Jewish Life in Twenty-First-Century Turkey: The Other Side of Tolerance

ONE. Tolerance, Difference, and Citizenship

As Turkey continues its half-century march toward joining the European Union, its Jews have been singled out as living proof of Turkey’s fulfillment of the Union’s “recognition of diversity” criterion. Public efforts toward “recognition of diversity,” however imperfectly matched with celebrations of national and pan-European identity, have become a pillar of European self-definition (Soysal, Bertilotti, and Mannitz 2005:27). Jews, particularly, occupy a central role in European claims to cosmopolitanism, especially as a foil against cries of intolerance made by other differentiated citizens and their champions (Peck 2006:154–174). Playing their part in international arenas, Jews regularly proclaim Turkey ’s eternal hospitality and tolerance for difference to a global audience as counterpoint to European politicians’ regular criticisms of Turkey’s treatment of Armenians, Kurds, and Islamists.1 This shift on the part of Turkish Jews—from a quiet, assimilating posture to a more public performance of difference—marks a change in the way they represent themselves and is but one reflection of the myriad ways in which Turkey ’s European Union overtures, its rapprochement with Israel and the United States, and other global political shifts have set the stage for Jews to stand symbolically for the tolerated Other. Istanbul, home to the vast majority—over 90 percent (Tuval 2004:xxxiii)—of Turkey’s Jews, is the obvious theater for the Jewish community to perform this role. As stages for cosmopolitanism, urban centers capitalize on the symbolic power of the city to trump the nation-state context, especially in the public imagination (Örs 2006:81). Istanbul’s re-signification echoes one Tolerance, Difference, and Citizenship 34 Jewish Life in 21st-Century Turkey trends across Europe’s urban landscapes, in places such as Berlin (Peck 2006), Krakow (Kugelmass and Orla-Bukowska 1998), and Vienna (Bunzl 2003), where Jewish museums, musical performances, and memorials are key sites through which cities enact their tolerance of diversity . Gruber notes, More than half a century after the Holocaust, an apparent longing for lost Jews—or for what Jews are seen to represent—is also evident. In a trend that developed with powerful momentum in the 1980s and accrued particular force after the fall of communism in 1989–90, Europeans . . . have stretched open their arms to embrace a Jewish component back into the social, political, historical, and cultural mainstream. (2002:4) To be a European city, it seems, is to “have” Jews. Those who are aware of the history of Jews in the Ottoman Empire and in Turkey are generally able to repeat a story of Ottoman welcome and Turkish tolerance . Although there is long-standing debate about the relative tolerance of Christian and Islamic regimes, many assume that the Turkish tolerance discourse is natural, given the striking contrast between the relatively peaceful experience of Jews in the empire (and under Islam more broadly) and the sometimes blood-stained history of Jews in Eastern Europe (see Cohen 1994; Bat Ye’or 1985). Ottoman and Turkish Jews never lived in ghettos and were never persecuted in a wholesale manner. Ottoman political structure had a place for them as a tolerated minority; further, Jews became full citizens with the shift to a secular republic. But how did Jews come to engender the role of the good minority in today’s discussions about Turkish qualifications (or lack thereof) for candidacy in the European Union? The process of becoming a good minority reflects a dedicated campaign of self-representation among Turkish Jews that has been sustained over decades (if not centuries, if we consider Jews’ desire to be “good Ottomans”; see Cohen 2008). One group that has taken responsibility for building representations of Turkish Jews as a good minority has been the Quincentennial Foundation (QF), an organization formed in the 1980s to commemorate the five-hundredyear anniversary of the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 (see also Baer 2000; Mallet 2008). Historians invoke the term “a usable past” (Roskies 1999) to describe how individuals, communities, and nations seek to interpret the 35 Tolerance, Difference, and Citizenship past in light of current concerns and future desires. The QF has publicly resurrected the memory of the Spanish expulsion and the legacy of Jewish life in the Ottoman Empire. As I noted in the preface, through conducting research in the archives of the American Branch of the QF, held at the Sephardi Federation in New York, I was privileged to learn how a group of...