ISTANBUL, Nov 15: Predominantly Muslim Turkey’s 35,000-strong Jewish community traces its roots back to the Jews’ expulsion from Spain five centuries ago.

Saturday’s blasts hit one of Turkey’s oldest ethnic communities, which has long been tolerated by the Muslim majority.

Many Jews here, or “musevi” as they are known, live in wealthy areas of Istanbul, the country’s largest city whose site on the Bosphorous gives it a foot in both Europe and Asia.

Most of the casualties in Saturday’s twin attacks were at the Neve Shalom synagogue, in the historic Beyoglu district in the heart of the city, close to the Golden Horn.

The synagogue, the Jewish community’s largest place of worhsip and most prominent building in the country, is also used for weddings and bar-mitzvahs.

Most of Turkey’s Jews are descendents of those who came here after fleeing the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century. Many still speak the kind of old Spanish written by the classic writer Cervantes.

During the centuries of the Ottoman empire, of which Istanbul was the centre, they generally prospered in their financial and commerical activities.

During World War II, neutral Turkey again opened its doors to Jews fleeing persecution, this time from Germany which had seized much of Europe.

Many German Jewish professors left Germany to take up positions at universities in Istanbul and Ankara.

They came at the invitation of Kemal Ataturk, father of the modern Turkish state, and many stayed on after the war ended in 1945. Today some of Turkey’s top businessmen are Jewish. —AFP