Cultural Identity and Minority Position: Turkey's Jews vs. Turkish-Jewish Immigrants in Israel

What is it about?

This article highlights on the complexity of cultural identity for minority and immigrant groups in the processes of assimilation/integration comparatively. It deals with the identity questions that Turkey’s Jews and Turkish Jews in Israel face with regards to the definitions imposed by the nation building structures in both countries respectively. The discussion utilizes the results of field research composed of in-depth interviews with Turkish Jews in Turkey and in Israel. It also makes a comparative assessment of the interviewees’ interplay with their identities from the pool of ‘Turkish’, ‘non-Muslim’, ‘Jewish’, ‘Israeli’, ‘El Turco’, ‘Sephardim’ or ‘Oriental’ categories.

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Why is it important?

The foundation of the state of Israel attracted masses of Jewish immigrants from all over the world. Turkey’s Jews joined in these waves of migration and there remained only a small minority community in today’s Turkey. The migratory flow of Jews from Turkey to Israel resulted in the formation of a distinct immigrant community in Israel – namely the Turkish Jews – who has maintained their cultural ties with the home country. Cultural identity formation, in these cases of a specific minority and an immigrant group, is relevant to ethnic and immigrant studies especially with respect to nation-state formations and constructions of national identities in Turkey and in Israel.