Colonial and Imperial Legacies,National Transformations: Jewish Minorities in 1950s to 1970s Morocco and Turkey

Abstract

This article explores the experiences of Jewish minorities in Morocco and Turkey and examines how these experiences shaped patterns of identification within postcolonial and post-Ottoman contexts. While Jews from the Middle East and North Africa have been widely studied, comparative research across groups remains limited. Drawing on life-story interviews, comparative historical analysis, and secondary sources, the study highlights variations in minority strategies, identity negotiation, and political adaptation. The findings reveal that Moroccan Jewish identity was shaped by geographical distinctions and the Israel–Palestine conflict, which heightened feelings of alienation, whereas Turkish Jews navigated the norms of kayadez and experienced neither decolonization pressures nor large-scale emigration during the same period. Social class and educational differences further influenced individual experiences, illustrating the nuanced ways participants adapted to socio-historical and political challenges. By comparing these populations, the article sheds light on the diverse strategies of survival, negotiation, and identity formation employed by minority groups in response to the postcolonial and post-Ottoman nation-building and political transformations.

Turkey's Ottoman history and its majority–minority relations put the country in a unique position compared to the colonial history and nation-building of Morocco. In 1956, Morocco declared independence, ending 44 years of French and Spanish colonial rules in the country. Turkey, by contrast, followed its own distinctive path. Unlike Morocco, the formation of the Turkish state was precipitated by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the First World War. ¹ Religious groups recognized as minorities, including Armenians, Jews, and Greeks, faced no legal obstacles in fundamental areas such as speaking their native languages, publishing newspapers, or opening schools. ² For the Jewish population that spoke Ladino, this freedom was challenged by the assimilationist language policies of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's regime. ³

Before the period of decolonization, some 250,000 Jews lived in Morocco. ⁴ Following the establishment of the state of Israel and Morocco's independence from colonial rules, many Jews chose to leave the country, and the community continued to decline after the Arab–Israeli Wars of the 1960s and 1970s, as more emigrated to Israel, France, and the Americas. Today, there are less than 2500 Jews comprising a mere 0.06 percent of the total Moroccan population of 35,200,000. In Turkey, there are fewer than 15,000 Jews, constituting just 0.18 percent of the total population of 81,300,000. ⁵ Unlike Morocco and other Arab states in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Turkey has never been at war with Israel and is therefore less directly affected by the Israeli–Palestinian conflict than many Arab countries. Additionally, Turkey is home to the second-largest Jewish community in a Muslim-majority country, after Iran.

Jews from MENA have been widely examined in scholarship and represented in films, novels, and music. ⁶ However, relatively little research compares the experiences of two ethnically distinct MENA Jewish groups within a single study. ⁷ Furthermore, Marc David Baer notes that most studies on Muslim–Jewish relations primarily focus on the Arabophone region, which means that the Israel–Palestinian conflict significantly influences this body of scholarship. ⁸ He suggests that in order to have a more comprehensive discussion of Muslim–Jewish relations, it is essential to include research that examines regions beyond the Arabophone world. ⁹

This article examines the identifications of Moroccan and Turkish Jews – primarily individuals of Sephardic origin – in postcolonial and post-Ottoman geopolitical contexts, focusing on their emigration experiences during the 1950s to 1970s. Why did some Jews leave Turkey and Morocco for Canada? What were the push and pull factors linked to different nationalisms and political shifts, and how did these dynamics shape emigration processes from these countries? Employing a mixed-method approach, the study combines 15 life-story interviews with historical comparative analysis and insights from secondary sources. Findings highlight how Moroccan Jewish identity was shaped by the north–south divide, while Turkish Jews navigated the norms of kayadez. ¹⁰ They also underscore class and educational differences among participants as well as how the Israel–Palestine conflict intensified Moroccan Jewish alienation, in contrast to Turkey, where Jews did not experience decolonization or the large-scale departure of their community during the same period. By examining these two cases in their respective postcolonial and post-Ottoman contexts, the study uncovers subtle variations in minority strategies, identity negotiation, and political adaptation or resistance that are often obscured in single-community analyses. In isolated cases, nuances such as the interaction of local political structures, national policies, and community-specific practices might remain invisible; this comparison, however, highlights how Jewish minorities responded differently to the legacies of empire, colonialism, nation-building, and political transformation. While the findings are limited to the participants, incorporating a broader diversity of experiences across class, ethnic, linguistic, and ideological lines could further strengthen the comparative perspective and enrich our understanding of Jewish minority experiences across distinct historical and political contexts in the MENA region.

This study draws on findings from my doctoral thesis, which explored the sense of belonging among Turkish and North African Jews in the Canadian cities of Montreal and Toronto. The present article, however, focuses exclusively on the empirical findings related to their lives in Morocco and Turkey. It is based on life-story interviews conducted remotely with 15 participants between June 2020 and February 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. ¹¹ The study also incorporates historical-comparative analysis and insights from secondary sources to provide contextual depth. I selected the 1950s to the 1970s as the period of focus, as this corresponds to when the participants emigrated from Morocco and Turkey.

After receiving ethical certification to conduct interviews in May 2020, I began recruiting participants. All participants currently reside in Canada, and many experienced multiple migrations, initially moving to Israel or France before settling in Canada. The French-speaking Moroccan Jews I interviewed are based in Montreal, while Ladino-speaking Turkish Jews and Haketia-speaking Moroccan Jews reside in Toronto. ¹² I conducted Zoom interviews with each participant, listening to their life stories from childhood. Interview durations ranged from one to four hours, with most lasting approximately 90 minutes.

