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.

This handbook, the first of its kind, provides a rich overview of the socio-political issues and dynamics impacting Turkey’s diasporic groups and diaspora policymaking. Turkey constitutes an important case study in the field of diaspora studies with a diaspora population of around 6.5 million. This handbook therefore brings together emerging and established scholars to explore the central issues, actors, and processes relating to Turkey’s diasporic groups and diaspora outreach. Taken together, the historical and contemporary analyses presented in this volume provide readers a multi-lens perspective on the trajectories of Turkey’s diasporic communities and diaspora policymaking in a wide range of regional contexts, including Europe, North America, and Oceania. The handbook comprises six analytical parts: Contextualising Turkey’s diasporas: past and present Localisation, transnational belongings, and identity Governing diasporas Micro-spaces and everyday practices Cultural production, aesthetics, and creativity Country-specific perspectives The volume offers insights into the debates and processes that structure each of these thematic clusters, but also provides a comprehensive overview of the dynamics shaping Turkey’s diverse diaspora populations today. The contributions encompass a range of disciplines, including anthropology, history, human geography, political science, international relations, and sociology, and the volume will be vital reading for anyone interested in Turkey, the Middle East, and diasporas.

The neutrality maintained by Turkey during most of the Second World War enabled it to rescue thousands of Jews from the Holocaust in the Nazi-occupied or collaborating countries of Europe. This book shows how in France, the Turkish consuls in Paris and Marseilles intervened to protect Turkish Jews from application of anti-Jewish laws introduced both by the German occupying authorities and the Vichy government and rescued them from concentration camps, getting them off trains destined for the extermination chambers in the East, and arranging train caravans and other special transportation to take them through Nazi-occupied territory to safety in Turkey. 'an important and unique addition to the vast scholarship available on that tragic era' Rabbi Abraham Cooper

A significant number of Sephardic Jews, tracing their remote origins to Spain and Portugal, immigrated to the United States from Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans from 1880 through the 1920s, joined by a smaller number of Mizrahi Jews arriving from Arab lands. Most Sephardim settled in New York, establishing the leading Judeo-Spanish community outside the Ottoman Empire. With their distinct languages, cultures, and rituals, Sephardim and Arab-speaking Mizrahim were not readily recognized as Jews by their Ashkenazic coreligionists. At the same time, they forged alliances outside Jewish circles with Hispanics and Arabs, with whom they shared significant cultural and linguistic ties. The failure among Ashkenazic Jews to recognize Sephardim and Mizrahim as fellow Jews continues today. More often than not, these Jewish communities are simply absent from portrayals of American Jewry. Drawing on primary sources such as the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) press, archival documents, and oral histories, Sephardic Jews in America offers the first book-length academic treatment of their history in the United States, from 1654 to the present, focusing on the age of mass immigration.

A North Caucasian ethnic group that has been largely obscured in world history as a result of their expulsion from their homeland by Tsarist Russia in the 1860s, Circassians now comprise significant communities not only in the Northwest Caucasus but also in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Europe and the US. The Circassian Diaspora investigates how a community of impoverished migrants has evolved into a well-connected and politically active diaspora. This book explores the prominent role Circassians played during the Turco-Greek War or the "Turkish National Liberation War of 1919-1922," and examines the changing nature of Circassians’ relations with the Turkish and Russian states, as well as the new actors of Caucasian politics such as the US, the EU, and Georgia. Suggesting that the Circassian case should be studied alongside those of the Jews, Armenians and other diasporas whose formation is fundamentally tied up to a violent detachment from their homeland, and arguing that Circassian diaspora politics is not a post-Soviet phenomenon but has a history dating back to early 20th Century, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Diaspora Studies, History, and Politics.

Originally published in 1910, this stirring depiction of shtetl life in Argentina is once again available in paperback.

A Sephardi Turkish Patriot explores the life of Gad Franco (1881–1954), a prominent Sephardi journalist, then a lawyer and a jurist, who worked relentlessly for the Jewish community’s belonging to the national Turkish polity, and for the consolidation of the rule of law. This historical biography, written by his grandson, takes the reader from fin-de-siècle Izmir, to the Istanbul of the Roaring Twenties and beyond, tracing his footsteps, including his opposition to Zionism, which he considered a threat to assimilation. The world of Sephardi Jewry, the convulsions and conflicts of the late Ottoman Empire, and the birth, ruthless consolidation, and promising reforms of the young Turkish Republic, provide the context to his intriguing life story. Inflamed by ethno-nationalism, the harassment of minorities deepened in the 1930s, peaking during World War II. By then a wealthy, respected Jewish community spokesperson and staunch Kemalist, Gad Franco was dealt an exemplary punishment in a shocking campaign to Turkify the economy, imposed on all minorities. His dramatic downfall at the hands of the Government shook his beliefs to the core. As their belonging to the nation had been so brutally denied, half of Turkish Jews migrated to Israel in the 1950s, putting an end to Gad Franco’s lifelong hopes of integration and acceptance.

This book examines the construction and articulation of diasporic cultural identity among the Turkish working-class youth in Kreuzberg (Little Istanbul), Berlin. This work primarily suggests that the contemporary diasporic consciousness is built on two antithetical axes: particularism and universalism. The presence of this dichotomy derives from the unresolved historical dialogues that the diasporic youths experience between continuity and disruption, essence and positionality, tradition and translation, homogeneity and difference, past and future, 'here' and 'there', 'roots' and 'routes', and local and global.

