Anatolia's Jewish population before Ottoman times primarily consisted of Greek-speaking Romaniote Jews, with a handful of dispersed Karaite communities.

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, many Sephardic Jews from Spain, Portugal and South Italy expelled by the Alhambra Decree found refuge across the Ottoman Empire, including in regions now part of Turkey.

[7][8] Turkey's Jewish community was large, diverse and vibrant, forming the core of Ottoman Jewry until World War I.

[13][14][15] According to the Hebrew Bible, Noah's Ark landed on the top of Mount Ararat, a mountain in eastern Anatolia, in the Armenian Highlands, near the present-day borders of Turkey, Armenia, and Iran.

[19][20][21] Based on physical evidence, there has been a Jewish community in Anatolia since the fourth century BCE, most notably in the city of Sardis.

The subsequent Roman and Byzantine Empires included sizable Greek-speaking Jewish communities in their Anatolian domains which seem to have been relatively well-integrated and enjoyed certain legal immunities.

[23] Although there is some evidence of occasional hostility by the Byzantine populations and authorities, no systematic persecution of the type endemic at that time in western Europe (pogroms, the stake, mass expulsions, etc.)

So, for example, while Murad III ordered that the attitude of all non-Muslims should be one of "humility and abjection" and that they should not "live near Mosques or tall buildings" or own slaves, others were more tolerant.

After suffering many sieges, the devastating sack of Constantinople by Crusaders in 1204 and the arrival of the Black Death pandemic in 1347,[28] the city was a shadow of its former glory.

[30] Among these immigrants was Rabbi Yitzhak Sarfati, a German-born Jew of French descent[32] (צרפתי Sarfati, meaning "French"), who became Chief Rabbi of Edirne and wrote a letter inviting European Jewry to settle in the Ottoman Empire, in which he stated, "Turkey is a land wherein nothing is lacking," and asking, "Is it not better for you to live under Muslims than under Christians?

The Jews satisfied various needs in the Ottoman Empire: the Muslim Turks were largely uninterested in business enterprises and accordingly left commercial occupations to members of minority religions.

[35] The Sephardi Jews were allowed to settle in the wealthier cities of the empire, especially in Rumelia (the European provinces, cities such as Constantinople, Sarajevo, Thessaloniki, Adrianople and Nicopolis), western and northern Anatolia (Bursa, Aydın, Tokat, Tire, Manisa and Amasya),[6] but also in the Mediterranean coastal regions (Jerusalem, Safed, Damascus, and Egypt).

[35] Like all non-Muslims, Jews had to pay the haraç "head tax" and faced other restrictions in clothing, horse riding, army service etc., but they could occasionally be waived or circumvented.

[38] Jews who reached high positions in the Ottoman court and administration include Mehmed the Conqueror's Minister of Finance (Defterdar) Hekim Yakup Paşa, his Portuguese physician Moses Hamon, Murad II's physician İshak Paşa and Abraham de Castro, master of the mint in Egypt.

In the 16th century especially, the Jews were the most prominent under the millets, the apogee of Jewish influence could arguably be the appointment of Joseph Nasi to sanjak-bey (governor, a rank usually only bestowed upon Muslims) of Naxos.

[39] Also in the first half of the 17th century the Jews were distinct in winning tax farms, Haim Gerber describes it: "My impression is that no pressure existed, that it was merely performance that counted.

Some examples: During the reign of Murad IV (1623–1640), the Jews of Jerusalem were persecuted by an Arab who had purchased the governorship of that city from the governor of the province.

The troubled history of Turkey during the 20th century and the process of transforming the old Ottoman Empire into a secular nation state after 1923, however, had a negative effect on the size of all remaining minorities, including the Jews.

[51] During World War II, Turkey was officially neutral although it maintained strong diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany.

[60][61] William Rubinstein goes further, citing British pressure on Turkey not to let Struma's passengers disembark, in accordance with Britain's White Paper of 1939 to prevent further Jewish immigration to Israel then-Palestine.

[68] Immigration was stunted for several months in November 1948, when Turkey suspended migration permits as a result of pressure from Arab countries.

The damage caused was mainly material (over 4,000 shops and 1,000 houses belonging to Greeks, Armenians and Jews were destroyed) it deeply shocked minorities throughout the country.

[10][11][13][12] According to this Treaty, officially recognized minorities (Armenians, Greeks and Jews) can use their mother tongue freely, especially for education purposes.

French was also the medium of instruction in most Jewish schools run by the Alliance Israélite Universelle in the Ottoman Empire.

[90] According to researchers at Tel Aviv University, antisemitism in the media and books was creating a situation in which young, educated Turks formed negative opinions against Jews and Israel.

Even though a local Turkish militant group, the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front, claimed responsibility for the attacks, police claimed the bombings were "too sophisticated to have been carried out by that group",[94] with a senior Israeli government source saying: "the attack must have been at least coordinated with international terror organizations".

[97] However, in the aftermath of the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid, antisemitism in Turkey increased and became more open, and it was reported that the community was also subjected to economic pressure.

The society, named after Selahattin Ülkümen and Yitzhak Sarfati, aims to promote intercultural and interreligious dialogue and wants to inform the public of the centuries of peaceful coexistence between Turks and Jews.

[105][106] The various migrations outside of Turkey has produced descendants of Turkish Jews in Europe, Israel, United States, and Canada.

They created a siddur called Zehut Yosef, written by Hazzan Isaac Azose, to preserve their unique traditions.