Turkey's Jews look for Spanish citizenship ...

Around 5,000 members of Turkey's Jewish community have applied for Spanish nationality because they feel no longer comfortable in their country of birth, where the government's Islamist discourse has gained in strength in recent years.
Out of the 17,000-strong Jewish population in Turkey, 5,000 have applied for a Spanish passport, a report on the website of the Financial Times claimed on Friday. The report made it clear once again that Turkey's Jewish community has become increasingly concerned with the Islamist rhetoric of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), particularly after the party came to power for a third consecutive term in the 2011 parliamentary elections.
“Many Jews smart at what they see as hostile rhetoric by the country's Islamist-rooted government, not least President Recep Tayyip [Erdoğan's] repeated references to an ‘interest rate lobby' supposedly plotting against Turkey,” the report said.
“There is open anti-Semitism in the pro-government press. This is hate speech and in places like Germany or Switzerland it would be taken to court,” the report quoted Ivo Molinas, the editor of the Jewish community's weekly newspaper Shalom, as saying.
The Spanish government announced two years ago that it was planning to offer citizenship to Jews whose ancestors were expelled by the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. According to the report, which said the Spanish parliament is likely to effect a change in the citizenship law so as to allow Sephardic Jews with a basic knowledge of Spanish to be granted dual citizenship, those who apply for citizenship and meet the criteria are likely to be awarded a Spanish passport.
Some of Turkey's Sephardic Jews can still speak Ladino, the Spanish-based language their ancestors spoke when they fled Spain for Ottoman Turkey at the end of the 15th century.
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