Assalamu Alaikum

Newsweek reports on the efforts of Turkish Jews to combat a rising tide of prejudice and reach out to their Muslim neighbors.

Turkish Jews are a tiny minority in their Muslim country and prejudice against them is rising. A 2008 Pew survey on European attitudes toward Jews and Muslims found that 76 percent of Turks surveyed had a negative view of Jews—an increase from 49 percent in 2004. In addition, a recently published study on radicalism by Yilmaz Esmer, a professor at Bahçesehir University, found that 64 percent of Turks in 34 different cities say they do not want Jewish neighbors. And then there’s the tension between Israel and Ankara over the celebrated Davos stage-storming incident by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan after an argument with Israeli President Shimon Peres in January. But instead of hunkering down in a hostile environment, Turkey’s Jews are reaching out.

Led by Chief Rabbi Ishak Haleva, the 23,000-strong community is preparing to say shalom—and salaam (the Hebrew and Arabic words of greeting)—to its Muslim neighbors. In March they launched a project to introduce the community and its culture to non-Jewish neighbors. Using funds allocated by the European Union for human-rights projects, Jewish leaders are working to curb spreading anti-Jewish prejudice and to underscore that they’re Turks as well as Jews. As one of their first steps, they’ve commissioned a company to conduct a public-opinion survey to get an accurate picture of what their fellow citizens really think of them. (Right now, they believe, study results are skewed because researchers tend to lump queries about religious discrimination in umbrella questions on views about homosexuality and drug addiction.) When that’s completed in July, they will use it to draw a "road map" on how to proceed, says project coordinator Lina Filiba. "In the eyes of [our] society, Turkish Jews are the others of the other," she says. "We are crying out loud that we’re Turks, but people keep seeing us as Israelis."