Yet another historical church has been unearthed in the Cappadocia region of Central Anatolia and experts are excited about its frescoes, which depict scenes hitherto unseen.

With the opening of the Grand Synagogue of Edirne, the celebration of Hanukkah and memorials held for the Holocaust and the Struma disaster, 2015 was a milestone year that shattered taboos for Jews in Turkey. However, in the same year, research has shown that Turkey is a leading country for anti-Semitic sentiments. This paradox shows that Turkey's nature is one of irony.

When Turkey’s official Religious Affairs Department, the Diyanet, denied a request from the Boyacikoy Yerits Mangonts Church Foundation to pay salaries to Christian clergy in Turkey, the move was challenged by the country's chief ombudsman, who asked the Prime Ministry to pay salaries to non-Muslim clergy. The Prime Ministry has not made a decision known, but non-Muslim clergy members are clearly delighted with the proposal.

There was a heart-warming news story in the Hürriyet Daily News yesterday titled: “Stray cats make their home in historic Istanbul mosque.” Accordingly, the Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi Mosque, a beautiful Ottoman artifact from the 16th century located in Istanbul’s Üsküdar district, has recently become the home of not just human worshippers but also feline refugees. In the cold winter days of Istanbul, during which the city’s innumerous cats suffer, the imam of the mosque, Mustafa Efe, made the compassionate decision to host them in his mosque.

A commemoration ceremony was held in Ankara on Wednesday for Holocaust victims. Representing the government at the ceremony, EU Minister Volkan Bozkır said Turkey was vigilant against anti-Semitism and embraces the country’s Jewish community.

Turkey’s Jews marked a milestone Dec. 13 with a public celebration of the Hanukkah holiday, said to be the first in the republic's history after decades of Hanukkahs marked behind closed doors in synagogues or homes. Members of the tiny community took to the streets for the ceremony, as the tradition requires, lighting thousands of candles at Istanbul’s Ortakoy Square.

In 1924, a year after founding the Turkish Republic on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the country’s new leader, abolished the Ottoman Caliphate, which had been the last remaining Sunni Islamic Caliphate since 1517. Having introduced a secular constitution and a Western-style civil and criminal legal code, Atatürk shut down the dervish lodges and religious schools, abolished polygamy, and introduced civil marriage and a national beauty contest. He granted women the right to vote, to hold property, to become supreme-court justices, and to run for office. The head scarf was discouraged. A notorious 1925 “Hat Law” outlawed the fez and turban; the only acceptable male headgear was a Western-style hat with a brim. The Ottoman Arabic script was replaced by a Latin alphabet, and the language itself was “cleansed” of Arabic and Persian elements.

Turkey’s newly elected government has given signals that it may move to address the grievances of the country’s Alevi community through a new “Alevi opening.” Following its crushing election victory on Nov. 1, some think the Justice and Development Party (AKP) now has the political cushion to pass legislative changes that - however necessary - may not be popular with its base.

Some 45,000 Christians who fled Syria and Iraq are forced to hide their religious identity in the Turkish provinces of Yozgat, Aksaray and Çorum.

Bitter experience has bred skepticism when self-proclaimed “moderate” or “peace-loving” Muslims declare they represent the true face of the faith, since such claims to date haven’t put much of a dent in the global spread of Islamic-inspired terrorism.

Christian refugees who have fled ISIS in Iraq and Syria are practising their faith in secret now they live in a Muslim-majority nation, according to a Turkish newspaper.

Abstract

While various studies suggest that anti-Semitism is almost non-existent in Turkish society, the popularity of the conspiratorial rhetoric about Jews raises question marks about this view. This article probes into contemporary anti-Semitism in Turkey by scrutinizing conspiracy theories about a crypto-Judaic society called Dönme. It explores the influence of the paranoid style in Turkish politics, known as the Sèvres syndrome, on the popular conspiracy theories with anti-Semitic themes. The research relies on an analysis of the content of conspiracy accounts and interviews with their authors. It concludes that the influence of the Sèvres syndrome is imperative to understand the rationale of anti-Semitic conspiracy rhetoric in Turkey.