Like diaspora communities throughout most of history, the Jews of Iraq—the oldest Jewish community outside the land of Israel—long remained linguistically distinct from their neighbors. The Jews of Kurdistan spoke a form of Aramaic, while those in the remainder of the country spoke a uniquely Jewish form of Arabic, written in Hebrew characters, which some linguists believe preserves aspects of the Aramaic spoken by these Jews before the Arab conquest. Mardean Isaac writes:

Under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ankara has become increasingly authoritarian, Islamist, and hostile toward Israel and the West more generally. The Turkish government has also indicated that it aspires to alter its maritime border with Greece, and even its border with Syria. Analyzing these changes, and what they term the country’s “bellicose foreign policy,” Efraim Inbar, Eran Lerman, and Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak examine the implications for Israel, and how the Jewish state might best respond: