![\"Turkish](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/israel-turkey-soccer-2011-9-17.jpg\" "\\"israel-turkey-soccer-2011-9-17\\"")
There are no Jews in Jordan and possibly a dozen Jews in Egypt, once the cradle of a great Jewish culture, but Turkey is different. About 20,000 Jews live in Turkey. Cenk Levy, 33, lives in Istanbul and works for Greenpeace.<\/p>\n
\u201cWeeeell,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is not so tense regarding the Jews. You don\u2019t hide it, but you don\u2019t feel very comfortable regarding your identity these days.\u201d<\/p>\n
His name is Levy. \u201cYeah, absolutely,\u201d he laughs. \u201cIt\u2019s very, very obvious!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou hear many statements about how the main problem here is the government, but we have also started to hear about how people themselves are turning. It\u2019s not like it was three or four years ago. People don\u2019t trust Israel, they don\u2019t trust what Israel does. It\u2019s becoming clear that this could disrupt business relations and other ties, not only military.\u201d<\/p>\n
For now, sport remains an area of intact relations. Last night, Istanbul\u2019s Besiktas soccer team played Maccabi Tel Aviv at home.<\/p>\n
Tel Aviv fans who went to support their team reported the paradoxical experience in which merchants and restauranteurs, hearing they were Israelis, welcomed them warmly and with explicit expressions of friendliness. Meanwhile, on the radio they heard that thousands had gathered n Istanbul\u2019s central square to chant anti-Israeli slogans.<\/p>\n
Cenk Levy watched the match at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cBekistas were trying to reduce tensions as much as possible before the match, to emphasize that it is part of a friendship and sport. They went to some lengths to emphasize that there is a clear distinction between politics and sport, and that there are also Muslim players playing for Israel. There was also very high security in the stadium.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there was only one anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, slogan heard during the entire game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe it helped that Bekistas won, 5-1.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings are a bit depressing,\u201d Levy added. \u201cThis didn\u2019t start yesterday, with the match, or a month ago. It\u2019s been a long campaign and as you see it moving forward, and with the flotilla incident, now my sense is that the government is using Israel as leverage to stabilize themselves politically in the new Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n
via Tension rises for Jews in Turkey | GlobalPost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For Turkey and Israel, sports are the only remaining relations that are intact. Noga Tarnopolsky There are no Jews in Jordan and possibly a dozen Jews in Egypt, once the cradle of a great Jewish culture, but Turkey is different. About 20,000 Jews live in Turkey. Cenk Levy, 33, lives in Istanbul and works for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":44048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[2528,1124,6950],"class_list":["post-44046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-besiktas","tag-jews-in-turkey","tag-maccabi-tel-aviv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}