Of the 15 participants, five were born in southern Moroccan cities such as Casablanca, Rabat, and Safi; five in northern Morocco, specifically Tangier; and five in İstanbul, Turkey. Among the Turkish Jews, two were of mixed Ashkenazi and Sephardi heritage, with one parent from Russia and Germany. Most Moroccan Jewish participants come from middle-class backgrounds, while the Turkish Jewish participants belong to the upper-middle class and attended private schools in İstanbul. This class difference emerged during data analysis rather than being intentionally sought during recruitment. The group comprised eight men and seven women, aged 69 to 93. Interviews with southern Moroccan Jews in Montreal were primarily conducted in French, whereas most interviews with Tangier and Turkish Jews in Toronto were conducted in English, with occasional switches to French or Turkish as preferred. I transcribed all interviews and shared transcripts with participants who wished to review them. Rather than using pseudonyms, I assigned numbers to the interviewees.

The smaller number of Turkish participants – 5 compared to 10 Moroccan Jews – reflects both their lower population in Canada and the challenges of recruiting during the COVID-19 pandemic, which prevented in-person fieldwork in Toronto. The 2011 National Household Survey provides demographic data for Sephardic Jews in Quebec but lacks information for the rest of Canada. According to the survey, Montreal is home to 22,225 Sephardic Jews, comprising 24.5 percent of the city's total Jewish population of 90,780. Moroccans constitute the largest group among Sephardic Jews born in the MENA region, South America, or Canada, with 6285 individuals born in Morocco. ¹³

Data analysis proceeded in four stages: pre-coding, coding, theme development, and comparing/crossing themes. During pre-coding, I repeatedly read transcripts to familiarize myself with participants’ stories. Substantial interpretative analysis occurred during coding stage, which I conducted manually by annotating transcripts rather than using software like NVivo. Relevant data were then clustered to identify patterns, leading to the emergence of themes that highlighted the diverse experiences of participants. Historical-comparative analysis and insights from secondary sources were integrated throughout to contextualize the findings. The major themes discussed in the findings included memory from the Ottoman imperial and later republican eras, colonial legacies in Morocco, class and educational differences, the concept of kayadez, and the Israel–Palestine conflict.

Prior to the Sephardic expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in the fifteenth century, a significant population of non-Sephardic or ‘indigenous’ Jews lived in Morocco. ¹⁴ During the period of the Roman Empire, Jews were called toshavim (dwellers) and were regarded as different from the post-expelled Castilian Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, who were designated as megurashim (expelled ones). ¹⁵ Whereas toshavim were in the urban and rural areas, megurashim, or post-expelled Castilian Jews, were mainly living in the urban centers next to the Muslims from Al-Andalus. Some Jews who lived in the countryside also integrated into the Amazigh-speaking communities.

Founded in 1860 in Paris, the Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU) schools opened their first department in Tetouan, Morocco, in 1862. These schools aimed to safeguard Jewish human rights and dignity and promote the French language and culture among Jews residing in North Africa and the Near East. They combined secular, scientific, and religious subjects in their curricula and attempted to secularize many parts of Jewish life. Beyond merely being Jewish educational institutions, the AIU schools sought to ‘emancipate’ Jews, i.e., Westernize them and encouraged ‘moral progress’. Modern curriculum in the French language was instructed, and assimilation into French culture was advocated. ¹⁶ Before the imposition of the French Protectorate in 1912, Moroccan Jews living in this Muslim-majority region had a dhimmi, namely, a protégé (protected) status. By law, the lives, goods, and religious liberties of these second-class citizens were protected in exchange for recognition of Muslim supremacy and the payment of a specific tax, known as the jizia. With the establishment of the French Protectorate, many Moroccan Jews began living in European neighborhoods, leaving the mellahs, and adopted European dress and behaviors, which contributed to their social detachment from the Muslim community. ¹⁷ From 1912 to 1956, during the height of French control over Morocco, French supplanted Arabic, Amazigh, and Hebrew, becoming the official language of all governmental affairs. ¹⁸

Spain's protectorate, far smaller than the French zone, operated under French dominance and relied on British support. ¹⁹ Britain, seeking to balance French influence in the region, backed the establishment of the international zone of Tangier, which took shape in the early twentieth century. Having lost its American colonies and the Philippines by the end of the nineteenth century, Spain sought to restore its diminished imperial status by securing territory in Morocco – a goal that became central to its foreign ambitions. ²⁰ Spanish colonialists applied the concept of convivencia (peaceful coexistence) between Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Iberian Peninsula as a justification for their colonial expansion in North Africa. ²¹ Under the Spanish Protectorate, Francoists believed in the superiority of Spanish colonialism over French rule, and Sephardic Jews living under Franco's regime often cooperated with the Spanish government. A key aspect of this was the ideology of philosephardism, which sought to revive the Castilian Jewish heritage of al-Andalus while fostering political, commercial, and cultural ties among Sephardic Jewish communities across the Mediterranean. ²² This movement also reflected the rivalry between Spain and France for cultural and political influence in Morocco. ²³

In 1930s Morocco, a new form of Arabism emerged as a key foundation of anti-colonial resistance among Muslims. Nationalist leaders mobilized to promote the status of the Arabic language in defiance of the colonial linguistic order, leading to its widespread revival. Vichy France's anti-Jewish laws in North Africa revealed how the racial ideologies of the Holocaust extended into the colonial sphere, intertwining with long-standing structures of imperial domination. ²⁴ Although its consequences were far less lethal than in Europe, North African Jews still faced discrimination that reinforced colonial hierarchies among Europeans, Jews, and Muslims. ²⁵

