Levantines or Franco-Levantines (French: Levantines, Italian: Levantini, Turkish: Levantenler or Tatlısu Frenkleri) are Latin Christians who lived under the Ottoman Empire. The term is also applied to their descendants living in modern Turkey and the Middle East.
Levantines were mostly of Italian (especially Venetian and Genoese), French, or other Euro-Mediterranean origin and lived in Istanbul, İzmir/Smirne and other parts of Anatolia (in present-day Turkey) or the eastern Mediterranean coast (the Levant, particularly in present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine/Israel) since the period of the Crusades, the Byzantine period and the Ottoman period.
The majority of them are descendants of traders from the maritime republics of the Mediterranean (such as the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Genoa and the Republic of Ragusa) or of the inhabitants of the Crusader states (especially the French Levantines in Lebanon, Israel and Turkey).
Levantines continue to live in Istanbul (mostly in the districts of Galata, Beyoğlu and Nişantaşı), İzmir (mostly in the districts of Karşıyaka, Bornova and Buca), and the lesser port city Mersin where they had been influential for creating and reviving a tradition of opera.[1] Famous people of the present-day Levantine community in Turkey include Franco-Levantine Caroline Giraud Koç and Italo-Levantine Giovanni Scognamillo.
Most of Turkey's small Roman Catholic community are Levantines.
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