all around the world, in what is known today as the Jewish diaspora.