In 1943, the Moroccan Independence Party, Istiqlal, was founded, issuing a direct challenge to French colonial authority. Because Moroccan nationalists viewed Jews as collaborators and beneficiaries of the colonial system, they ‘were less decisive when it came to the role of minorities in that struggle’. ²⁶ The AIU Alumni Association of Tangier supported a social life through arranging events in European ways and considered Muslim Moroccans as ‘the antithesis of civilization and progress’. ²⁷ Members of the association's concept of modernity, like other Jews in the Mediterranean basin, sought to emulate European culture while also feeling anxiety about being perceived as backward in their encounters with European powers. ²⁸ Only a small group of Moroccan Jewish activists who embraced anti-colonial movement and Palestinian cause remained in Morocco after the independence. ²⁹

As a result of Jewish distrust of France and the anti-colonial struggle, an independent Moroccan wing of the Zionist Federation was established. Zionists in Morocco increasingly began to call for Jewish emigration to Israel. Moroccan nationalists associated with Istiqlal, on the other hand, initiated an anti-Zionist campaign in response. Asserting their sympathies with the Palestinian Arabs who were being dispossessed of their land, members of Istiqlal banned Jewish and European trade that supported the Zionist movement. Even though the French authorities worked against rousing anti-Jewish sentiment in the country, boycott on Jewish-owned entertainment industries, companies, and pharmacies continued, intensifying after Morocco's declaration of independence and its participation in the Arab–Israeli Wars through the 1960s and 1970s.

Jewish existence in Turkey dates back to the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. As in Morocco, there were ‘indigenous’ Jews before the expulsion of Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula to the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century. After 1492, approximately 100,000 Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula immigrated to the Ottoman Empire, who took the largest cluster of Sephardi exiles. ³⁰ Some Ashkenazi Jews from Central and Eastern Europe also immigrated to Turkey in the following centuries. In the Ottoman Empire, Jews, together with other non-Muslim communities, lived under the millet system which enabled them a certain degree of autonomy in administering their own civic affairs. Places with a dense Jewish working-class population, such as Thessaloniki, showed differences compared to İstanbul, Izmir, and Jerusalem. Unlike other non-Muslim groups, Jews neither pursued separatist goals nor posed a political threat, which made them valuable allies for the Ottomans; in return for state protection against attacks, their loyalty helped cement a late nineteenth-century ‘Turkish–Jewish’ alliance. ³¹

With the establishment of modern Turkey following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, a new minority right was granted to the Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. These groups, namely the three major non-Muslim communities in the newly founded Republic of Turkey, were granted minority status within the legal framework of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Articles 37–45 of the Lausanne Treaty allowed the three non-Muslim groups to establish their own temples and educational institutions. ³² Yet, ‘minority schools had to hire a certain percentage of Turk teachers’ in their institutions, and they ‘were not permitted to teach the history of their separate communities but only the history of the Turks’ ³³ According to the state representatives of the Turkish nation, inclusion of minority groups could be achieved through their assimilability in the post-Lausanne Turkey rather than implementation of inclusive policies. ³⁴

For Jews, the early Republican (Single-Party) period ending in 1946 was a period of pressure due to the nation-building project and Turkification policies. The infamous ‘Citizen Speak Turkish!’ campaign, with its top-down nationalistic and populist agenda was one of the instruments of this policy. ³⁵ Seeking to homogenize its population, the government established after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire expected Jews to embrace Turkishness, including abandoning their Judeo-Spanish language in favor of Turkish. ³⁶ Their primary language, Ladino, was not legally recognized as a protected minority language, unlike Hebrew, Armenian, or Greek. ³⁷ Deputy Chief Rabbi Becerano requested 10–15 years for Turkish Jews to gradually adopt Turkish, but the regime did not grant this patience. ³⁸ Turkish Jews were singled out in humoristic journals and the press, constantly ridiculed for their language use. Armenians and Greeks were rarely subjected to the same ridicule, partly because their languages were officially recognized and seen as legitimate minority tongues. ³⁹

In 1930s Turkey, Jews were encouraged to assimilate by learning Turkish and promoting Turkish culture, in contrast to Nazi Germany, where Jews were systematically excluded. ⁴⁰ Jewish representatives in Turkey sought to maintain good relations with the authorities, continuing an Ottoman-era tradition. Kemalist politicians portrayed them as a model minority, highlighting their loyalty to Muslim Turks and to the Turkish homeland in contrast to Armenians and Greeks. ⁴¹

