Israel, Turkey, and the Turkish Jewish community in light of Operation Protective Edge

This article examines developments within the Jewish community in Turkey during and after the Israeli operation in Gaza in 2014 and describes the political relations between Israel and Turkey and its impact on local Turkish Jews. It depicts Operation Protective Edge as one of the peaks of antisemitism in Turkey and considers the question of whether antisemitism in Turkey is related to Turkish-Israeli relations. This study contributes to the scholarship on the perception of Jews in Turkey in light of Turkish-Israeli relations. The paper begins by introducing minority discourse, and then describes the historical background of Turkish-Israeli relations, the perception of Jews, and the effects of the Protective Edge on the Jewish community in particular and on Israeli-Turkish relations in general during that period. Subsequently, the main findings are presented.