Letter Addressed to the Conference of Constantinople in Favor of the Jews of the Orient

Paris, December 1876

To Mr. President and Members of the Conference of Constantinople

Sirs,

You were nominated to discuss the interests of a great number of people in the Orient, and to accomplish a work of peace and justice.

In coming before you today, we are not addressing your generous power for ourselves. Given the goodness we enjoy in the different governments where we were born and amongst the populations of which we form a part, we are deputies amongst you on behalf of the Jews of Germany, England, Austria, Belgium, France, Holland, Italy, and Switzerland, all united by belief in the same faith. We pray that your initiative will complement the work of humanity with which you are charged, and which promises so many important results.

You are meeting to arrange the civil and political status of diverse populations in the Orient. We Jews, citizens of liberal nations, came to ask that you make no distinction between peoples of different religions, and to ensure that our coreligionists have the same rights as other inhabitants of these areas.

The events happening in the Danubian provinces are painful proof that clearly demonstrates the danger of inequality of rights between the diverse populations of the same country, as was done through the Treaty of Paris in 1856 and the Convention of Paris in 1858. Every privilege given to one race or faith gives way to persecution, as the persecutions taking place in Romania or Serbia have shown Europe for so many years. We hope that the hour has come to put an end to these persecutions.

In Turkey, equal treatment of all of the non-Muslim populations has always been guaranteed. At present, Jews are mentioned in all of the laws that were given to advance the empire and improve the status of the reayas, as did the Hatti Sherif of Gulhane of 13 November 1839 and the Hatti Humayun of 1856.¹ Ottoman civil law gave equality to all people without distinction of race or faith in the eyes of the law. These precedents promise that the Jews as well as all non-Muslim subjects will equally enjoy the improvements that will be introduced by the governance and policies of Turkey.

This letter reports on a conference held by the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Istanbul on the situation of Eastern Jews; it was written in December 1876 and published by a leading Ladino periodical, El Tiempo, on January 19, 1877.