Introduction: Turkish-Jewish Entanglements from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic

This book is about loss and endings, but it does not only pertain to the often prophesied and lamented end of Turkish Jewry: it also takes into account the dissipation of persistent discursive traditions pertaining to the uniqueness of Turkish-Jewish relations and the notion that Jews in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic experienced a mostly benevolent reception from state and society. In this reading, Jews and Turks were seen as having a closer and more meaningful relationship than Jews in other lands were able to maintain with the majority societies among whom they resided, whether in the Muslim East or the Christian West. Many Turkish Jews, Western- and European-leaning Turks and parts of the Turkish state have embodied these discourses to varying degrees and employed them for different political and strategic purposes. As we will see, they all have participated in the construction of a discursive tradition whose fragmentation we are now witnessing.