Expectations that Turkey and Israel will restore relations after a five-year-old rift have raised hopes of speedy progress in talks to import Israeli natural gas, potentially a multi-billion-dollar project. Israel’s once-strong ties to Turkey soured in 2010 when Israeli commandoes killed 10 Turkish activists when storming the Mavi Marmara, a ship in a convoy seeking…
How about this for a Hollywood script? It’s 1492, and Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expel their Jewish subjects. In response, the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II sends ships to Spain to collect them. How nice of him. They flourish under Muslim rule and, centuries later, receive equal rights as citizens. Fast-forward to 2002 and…
I’m pretty sure I’ve missed a turn on the winding, bougainvillea-filled backstreets of Buyukada, an idyllic island about an hour’s ferry ride from Istanbul. A horse-drawn carriage filled with vacationers — some wearing headscarves — whips by. Suddenly, an older man in an immaculately pressed suit and silk tie appears in front of me. Next,…
Israel held unannounced diplomatic level talks with Turkey on Monday to explore prospects, after Turkish polls, of restoring an alliance that was once central to U.S. Middle East policy but has soured dramatically under Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan. The Islamist-rooted AK Party founded by Erdogan, who accused Israel last year of having “surpassed Hitler in…
Every time she prepares her newspaper for print, Karen Sarhon has her pick from dozens of submissions she receives daily from writers around the world. A desirable situation for any editor-in-chief, Sarhon says it is nothing short of unbelievable for her monthly, El Amaneser, which is the world’s only newspaper in Ladino — a Jewish-Spanish…
The political party of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lost its ruling majority in parliament, apparently setting back the anti-Israel leader’s bid to gain sweeping powers. With most of the votes counted in Sunday’s election, the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, had about 41 percent of the vote with projections of about 256…
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said at a campaign rally that “Jewish capital” was behind The New York Times. Erdogan made his remarks a day before Turks voted on Sunday. Polls predicted victory for Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, though with a much smaller margin than in 2011. On Saturday, Erdogan…
Spain’s embassy in Ankara disputed a New York Times article claiming that thousands of Turkish Jews have applied for Spanish citizenship amid growing concern about anti-Semitism. The May 26 Times article speaks of “thousands of Sephardic Jews in Turkey who trace their ancestry to Spain and are now applying for Spanish citizenship in anticipation of…
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