“A Century of Greek-Turkish Relations is an important handbook written by leading authorities from both shores of the Aegean Sea. Greek and Turkish scholars present in a balanced and objective way, as well as in a graspable and meaningful manner, the main periods in which key events brought the two sides into dispute or even conflict. These events, which are integrated in parallel and conflicting national narratives, fuel the historicity of the two national rivals. A century since the end of the Greek-Turkish war, the trauma of the Greek military defeat and the “disaster of the Asia Minor Greeks”, the establishment of the Republic of Turkey and the emblematic Treaty of Lausanne, render this kind of handbook undoubtedly essential. It opens the discussion to the wider audience in a rational and composed way and most importantly, the reader can follow through the pages, the dialogue between Turkish and Greek scholars. A book of this kind was missing from public history.” – Prof. Sia Anagnostopoulou, Panteion University “As an expert on the subject of “minorities” for the past fifty years with a number of publications in Turkish, English, and French, and based on the experts that are participating in the A Century of Greek-Turkish Relations: A Handbook, there is no doubt that this will become an indispensable tool, and above all, an objective account of the Greek-Turkish relations for both experts and the wider public.” – Prof. (emeritus) Baskin Oran, Ankara University “As editors of this important and timely book, Nikos Christofis and Anthony Deriziotis assert that uneducated narratives have perpetuated misunderstandings within Turkish-Greek relations. In their enlightening work, they dismantle these misconceptions, offering a nuanced exploration of the historical and contemporary complexities between the two nations. By featuring insights from leading experts, this book provides a crucial resource for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Turkish-Greek relations, presenting new historical insights and analytical viewpoints on bilateral relations.” – Prof. Evren Balta, Özyeğin University “A comprehensive and insightful survey of Greek-Turkish relations. A number of distinguished academics have offered their expertise succeeding in the formidable task of touching upon several sensitive issues avoiding stereotypes and easy readings of problems that are burdened by history. A must read for students and experts alike.” – Prof. Sotiris Roussos, University of Peloponnese CONTENTS Preface – Nikos Christofis and Anthony Deriziotis The Uses and Abuses of History in Greece and Turkey – Nikos Christofis and Kerem Öktem The Greek-Turkish War of 1919–1922 – Charalampos Minasidis The 1923 Greco-Turkish Population Exchange: An Assessment of its History and Long Shadow at its Centennial – Aytek Soner Alpan Agreements and Friendship between Greece and Turkey in 1930: Multifaceted Official Nationalist Discourses and Opposing Voices – Anna Vakali Anti-Rum Politics in Turkey, 1923-1946 – Alexandros Lamprou “The State Will Always Pursue You”: A History of Greeks in the Republic of Turkey – Kutay Onayli Muslim Minority of Greece: From Lausanne to the Greek Civil War – Samim Akgönül Greek-Turkish Relations in the Shadow of World War II – Zuhal Mert Uzuner Realpolitik with a Twist: The United States and Greek-Turkish Relations – Ekavi Athanassopoulou Rum Polites in the Context of Turkish-Greek Relations – İlay Romain Örs The Muslim Minority of Western Thrace, 1945-1999: A Strained Saga – Georgios Niarchos The “Troubled Triangle”: Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus, 1940s-1990s – Nikos Christofis Greek-Turkish Relations During the Junta Regime in Greece (1967-1974) – Melek Fırat and Özge Özkoç The Aegean Dispute – Alexis Heraclides Greek-Turkish Relations and Civil Society: Healing the Wounds? – Leonidas Karakatsanis Greek-Turkish Relations: The ‘Helsinki Moment’ in Greece’s Strategy to Turn the EU into A Catalyst for Conflict Resolution – Panayotis J. Tsakonas Greek-Turkish Relations and the Refugee Question – Anthony Deriziotis Reciprocal Minorities in Greece and Turkey: Α Century of Adversity – Konstantinos Tsitselikis Energized Geopolitical Turmoil in the Endangered Eastern Mediterranean: Towards Anthropocene Geopolitics? – Emre İşeri “Hawks and Romantics”: The Role of Media in Turkish-Greek Diplomatic Seesaw – Emre Metin Bilginer “With or Without You”: Turkish-Greek Relations from the Perspective of Securitisation Theory – Başak Alpan The Prospects and Challenges for Cooperation in Cyprus – Ahmet Sözen and Devrim Şahin Greek – Turkish Encounters in the City: Who Meets Who in Kadıköy? – Kerem Öktem Post-script – Anthony Deriziotis and Nikos Christofis

This book presents gendered readings of cultural manifestations that relate to the Ottoman era as a preferred past and a model for the future. By means of claims of authenticity and the distribution of imaginaries of a homogenous desirable alternative to everyday concerns, as well as invoking an imperial past at the national level. In this mode of thinking, shaped around a polarised worldview, Republican ideals serve as a counter-image to the promoted splendour and harmony of the Ottomans. Yet, the stereotypical gender roles inextricably linked with this neo-Ottoman imaginary remain largely unacknowledged, dissimulated in the construction of the desire of an idealised past. Our adaption of a cultural studies perspective in this volume puts special emphasis on agency, gender, and authority. It provides a shared ground for the interrogation, through the contributions comprising this project of knowledge production about the past in light of what constitutes acceptable legitimacy in interpreting not only the canonical literature, but history at large.