Sami Kohen, a world-renowned columnist for Milliyet Gazetesi, one of Turkey’s leading newspapers, was born in Istanbul in 1928. As the son of the journalist Albert Kohen, Sami Kohen became interested in a journalistic career at an early age. From 1939 to 1949, he wrote articles in both Ladino and French for his father’s newspaper, La Boz de Türkiye (The Voice of Turkey). Toward the end of his high school years, with his father’s encouragement, Kohen became an intern at Tan Gazetesi (Dawn Newspaper). Following his father’s death in 1949, Kohen continued to publish La Boz de Türkiye, but he g…

Mario Levi is a Turkish Jewish author and professor of communications. Born in Istanbul in 1957, he graduated from the Lycée Français Saint Michel in 1975 and subsequently attended Istanbul University, where he pursued a degree in French language and literature, graduating in 1980. Levi’s first experiment in writing was a diary in which he made regular entries. He began his professional career in 1984, contributing articles to numerous magazines and newspapers, including Şalom , Cumhuriyet, Milliyet Sanat, and Cumhuriyet Dergisi. In 1986, he published his first book, a roma…

The Bet Israel Synagogue is located in the Karataş quarter of the Turkish city of Izmir (formerly Smyrna). The city’s largest synagogue, it was built to accommodate the growing population in the area, which in the late nineteenth century was known as the Jewish quarter.Ottoman law required government permission to restore or build new synagogues. The request for the construction of Bet Israel was submitted in 1904 to Sultan Abdülhamid II; the following year permission was granted and construction began. The synagogue was opened for worshi…

Yuda Yürüm was born in Ankara on May 17, 1946. He began his academic career in science as an undergraduate in the Department of Chemical Engineering of the Middle Eastern Technical University in Ankara. In 1970 he went on to earn his master’s degree followed by a Ph.D. from the Department of Chemistry at Hacettepe University in Ankara. During the course of his career he has held teaching positions at universities in Turkey and abroad, including the University of Tennessee in the United States an…