The image of Turkey as a safe haven for Jews during the Second World War – promoted both by Turkish officials and Jewish figures like Abraham Galanté, who emphasized Muslim tolerance while denying episodes of minority persecution – has often obscured the harsher realities of the period. ⁴² The 1930s and 1940s marked the darkest period for Turkey's Jews, with events such as the Thrace pogroms, forced labor battalions, the Wealth Tax, and the 1932 Law on Trades and Services Reserved for Turkish Citizens – which excluded Jews and other minorities from numerous professions – severely undermining their place in society and accelerating their emigration. ⁴³ Jewish emigration from the Ottoman Empire began in the late nineteenth century with a small group of merchants settling in Europe, aided by Western education and language training provided through AIU schools, which the Kemalist regime later closed. ⁴⁴ Although destinations included Europe, the United States, and Latin America, the largest wave of emigration followed the establishment of the Turkish Republic, spurred mainly by anti-minority policies and employment restrictions. ⁴⁵ Refugee policy further reveals the contradictions of this era: while a handful of Jewish academics fleeing Nazi persecution were admitted to bolster Turkish universities, the majority of Jewish refugees were barred under nationalist settlement laws that defined Jews as ‘undesirable elements’. ⁴⁶ Thus, rather than serving as a genuine refuge, Turkey's limited acceptance of Jewish intellectuals was driven by pragmatic state interests, while its broader policies reinforced exclusion and revealed the depth of its assimilationist nationalism. ⁴⁷

Turkey, as the first Muslim country to recognize Israel in 1949, leveraged historical, cultural, and geographic ties with the Jewish state to maintain balanced relations with both Israel and Arab countries. Early connections between Turkey and Israel dated back to Ottoman times when Palestine was an integral part of the Ottoman Empire. Israel's first leader, David Ben-Gurion, studied law in İstanbul, and some Jewish people served in the Ottoman army during the First World War, including Moshe Sharett, the second prime minister of Israel. ⁴⁸ Viewed in this perspective, the leaders of Turkey and Israel had geographical, historical, and cultural commonalities, making them major trade partners ‘with Turkey quickly becoming the third largest importer of Israeli goods; likewise, Israel was also dependent on imports from Turkey, especially for wheat’. ⁴⁹

When Atatürk's birthplace in Thessaloniki was allegedly bombed in 1955 – a staged incident orchestrated amid escalating tensions over the Cyprus crisis – the Democratic Party (DP), which had come to power after the end of the Single-Party regime, used the event to fuel nationalist outrage. The ensuing İstanbul pogrom, directed primarily against Greeks in Turkey, quickly escalated into a broader anti-minority riot. The violence, initially framed as retaliation for the attack on Atatürk's house, soon became uncontrollable and spread to Jewish-owned shops and properties in both İstanbul and İzmir on 6–7 September 1955. In the following decade, the trauma of these events accelerated the emigration of non-Muslims: while many Greeks resettled in Greece, most Jews – largely from the middle and upper-middle classes – chose to emigrate to Israel. ⁵⁰ By the 1960s and 1970s, political Islam, anti-colonial movements, and leftist opposition to Israel, combined with domestic unrest, limited Jewish rights and spurred further emigration. ⁵¹ Necmettin Erbakan and his parties, the National Order Party and later the National Salvation Party, represented the rise of political Islam in Turkey, framing Zionism and Israel as threats to Turkey and portraying global conflicts through the lens of nationalism and religion. Islamists viewed Israel as a destabilizing force aiming to divide Turkey, while the Jews of Turkey occupied a distinct, ‘Turkified’ position: loyal to the Turkish state, detached from Zionism, and serving as proof of Muslim tolerance and as a strategic ally in international affairs. ⁵² Antisemitic rhetoric was directed at Jews associated with Zionism, not Turkish Jews, whose elite and business leaders also cultivated pro-Turkish support abroad, particularly in the United States. ⁵³

Francophone Moroccan Jewish interviewees were raised in environments heavily influenced by French culture through the AIU schools or French public schools they attended. Interviewee 1, born in Casablanca in 1954 and educated in the AIU system from the age of 6 until she left at 14, highlighted how she could engage with the broader Moroccan Jewish community outside of school, which in turn reinforced her Jewish identity – an experience she did not necessarily have at home. ⁵⁴ She recalled that, while she did not feel culturally connected to other groups, she was well integrated within her schools. Although she did not use Arabic in daily life, she had learned to write it. All southern Moroccan Jewish interviewees acquired French, Hebrew, and Arabic through these schools and retained their French-language networks and cultural ties upon immigrating to Quebec, making the province a natural destination.

Distinct from southern Moroccan Jews, the northern Moroccan Jewish participants are identifiable by their use of Haketia, a unique language, as well as by their distinct cultural practices. Interviewee 2, born in Tangier in 1939 and immigrated to Toronto in 1958, recalled that Spaniards did not understand when his parents and grandparents spoke to them in Haketia. ⁵⁵ Several other interviewees also mentioned that northern Moroccan Jews had a derogatory term for their francophone counterparts, calling them forasteros (foreigners) because their closer proximity to Europe made them appear more European compared to Southern Moroccan Jews. These participants placed importance on Tangier's international status with its diverse population of people of different nationalities and their respective schools. In Tangier, there were Americans, Spaniards, Hindus, Europeans, and some Asians living in this unique setting.

Born in 1951 in Tangier and immigrated to Toronto in 1964, interviewee 3, who was educated at the AIU school in Tangier, where classes were primarily taught in French, mentioned that students also had the opportunity to take one hour of Arabic and one hour of Hebrew each week. ⁵⁶ When they reached grades 8 and 10, the interviewee added, they had the chance to study Latin, followed by Spanish and English. For this individual, life in Morocco was very enjoyable, and her parents loved and appreciated their time there. Some of these interviewees, like the Jews of southern Morocco, speak French and Hebrew. In AIU schools, as interviewee 4 from Tangier – the husband of interviewee 3 – added, students included not only Jews but also Spaniards and Muslims, all taking the same courses side by side. ⁵⁷ According to these interviewees, the most remarkable aspect of living in Tangier was the city's diversity – people of different religions speaking multiple languages coexisted closely. They learned to navigate their differences while respecting each other's traditions, without being assimilated.

