Diyarbakir Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries

Jewish kingdom, St. Immediately after the death of Solomon, it was divided into Judah and Israel. As a result of the disappearance of the kingdom of Israel from the stage of history and the destruction of the kingdom of Judah, some of the Jews were exiled to the Mesopotamian region. The beginning of the existence of the Jews in this region, which had a multicultural and multi-religious structure until the middle of the 20th century, is based on this exile. The Jews who lived here for centuries left Diyarbakır completely with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. In this study, the existence of the Jews of Diyarbakir in the 19th and 20th centuries, in the last period of the Ottoman Empire, the establishment of the Republic and the establishment of the State of Israel will be discuss. This study consists of three main parts. While the geographical, administrative, political and religious importance of Diyarbakir was emphasized in the first part, information was given about the history of the Diyarbakir Jews in the second part of the study. In the last part of our research, information about the demographic, social, economic and religious characteristics of the Jews of Diyarbakır was presented. This thesis study aims to investigate the religious and historical situations of the Jews living in Diyarbakir since the Tanzimat period of the Ottoman Empire. Studies on history, architecture and Judaism in our country were examined. The population, settlement, religious structure, religious life, tradition and migration processes of the Jews of Diyarbakır were presented in the context of the study with a descriptive method. Interviews with Jews who migrated from Diyarbakır were evaluated. The structured interview included in the study was contacted with R. Rahel Acemi, a Jew from Diyarbakır, many times via online communication tools (Whatsapp, Zoom), and then the interview was completed with a face-to-face interview at Antalya Airport. Translations were used in the study by translating Ottoman texts into Turkish. Documentary analysis method, one of the qualitative research methods, was also used with the opportunities offered by archival studies. We supported our work with the tables we prepared from time to time in order to make the findings related to the population data more understandable. The findings about the demographic, social, economic, historical and religious life we obtained were transferred and evaluated within the scope of the relevant literature. The archive documents of the Republic of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire, especially the registers, contain important information about the Jews of Diyarbakır in the 19th and 20th centuries. Based on these sources, as we conduct research on the Jewish community of Diyarbakir, which has now become a part of history, and the ruins are examined, significant information can be obtained.