Yes … there’s a JCC in Turkey!

“We have to keep Judaism alive and sparkling,” says Sami Azar, a volunteer with the Turkish Chief Rabbinate Foundation — the Jewish Community of Turkey, otherwise known as the Turkish Jewish Community Center or TJC. 

Azar, who lives in Izmir, runs a smaller JCC program about a 45-minute plane ride from Istanbul, where two larger JCCs are established. In his town of nearly 4 million people, only about 1,700 are Jewish.

“In the last 10 years, we have had 387 deaths and only 38 births,” notes Azar during a recent interview in Jerusalem. He and his colleague, Tuna Alkan, who volunteers with youths between ages 18 and 35 through the Istanbul T.J.C. network, attended last week’s JCC Global 2015 World Conference. Somewhat isolated as a Jewish community in a Muslim-majority country where Jews are forced to keep a low profile, Azar says the conference helps him to “feel more motivated. … It is very good for us.”

The institution of the JCC in Turkey is different than the traditional model in the United States, whose pillars are early childhood, camping, health, and recreation. In Turkey, the JCC is “really the center for the Jews to feel safe and they feel that is their community,” explains Smadar Bar-Akiza, executive director of the JCC Global organization in Jerusalem.

Alkan, a dentist by profession, says life is not as bad for the Jews in Turkey as it might appear in the news. While she admits that the current Turkish government—led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Islamist—doesn’t “agree with anything Israel does,” she says the government tries not to take out its frustration with the Jewish state on the local Jewish community.

“The leaders say in Turkey that Jews are citizens and the problem is Israeli politicians. We are guaranteed our rights as citizens—security, everything. Do I feel like that is true? Yes,” says Azar.

“We haven’t had anything in the streets in a long time,” adds Alkan. “I feel safe.”

She also feels that there is a future for Jews in the Muslim-majority country.