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This book introduces the reader to the past and present of Jewish life in Turkey and to Turkish Jewish diaspora communities in Israel, Europe, Latin America and the United States. It surveys the history of Jews in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, examining the survival of Jewish communities during the dissolution of the empire and their emigration to America, Europe, and Israel. In the cases discussed, members of these communities often sought and seek close connections with Turkey, even if those 'ties that bind' are rarely reciprocated by Turkish governments. Contributors also explore Turkish Jewishness today, as it is lived in Israel and Turkey, and as found in 'places of memory' in many cities in Turkey, where Jews no longer exist today.
List of contents
1. Prologue: The Long Twilight.- 2. Introduction: Turkish-Jewish Entanglements from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic.- Part I: Jewish-Turkish Lives in the Late Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Republic, and Israel.- 3 Solidarity and Survival in an Ottoman Borderland: The Jews of Edirne, 1912-1918.- 4. On the Outside Looking In: Jewish Émigrés and Turkish Citizenship in the Early Republican Period.- 5. "The Ties that Bind Us to Turkey": The Turkish Jewish Diaspora in Europe and Its Relations with the "Home Country".- 6. The Founding of the State of Israel and the Turkish Jews: A View from Israel, 1948-1955.- Part II: Jewish-Turkish Entanglements in Contemporary Turkey and Israel.- 7. Entangled Sovereignties: Turkish Jewish Spaces in Israel.- 8. Creating [Jewish] Sites of Memory in Turkey Where Jews No Longer Exist: From Physical Sites to Virtual Ones.- 9. Whitewashing the Armenian Genocide with Holocaust Heroism.- 10. Turkish Jews in an Unwelcoming Public Space.- 11. Epilogue: "Aprontaremos Las Validjas" Shall We Start Packing the Suitcases?
About the author
Kerem Halil Latif Öktem is Associate Professor of International Relations at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy. He previously held the Chair for Southeast European Studies and Modern Turkey at the University of Graz, Austria, and was Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, UK.
¿pek Kocaömer Yosmaölu is Associate Professor of History and Director of Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program at Northwestern University, USA. She previously taught at University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, and was a Mellon Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA.
