The Abulafias – as with most other Sephardi expellees – settled mostly in the European portions of the Ottoman Empire, largely in what is today Thessaloniki (in modern Greece), and Istanbul in modern northwestern Turkey. This area is where the surname was most concentrated until later immigration to other parts of the Ottoman Empire, such as modern Tunisia and Rhodes. The Ottoman Empire collapsed following World War I, with Turkey becoming its successor state, and after World War II and the establishment of the State of Israel, almost all the established Sephardic communities of the former Ottoman Empire moved to Israel, France and the United States.