A haven of tolerance on the Golden Horn

A community of fate

Jewish Diaspora: Descendants of those who fled the Inquisition still prosper in the old capital of the Ottomans

Istanbul - An iron gate bars access to the fifth floor of an anonymous building in the fashionable district of Tesvikiye, behind which, every Saturday afternoon, a brightly dressed group of amateurs gathers to put out the weekly organ of Turkey's proud and successful Jewish community.

Security at Shalom newspaper is respected only a little more than the Sabbath day, however. A cheery voice called down the stairwell: "Who is it?" The gate swung open and I was ushered into a world about which most of Turks are only dimly aware.

"We are just 25,000 people in a country of 65 million. Most Turkish Muslims have never even met a Jew," said Shalom's editor, Silvyo Ovadya, after greeting me in a lobby-cum-bookstore filled with thick volumes on more than 500 years of Turkish Jewish history.

The community's story is an unusual tale of survival and the creation of a unique sense of identity and tolerance. Outrages committed by Israel have led to upsurges of Islamic fervour and ignorant slurs against Jews in Turkey's Islamist press. But in general, the Turks feel little common cause with Arabs. Anti-Semitism has rarely found any official echo.

Indeed, Turkey's Jewish community sees itself as an important link in a developing special relationship between Turkey and Israel, not to mention an alliance in Washington between the powerful Jewish lobby and its puny Turkish equivalent.

"It's fair to say that no Jew has ever been persecuted by the state here just because they were Jews," said Suzan Nana Tarablus, taking time off from a mainstream Turkish newspaper as the only professional journalist in Shalom's editorial team.

Traditionally the Jews of Turkey believe they have not only been better off than Jews in other Muslim countries, but better off than in many European Christian countries as well.

The first Jews came to Istanbul in Byzantine times. When the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror captured the depleted city in 1453, he asked them to stay. "Ascend the site of the imperial throne, dwell in the best of the land, each beneath his vine and fig tree, with silver and with gold, with wealth and with cattle," one of his edicts declared.

Pleased by the Jews' contribution to prosperity, the Ottomans seized the opportunity offered by the persecution of the Catholic inquisition in Spain and in 1492, they welcomed any Sephardic Jews who wished to come.

Even today, the lilting tones of Judaeo-Spanish, sometimes called Ladino, can be heard in Tesvikiye restaurants. The custom is dying, however. Perhaps only a third of the community now speaks the language. Shalom just gives it one page, the recipe column and the motto: "A lo tuerto tuerto, a lo dereco dereco." (Right for the right, crookedness for the crooked.) The rest is in Turkish.

"Judaeo-Spanish is not a mother-tongue any more, it's a grandmother-tongue. Very few people know any Hebrew. Turkish is the language we speak at home," said Mr Tarablus.

The Ottoman Empire declined, and with it, the Jewish community. By the mid-19th century, many lived in poor districts by the banks of the Golden Horn. Education and an opening to the West began to change all that. Unlike the Greeks and Armenians, who had territorial claims against the Ottoman Empire, the Jewish community survived the transition into a Turkish republic relatively well.

The only hiccup came during the Second World War. On one hand, Turkey gave asylum to German Jews, encouraging academics to settle, and protecting Jews with Turkish passports. On the other hand, an unjust wartime capital levy, the wealth tax, aimed to break the domination of business by non- Muslim minorities. Many Jews were sent into internal exile.

The result was that many chose to go to the new state of Israel after the war, where many of them preserve a distinctly Turkish Jewish identity.

Turkish politicians visiting the country sometimes seem to get a warmer welcome in their main district of Beit Yam than they do when touring Turkey. Few Jews choose Israel over Turkey today, despite an undercurrent of problems that goes further than the occasional vandalisation of Jewish cemeteries or anti-Semitic diatribes in the Islamic press.

Two Arabs from Abu Nidal's terrorist group shot and killed 22 Jews in Istanbul's Neve Shalom synagogue in 1986.

In 1992, a hand-grenade killed another at the same place. Assassination attempts were made since then against two Jews, the head of the 100-strong community in Ankara, and the best-known Jewish industrialist, Jak Kamhi.

But Jak Kamhi's son Jefi in December became the first non-Muslim to be elected to the Turkish parliament in four decades. Other Jews, being well- educated, still feel they are better off playing a role in the dynamic development of the Turkish economy.

"To be in a minority is a personal conflict. But everybody resolves their conflict in some way," Mr Tarablus said. "Some people call themselves Vedat instead of Vitaly and melt into the population. Others are given names that stand out, like Israel, and happily live with it."