The stories shared by the Moroccan Jewish interviewees underline their paradoxical relationship with Muslims in Morocco: alongside closeness and friendship, there was also distance and occasional hostility. ⁵⁸ Interviewee 5, from the small Atlantic city of Safi in southern Morocco, recalled how 13- and 14-year-old children were arrested after the Six-Day War for wearing blue-and-white clothing, the colors of the Israeli flag. ⁵⁹ Interviewee 6, born in 1943 in Rabat, recounted how the rise of Arab nationalism and its consequences prompted him and his family to leave Morocco for Quebec in the 1970s. ⁶⁰ He recalled that during the 1967 Six-Day War, King Hassan II endorsed an intervention in Israel and intended to mobilize Moroccan forces in support of the Palestinians. According to the interviewee, this rhetoric, which was widespread at the time, led to nationalist gatherings in certain Casablanca neighborhoods. It is important to note that Hassan II embraced an ambivalent stance towards the Israel–Palestine conflict during his rule. As Brahim El Guabli emphasizes, ‘declaring Palestine as a sacred issue for Moroccans, while in the meantime serving as a negotiator between Israelis and Palestinians’, Hassan II embodied ‘very tricky nature of the negotiations between external solidarities and internal interests’. ⁶¹ Consequently, he did not hesitate to arrest his opponents – including Moroccan Muslim leftists and other critics of the regime – who were broadly targeted, and to imprison those who called for the removal of Moroccan Jews from government positions or the boycott of Jewish businesses following the Six-Day War. ⁶²

The Yom Kippur War was also a significant factor in the interviewees’ decision to leave, as it heightened perceptions of Jews in Morocco and led the national press to adopt an increasingly aggressive stance toward Israel. According to interviewee 5, attending school became unsettling and frightening after the Six-Day War. She emphasized that anti-Jewish sentiment, especially directed at Jews in Israel, was widely broadcast on the radio across the country. Israel's victory in the war added another layer to this hatred and increased feelings of hostility against Morocco's Jewish population, leading to policies of imprisonment and persecution:

We were kept cloistered in our homes, like how people are confined now because of COVID. We didn’t go out for a month, but then it was early July. After the war, we finally went out – to the beach a month later. And there . . . we were told that someone in the café had a gun. There was a lot of anger; they accused us of celebrating Israel's victory in the Six-Day War. The police came with submachine guns and arrested us. We spent ten days in prison, where we were threatened. There was an 18-year-old man, his last name was ‘Israel’, who was badly treated. The children accused us of being Israeli spies. (My translation)

When recalling the experiences of Jews from lower-class backgrounds like herself, who lived in poverty and suffered from malnutrition following the rise of Arab nationalism in Morocco, interviewee 5 noted that Zionism represented a hope for survival. According to these interviewees, as the streets suddenly became threatening with the outbreak of the Arab–Israeli wars, they grew increasingly skeptical of collaborating with nationalists. They came to believe that remaining in Morocco was no longer viable. The Moroccan nationalist movement – aligned with Gamal Abdel Nasser's Pan-Arab vision and defined by an Arab-Muslim identity – could not offer them genuine equality. In particular, after the Six-Day War, they felt certain they would never be regarded as equals under such a regime.

When Morocco declared its independence, Tangier's international mosaic underwent significant changes, as did the cities of southern Morocco. According to interviewee 4, the Arab League nearly compelled Morocco to participate in the Arab–Israeli War. As a result, whenever conflict erupted between Israelis and Palestinians or Egyptians, his community feared leaving their homes, worried they might be perceived as Israeli sympathizers. Interviewee 7, another Tangier Jew, recalled how Moroccan nationalism became increasingly rigid in the decades following independence: ⁶³

By the 1960s, Morocco was already governing Tangier, but in terms of trade and status, it remained international – no taxes. By the early 1960s, non-Muslim Moroccans were already seeking new opportunities, sensing that their time in the city was limited. The major exodus began in the mid-to-late 1960s and early 1970s. For Moroccan Jews, the Six-Day War in 1967 was the catalyst. There was widespread insecurity. I was in France, finishing my last year of high school. When I returned to Tangier, my father, following the trend, applied for a Canadian visa, which was approved quickly – maybe in four to six months. At the end of my academic year in France, in June, my father told us, ‘We received immigration approval for Canada – what do you think?’ I said, ‘I’m going. I’m going’. My sister added, ‘If he's going, I’m going too’. So we left one day with four suitcases, while the family business remained open.

From 1961 to 1964, interviewee 4 recalled that life had become increasingly dangerous for Jews, causing widespread fear and panic. For instance, he told how the chief rabbi of Tangier was once stabbed in the neck and went on to share a story about his aunt:

We love Morocco. I love Morocco to be honest. It's a great destination. So, I had, for example, my aunt, who passed away a few years ago, who was 92. And she was very much involved in one of the places, it was like a hospital. It was very, very famous. I mean if you needed anything, just go to Rachel, Rachel will handle everything. If you needed a passport, and it was very hard to get a passport . . . Naturally, to get a passport is not like in Canada, you just go and fill out a form and boom and in two or three weeks, you get the passport. In Morocco, you have to bribe. So, my aunt was so much involved with the police and . . . one of her colleagues at work went to the police secretly and told them that my aunt was a Zionist spy. When the police came to her and started to ask questions and thank God that one of the policemen that she knew, and he really liked my aunt, told her, ‘Listen, they’re trying to tell the government that you’re a spy. So, you better start moving’. And that's why she came to Toronto.

