Long-running efforts to fully restore Israeli-Turkish relations have made good progress but need a few more rounds of negotiations, though a political shift in Turkey should not affect the process, Israel’s top diplomat in the country said. The impetus behind fixing a relationship badly damaged by a clash over Gaza in 2010 is now security,…
Long-running efforts to fully restore Israeli-Turkish ties strained after an Israeli raid of a Turkish boat in 2010 must now await the formation of a new government in Ankara, Israel’s top diplomat in Turkey said. Turkey downgraded diplomatic relations and ejected Israel’s ambassador in 2011, a year after Israeli commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara, part…
(JTA) — Prominent scholars of Jewish demography dismissed the findings of a newly published genetic study suggesting that today’s Ashkenazi Jews originate from converts to Judaism in what today is Turkey. Titled “Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to primeval villages in the ancient Iranian lands of Ashkenaz,” the by the University of Sheffield geneticist Eran Elhaik and…
When I first saw the short film from Sheffield University featuring Dr. Eran Elhaik claiming that Yiddish has its roots in Turkey, I thought it must be an elaborate ruse, a Sacha Baron Cohen-esque prank to poke fun at the sometimes inane world of academia. But I soon realized that it was, alas, all too…
LONDON — Britain’s Sky News quoted intelligence sources on Monday as saying that Islamic State had “advanced plans” to kill Jewish children in Turkey by attacking kindergartens, schools and youth centers. Sky Foreign Affairs Editor Sam Kiley said the information on the “imminent” threat came from six operatives arrested over the past week in the…
(JTA) — The personal Twitter account of a spokesperson of a women’s association affiliated with Turkey’s ruling party featured a message wishing death to Israelis injured in a terrorist attack in Istanbul. The account of Irem Aktas, head of the media department of the women’s branch of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP,…
(JTA) — Three Israelis were among the five people killed in a suicide bombing at a main shopping center in Istanbul, Turkish officials said. At least 11 Israelis were among the 36 people who were wounded in the blast Saturday. Turkish Deputy Health Minister Ahmet Baha Ogutken confirmed in a statement to the Daily Sabah…
A version of this article first appeared in Yiddish in the Forverts. In Hamburg, Germany, a group of five 14-year old girls, most of them from Muslim Turkish homes, recently interviewed a Yiddish folksinger and even learned a Yiddish song themselves. The activity was part of Geschichtomat, a project that encourages eighth-graders in this north…
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