Turkey: Huddled together in a drenching downpour, thousands of Jews and Muslims, tears mingling with the rain, clung together yesterday at the funeral of six Jews killed in suicide bomb attacks on two Istanbul synagogues.
A police helicopter flew overhead and guards searched what police estimated to be 3,000 mourners entering the cemetery where a gathering of faiths rare in the Middle East took place.
"This painful ceremony should have been held at the synagogue but the two synagogues that could have housed this many people have been destroyed," Turkey's chief rabbi, Ishak Haleva, said.
Some mourners still bore cuts and bruises on their faces.
"Throughout time, Jews have been victims of violence and massacres only because they are Jewish," the rabbi told the crowd.
"These attacks did not just target Jews. People of all faiths lost their lives and were harmed by these meaningless and inhuman attacks." The bombings on Saturday killed 25 and wounded 300, most of them Muslim passers-by.
The dead were carried in coffins wrapped in the Turkish flag, an honour usually only reserved for dignitaries and soldiers or police.
The caskets were lowered into graves near the plot bearing the victims of a 1986 attack on one of the synagogues hit again on Saturday. In the earlier attack on Neve Shalom, 22 Jewish worshippers were killed.
Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomeos I and Armenian Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan, who are based in Istanbul, were among the mourners at the Ashkenazi Jewish Cemetery.
"The presence of Muslims, the patriarchs and others is a good symbol of the solidarity in Turkey. But what is important is what happens tomorrow, what measures will be taken to stop further atrocities and anti-Semitism," Shimon Samuels, of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Jewish rights group told Reuters.
"Anti-Semitism has collateral damage. This was an attempt to kill the fragile relations between Judaism and Islam," he said.
Muslim Turkey, a secular democracy straddling Europe and the Middle East, has long maintained good diplomatic and military relations with Israel.
Its tiny Jewish community of some 25,000 people are mainly the descendants of Sephardim expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492 who were offered sanctuary by Ottoman Turks.
Yalcin, a Muslim who stood outside of the gates of the cemetery during the service, said he worried the remnants of a centuries-old community would now abandon Turkey.
"I came to express my condolences and my shame," he said.
A Jewish man who wept silently during prayers read in Hebrew said he now feared an ominous chapter had been opened in Turkey.
"This is a blow for our community but it is also a dark moment for Turkey," he said. - (Reuters)