Interviewee 3, on the other hand, described how people were secretly leaving Tangier after the 1960s to avoid entanglements with Moroccan security, recalling instances of neighbors disappearing. Interviewee 7 depicted these times as follows:

Jobs were actually decreasing. The Jews could see the problems emerging. Historically, Jews had been in a good position because they often served as translators for Arab officials, but even that began to disappear. Some Jews were doing very well, but there was also widespread poverty among both Arabs and Jews. The community supported those in need by providing food and clothing. Many Israeli and American organizations were pressuring Jews to leave, concerned about their safety in a country where Israel had conflicts with Palestinians – they didn’t know what the future held. Before this, we had fantastic relationships with everyone – Christians, Arabs, and others. It was an extremely tolerant community, something that doesn’t even exist in Toronto. We were so well integrated; we were invited to Christian and Arab events, and that was fine. We maintained our own religion, and it was respected.

The legacies of Spanish and French colonialism in Morocco profoundly shaped the intercommunal dynamics between Muslims and Jews, and these historical processes help contextualize the perspectives reported by Moroccan Jewish interviewees. Under French rule, Jews were alternately privileged and marginalized – particularly under the Crémieux Decree and Vichy policies – while Spanish authorities strategically elevated Sephardi Jews to advance their own imperial ambitions, positioning them as economic and cultural intermediaries to counterbalance French influence. The Crémieux Decree of 1870 granted French citizenship to Algerian Jews while excluding Muslim Algerians, creating a legal and social hierarchy that privileged Jews over Muslims. This colonial policy reinforced intercommunal divisions and shaped perceptions of Jewish communities across North Africa, including Morocco, where similar patterns of French favoritism and differential treatment contributed to social stratification, tensions with Muslim neighbors, and the positioning of Moroccan Jews within the colonial order. ⁶⁴

In both colonial contexts, Jewish communities were positioned as instruments of European authority, fostering suspicion and tension with Muslims, and reinforcing hierarchical divisions. These colonial interventions intersected with broader political developments: Moroccan nationalism, Pan-Islamism, Nazi and fascist propaganda, and the global reshaping of the Jewish world through the rise of Zionism. Consequently, Moroccan Jews – particularly alumni of AIU schools who oriented themselves toward European modes of education and culture – often perceived Arabic and Arab-Muslim society as obstacles to social progress, rather than sites of integration, reflecting both the colonial privileging of European affiliations and the enduring hierarchies that structured Muslim–Jewish interactions. The rupture following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the territorial expansion of Jewish settlers in Palestine further exacerbated these divides, aligning Jewish identity with European and Zionist affiliations and heightening alienation from local Muslim populations. In this light, Spanish and French colonial policies did not merely administer Moroccan society; they actively shaped the social imaginaries and intercommunal perceptions that continue to influence Jewish–Muslim relations, both in Morocco and among the diaspora, linking historical colonial hierarchies to contemporary identity, belonging, and cultural orientation.

The Ladino-speaking Turkish Jewish participants emigrated from Turkey during the 1960s and 1970s. Two of these participants, presented here, were of mixed Ashkenazi and Sephardi descent. Before immigrating to Canada in the 1970s, three of the Turkish Jewish interviewees had first migrated to Israel in the 1960s. In analyzing the trajectories of Turkish Jewry, it is essential to consider the republic's foundational ideals, the silences in personal and communal narratives, and the apolitical form of Turkish patriotism articulated through the concept of kayadez. As Rifat Bali highlights, Turkish Jewry exhibits a pattern of cautious silence and strategic patriotism, shaped by historical vulnerability, political pressures, and societal expectations. ⁶⁵ They occupy a space of constrained belonging – tolerated as ‘our Jews’ only so long as they remain publicly detached from Zionism, Israel, or overt Jewish political identity. The moment a Turkish Jew voices support for Israel, critiques anti-Semitism, or participates in pro-Israel advocacy, the label of ‘Zionist Jew’ erases their ‘Turkish’ identity and subjects them to scorn. ⁶⁶ The result is an unspoken rule of silence – kayadez – a survival strategy that keeps the community safe but politically invisible. For those whose Jewish or Zionist convictions are strong, emigration becomes not just desirable but ‘practically necessary’, since Turkey's political climate leaves no space for open Jewish self-expression. ⁶⁷

Interviewee 8, from İstanbul, reflected on his life in Turkey before leaving for Israel in 1968, emphasizing his linguistic background and education ⁶⁸ :

I was born in 1950 in a very Jewish area of İstanbul. Historically, Jews had been concentrated around the Golden Horn, and both my parents were born either in Balat or nearby in Hasköy. So, I grew up in the heart of the Jewish community. I finished high school there, in the Jewish high school, where we were taught in Hebrew. It followed the Turkish curriculum – we didn’t learn Ladino or anything like that; everything was in Turkish. Kayador – a Ladino word meaning ‘keep quiet’ – was something we often heard. It meant: ‘keep quiet around Muslim Turks; don’t reveal who you are; don’t get involved in politics; don’t give them a reason to come after you. You would lose every time’. So kayadez was commonplace when I was growing up.

Behaving one way in the public sphere and another at home represents a form of performance that can be understood within the limits of tolerance imposed by state power. This tolerance – dependent on a set of ‘act as if’ behaviors – required individuals ‘to act as if they do, and by so acting, to live “within the lie”’. ⁶⁹ In Turkey, this translated into two distinct identities: a Jewish one maintained in private, and another adapted for public interactions with Muslim Turks. Although this interviewee did not consider such dual identity formation unusual among Jews in Turkey, it ultimately compelled him to leave the country at a young age. During this time, speech was not just a matter of being unable to speak, but rather a deliberate withdrawal from it, which served to reinforce inclusion. ⁷⁰

In contemporary Turkey, Turkish Jews – largely middle- and upper-middle-class professionals, business owners, and white-collar workers – remain predominantly apolitical and economically self-reliant. ⁷¹ Unlike other minorities who have faced persecution for dissent, most Turkish Jews have not experienced direct state repression; yet their compliance stems more from fear than from trust. Generations have internalized an ‘apolitical Turkish patriotism’, a learned loyalty that substitutes civic belonging for political agency. ⁷² This ethos, embedded ‘in the genes of the community’, ensures their visibility as loyal citizens while limiting space for critical engagement or the public expression of Jewish identity. ⁷³ Even minor critiques of anti-Semitism, such as those voiced by journalist Mois Gabay, are framed in patriotic language – ‘my beloved country’ – illustrating how dissent must remain carefully aligned with devotion to the Turkish state. ⁷⁴ The community's ideology of silence reflects both historical prudence and internalized marginalization. In this context, kayadez persists not merely as a word but as a collective condition – an inherited way of life characterized by discretion, loyalty, and the silent endurance of liminality. ⁷⁵

Interviewee 9, a Ladino-speaking woman, who immigrated to Toronto from İstanbul with her husband in 1975, described her Turkish childhood, occasionally sprinkling in a few Turkish words. ⁷⁶ She reflected on leaving Turkey and cherishing fond memories of their diverse and inclusive childhood. Decades later, she stated that they reconnected with old classmates through a nostalgic post about their beloved teachers, highlighting the deep bonds and shared humanity that transcended cultural and religious differences.

Interviewee 10, another Ladino-speaking interviewee, born in 1932 in İstanbul and describing herself as an ‘admirer of Atatürk’, left İstanbul for Canada in 1968. ⁷⁷ In the early years of the Turkish Republic, many Jewish intellectuals aligned themselves with the Kemalist vision of progress and secularization, expressing admiration for Atatürk and hope for integration as equal citizens. ⁷⁸ They initially saw themselves as allies of the new republic and envisioned becoming Turks of Jewish faith. However, they would eventually confront the limits of this optimism, as the state's Turkification policies also targeted them, undermining their aspirations for full inclusion. There were two main reasons for her emigration from Turkey in the 1960s: one was the situation of the Jewish community, and the other stemmed from the broader conditions in the country.

Another instrument of Turkification during the early Republican period was the enforcement of the Varlık Vergisi (Wealth Tax) in 1942. The Kemalist regime imposed this tax specifically on religious minorities, ostensibly as an economic measure during wartime. ⁷⁹ In practice, it was a heavy levy aimed at bolstering the national treasury while transferring wealth from non-Muslims to the Muslim bourgeoisie. ⁸⁰ Non-Muslims unable to pay, even after liquidating their assets, were sent in January 1943 to forced-labor camps in Aşkale, where they endured extreme winter conditions until their release in December of the same year. ⁸¹ Interviewee 11, of both Sephardi and Ashkenazi descent, recounted that his grandfather, a cotton trader in Tashkent until the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, crossed the Azerbaijan-Ottoman border three years later and settled in Adana. ⁸² In the Çukurova region, known for its cotton production, his grandfather and father established a factory. During the early Republican period, however, they were subjected to the Wealth Tax, and the Turkish government demanded a significant sum from his grandfather, forcing him to sell the factory while still incurring debt. The factory eventually became the property of Hacı Ömer Sabancı, whose fortune grew from this acquisition. ⁸³ Following this financial setback, the family moved to İstanbul, where the interviewee later met his wife.

Before emigrating to Israel, interviewee 11 and his wife lived in Kilis, Turkey, where he completed his military service. Although life in Israel was not particularly difficult, political controversies – not anti-Semitism in Turkey – were a major factor in their decision to leave, and in 1975 they emigrated to Canada. Interviewee 8, who left Turkey for Israel in the 1960s before eventually settling in Canada, cited the Six-Day War and the establishment of the State of Israel as key motivations. In contrast, interviewees 9 and 10 left primarily due to the broader situation in Turkey and the position of the Turkish Jewish community, while interviewees 11 and 12 additionally noted feelings of insecurity in Israel. Unlike Moroccan Jews, these emigration decisions were not influenced by anti-Semitism in Turkey or the impact of the Israel–Palestine conflict on public Jewish life.

Among these interviewees, interviewee 8 rejects the concept of kayadez and no longer emphasizes private differences, whereas interviewee 9 maintains a connection to a shared, idealized past with Christian minorities and Muslim Turks through the Turkish language, using it in daily interactions as a bridge to this collective memory. In contrast, interviewee 8 expresses his distinctiveness through his Jewish schooling and the norms of kayadez, which his parents practiced and transmitted to him prior to his emigration from Turkey. These testimonies reflect experiences spanning both the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, while also highlighting the silences in their narratives.

