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November 21, 2003/Cheshvan 26 5764, Vol. 56, No. 9
Turkish Jews: We'll carry on
YIGAL SCHLEIFER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
ISTANBUL - The recent bombings of two Istanbul synagogues won't end the tradition of openness in Turkey's Jewish community - and it could even make the community more cohesive, leaders say.
At the same time, the attacks are unlikely to force Turkey to retreat from its alliances with Israel and the United States, according to analysts. It could even push the secular state away from the Muslim world and further toward the West.
Standing Nov. 16 near the entrance to the rubble-strewn street that leads to Istanbul's bombed Neve Shalom syn-agogue, a leader of Turkey's Jewish community looked out on the scene of destruction illuminated by the glow of police investigators' emer-gency lights and television spotlights.
Only a few months before, the community had opened synagogue doors in Istanbul's Galata district as part of an annual Europe-wide day celebrating Jewish culture. There were musical per-formances in Ladino and photo exhibits inside the different synagogues. Over-flow crowds - mostly non-Jews - turned out for the events.
Despite the security concerns brought on by the nearly simultaneous bomb-ings of Neve Shalom and of the Beit Israel synagogue, located several miles away, on Nov. 15, the community will put on the same program next year, the leader said.
"We patch our wounds and go on," said Lina Filiba, the community's executive vice president. "We want life to continue like before. The synagogues have to stay open. Life has to go on."
A group linked to Al-Qaida has claimed responsibility for the Nov. 15 attacks. Given the sophistication of the bombings, Turkish and Israeli officials are inclined to believe the claim.
The bombings killed 24 and injured more than 300 people. At least six Jews were killed and some 60 Jews injured.
If Al-Qaida indeed is involved, it may be difficult for the Jewish community - and Turkey itself - to return to life as it was before.
"The big question mark is, who did it and who were their local collaborators?" said Rifat Bali, a Jewish historian who has written extensively about Turkeys' Jews. "For sure there were local collaborators, and that makes it much worse. That means you have a nucleus of local terrorists who are targeting you and who are here per-manently."
In recent years, the normally insular comunity has started reaching out to the public and making itself more accessible. The process began with the mostly Sephardic com-munity's gala celebrations in 1992 to mark the Jews' arrival in Turkey from Spain 500 years before.
For many community leaders, the standing-room-only crowds at the recent Jewish cultural events were another sign that the new policy was having a positive impact on Jewish life in Turkey.
But the synagogue bomb-ings may put a halt to the Jewish community's open-ness, Bali said.
"Now the community's worst fears have been real-ized, so there may be people who will ask why the community is opening up," he said. "This will mean that on a community and individual level, people will close upon themselves."
Now "we will always worry about getting together, about having meetings, and com-munity life will be much harder," said Viktor Kuzu, 25, who works in an advertising agency and volunteers as an editor at Salom, the Turkish Jewish newspaper.
While people are afraid, Kuzu said he doesn't feel the attacks will cause Jews to pull away from the com-munity.
"Maybe there's an opposite effect," he said. "Maybe it will make people understand what it is to be Jewish; they will understand what it is to be a community. I can tell you that this event will bring the Jewish youth much closer together."
As the community con-templates the road ahead, the government is confronting what could be a stark new reality for Turkey.
Sami Kohen, a political analyst and veteran col-umnist with the Turkish daily Milliyet, said the attacks could push Turkey toward closer cooperation with the United States and Israel in the fight against terrorism.
"Turkey is now included in the war-on-terror front," Kohen said. If the bombers wanted "to force Turkey to change course, to take a cooler attitude toward Israel or the West, that's not going to happen."
The attacks show that "terror is at work every-where, and not necessarily in one specific country or another," said Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom. "I think that the operation here shows both Turkey and other countries in the world that no place is immune to terrorism."
While the probe continues, Turkish officials have begun to release more details about the attacks. Turkey's interior minister, Abdulkadir Aksu, told The Associated Press that he is "more than 95 percent" sure that the attacks were the work of suicide bombers.
According to Turkish police officials, the attacks were carried out by an identical pair of Isuzu delivery trucks, each packed with some 880 pounds of explosives, a mix of ammonium sulfate, nitrate and compressed fuel. The explosives had been put into containers wrapped in sacks and hidden among containers of detergent.
Though directed at the synagogues, the attacks killed and injured mostly Muslims who were working near the buildings or passing by.
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