Turkey’s Jews and their Immigration to Israel

TitleTurkey’s Jews and their Immigration to Israel
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2006
AuthorsToktaş Ş
JournalMiddle Eastern Studies
Volume42
Start Page505
Issue3
KeywordsEdirne, immigration, Israel, Jews
AbstractThe migration of Jews from Turkey to Israel is the second largest mass emigration movement out of Turkey, the first being labour migration to Europe. The largest mass migration of minorities from Turkey was that of the Greeks during the Turkish–Greek population exchanges of the early 1920s. However, the emigration of the Jews was not part of a government-mandated population exchange. On the contrary, the Jews immigrated to Israel of their own free will. Despite this prominent characteristic, the mass migration of Jews to Israel has failed to attract significant attention either from the perspective of policy-making or of social science, as shown by the paucity of studies on the subject. Even in terms of official documentation on the scope of migration from Turkey to Israel, the more concrete and reliable data come from Israeli sources, which can be interpreted as a natural consequence of Israel being founded by Jewish immigration from all over the world. On the Turkish side, as a sending country, there is a scarcity of official documentation of Jewish emigration.
URLhttp://suletoktas.com/files/books/4974a480cb10f.pdf