The absence of outspoken or ‘madman’ figures within the Turkish Jewish community – unlike the Armenian examples of Hrant Dink or Sevan Nişanyan – reveals a longstanding survival strategy rooted in historical vulnerability. ⁸⁴ For centuries, Turkish Jews have navigated their minority status through discretion and loyalty, viewing silence not as passivity but as a means of collective endurance. In a national context that equates dissent with disloyalty, the risks of visibility have consistently outweighed any potential gains. The trauma of earlier episodes – such as the 1934 Thrace pogroms, the 1942 Wealth Tax, or the 1955 Cyprus crisis – instilled a sense that open criticism could provoke collective punishment. Unlike Armenians, whose calls for recognition and justice stem from a distinct historical rupture marked by the 1915 genocide, Turkish Jews have sought security through conformity and public reticence. In this context, the outspoken is not merely a dissident but someone who breaks the tacit pact between minority and state – a pact maintained through caution, fear, and pragmatic accommodation. The absence of such figures among Turkish Jews thus underscores a deeply internalized discretion, in which community leaders prioritize continuity and security over confrontation. Far from signaling apathy, this silence reflects a calculated logic of minority endurance in a political environment that has never assured equal protection or freedom of expression.

This article has sought to illuminate the comparative experiences of Moroccan and Turkish Jews, emphasizing how postcolonial and post-Ottoman contexts shaped patterns of identification and emigration in two distinct Muslim-majority societies. The findings revealed that while Moroccan Jews experienced the ramifications of French and Spanish colonial policies, such as through language and sense of belonging, Zionist networks, and the escalating Israel–Palestine conflict, Turkish Jews navigated a different set of circumstances, influenced largely by Ottoman imperial legacies, the transformations of the Turkish Republic, and broader socio-political shifts. These divergent historical trajectories underscore the importance of situating Jewish minority experiences within specific geopolitical and temporal contexts, highlighting the interplay between local histories and global currents in shaping community responses to modernity, nationalism, and emigration.

In Morocco, French and Spanish colonialism profoundly impacted intercommunal relations. French authorities employed a divide-and-rule strategy, institutionalizing hierarchical distinctions between Europeans, Jews, and Muslims. The Crémieux Decree and its suspension under Vichy exemplify how Jews were at once privileged and subordinated, reflecting the fragility of colonial legal protections. Spanish policies, although operating on a smaller scale, similarly relied on instrumentalizing Moroccan Jews to advance colonial interests and counter French influence, promoting philosephardism as a tool to assert cultural and economic authority. These colonial interventions exacerbated Muslim-Jewish tensions, aligning Jews with European colonial power while fostering suspicion and resentment among Muslim nationalists. The combination of colonial governance, global anti-Semitism, and the Israel–Palestine conflict further alienated Moroccan Jews, many of whom found themselves caught between the political ambitions of nationalist movements and the imperatives of survival within a rapidly changing socio-political environment. AIU schools also played a significant role in shaping the experiences of Francophone interviewees, influencing their sense of identity, belonging, and migration trajectories. By providing a French-language education and exposing students to broader cultural and social networks, these schools helped forge connections that later shaped their decisions regarding emigration and integration.

Turkish Jews’ experiences were shaped less by external colonial intervention and more by the internal dynamics of the Ottoman Empire's dissolution and the construction of the Turkish Republic. The article's interviews demonstrate that Turkish Jews often emphasized their historical continuity within the Ottoman imperial framework and the subsequent republican order. Unlike Moroccan Jews, whose narratives were inseparable from the conflictual dynamics of colonial rule and Palestinian cause, Turkish Jews did not experience the same level of political or physical insecurity vis-à-vis their Muslim neighbors. Instead, their emigration decisions were motivated primarily by broader socio-political changes in Turkey, including Jewish minority's condition and the process of modernizing a formerly multi-ethnic empire into a nation-state. In this context, the concept of kayadez – the moral, social, and cultural codes inherited from the Ottoman-Jewish milieu – emerges as a critical analytic tool. Kayadez encapsulates a framework of ethical comportment, communal responsibility, and attachment to the cultural memory of Ottoman pluralism, guiding Turkish Jews’ understanding of identity, belonging, and cosmopolitan aspiration. In the post-republican era, kayadez allowed Turkish Jews to navigate modern pressures while preserving a sense of collective continuity, differentiating their trajectories from the more externally constrained Moroccan Jewish experience.

The comparative analysis underscores the profound influence of colonial legacies and nationalist transformations on Jewish patterns of identification. In Morocco, Jews were pushed toward Europe-oriented cultural, linguistic, and educational trajectories by both colonial preference and political necessity, as evidenced in the pro-European orientation of alumni from AIU schools. These alignments, while offering social mobility and access to global networks, also reinforced a sense of separateness from local Muslim communities, especially as nationalist movements increasingly linked Jews with colonial powers or with transnational Zionist agendas. In Turkey, by contrast, the secularizing reforms of the republic and the absence of a colonial intermediary created a context in which Jews could maintain internal community cohesion while negotiating their status within a broader Muslim-majority society. By comparing the Moroccan and Turkish cases, this study illuminates broader theoretical questions in migration and minority studies. It demonstrates how colonial entanglements and post-imperial nation-building converge to produce distinct patterns of emigration and identification. Recognizing these dynamics allows for a more nuanced understanding of minority adaptation, intercommunal negotiation, and mobility in the modern MENA region. The framework developed here – attentive to colonial and postcolonial structures as well as the Ottoman and post-imperial contexts – offers a productive model for future research on minority experiences in other Muslim-majority societies undergoing political transformation and migratory processes.