The Neve Shalom Synagogue served Istanbul's Sephardic Jewish community — a community with roots in the Iberian Peninsula, descendants of Jews who had found refuge in Ottoman lands after the expulsions of 1492. For nearly five centuries, Istanbul's Jews had built lives, institutions, and a spiritual home in the city. The Neve Shalom, the largest Sephardic synagogue in Istanbul, was central to that life. Its name means 'Oasis of Peace' in Hebrew.

The synagogue had been closed for repairs. Its reopening on that September Shabbat was an occasion for the community to come together — to celebrate the restoration of a place that mattered. Around two dozen would be wounded in addition to the twenty-two killed; among the injured were four women struck by shrapnel in the women's gallery above. A Bar Mitzvah that had been planned for that same morning was cancelled at the last moment, a cancellation that in retrospect spared additional lives.

Two attackers gained entry by posing as television cameramen, claiming to cover the reopening for Israeli television. One spoke Hebrew to a guard at the door. Once inside, on the men's side of the prayer space, they opened fire with machine guns on the congregation gathered for worship.

After the shooting, the attackers poured gasoline over the dead and wounded and set the bodies on fire. They then detonated grenades — described by investigators as 'extremely powerful' — that killed the attackers themselves and disfigured their remains so severely that identification proved impossible. The fire burned for several hours inside the building.

The attack was attributed to the Abu Nidal Organization, a Palestinian militant group responsible for attacks across Europe and the Middle East during the 1980s. Whether the attackers acted with full organizational backing or in coordination with others was never fully established to public satisfaction. What was established was the toll: twenty-two worshippers dead, and a community shattered on what should have been a morning of renewal.

The condemnation was swift and came from across the political spectrum. Turkey's Prime Minister Turgut Özal convened a special cabinet session and called the massacre 'heinous' and an 'odious assault.' Jewish institutions and synagogues across Turkey were placed under heavy security. President Ronald Reagan wrote personally to Istanbul's Jewish community, sharply condemning the attack. Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres called it 'beastly.'

Turkey's response mattered. The country had long been home to one of the world's most significant Jewish communities, and the government's unambiguous condemnation reflected both genuine solidarity and a recognition that antisemitic violence struck at something fundamental about Turkish civic life. Jewish institutions in Turkey remained under elevated security for years afterward — a precaution that would prove tragically warranted when the synagogue was attacked again in 2003.

The twenty-two people killed on 6 September 1986 were not abstractions. They were worshippers — men and women who had come to their synagogue on a Shabbat morning, some to celebrate a reopening, some simply to observe the weekly rhythm of Jewish life. Their deaths left families bereaved and a community marked.

Istanbul's Jewish community, which had survived and contributed to Ottoman and Turkish life for half a millennium, did not disappear. The synagogue itself was repaired and reopened. The community continued its traditions of Shabbat, High Holidays, weddings, and bar mitzvahs in the same building. Neve Shalom endured, though the weight of what happened there on that September morning was never forgotten. Each year, on the anniversary of the attack, the victims are commemorated — twenty-two people whose only act that day was to gather in prayer.