“When your whole identity is secret, you leave the door open for this kind of subversion.”Still, for this story, at least, Osman insisted on keeping his identity secret. Atatürk came to prominence for his role in securing the Ottoman Turkish victory at the Battle of Gallipoli (1915) during World War I. Atatürk’s hometown was in fact Salonika, and he went to a Dönme school, leading many conspiracy theorists to erroneously conclude that he himself was Dönme.“Atatürk and our families had good ties,” Cem says.
Journal of World History. Many Dönmeh, along with traditional Jews, became powerful political and business leaders in Salonica. Even then, his legions of adherents only seemed to grow. He plays music on YouTube, calling himself a ‘Dönme DJ.’They chat for hours about Dönme history, the complex beliefs of the three sects, which traditionally don’t intermarry, and most of all, about discrimination against their communities. Atatürk’s hometown was in fact Salonika, and he went to a Dönme school, leading many conspiracy theorists to erroneously conclude that he himself was Dönme.
The authoritarian AKP has established a new model of Turkish society – ‘New Turkey’ – with a restrictive national ideal based on being a publicly pious Sunni Muslim.“All of this previous oppression couldn’t create as much distress as the election of the AK Party,” Osman says, referring to Erdogan’s factional base.The Islamist-rooted AKP has pushed Sunni Islam ever closer into public life in Turkey. This was especially true in what became the Dönme heartland, Salonika, in what was then Ottoman-ruled Greece. Trying to decipher the secret meaning is what mysticism is about,” he says, such as reinterpreting passages from the Torah and finding new symbolic meanings.The Dönme tradition of furtiveness comes not only from an effort to escape discrimination, but also for religious reasons. An older woman’s face, split in half and incised with a spider web of cracks, gapes up at him. Those outside this dual construct were often looked upon with hostility and suspicion, and seen as potentially disloyal.“Banished from Greece because they were Muslim, the Dönme were greeted in Turkey as if they were Jews,” explained historian Marc David Baer of the London School of Economics, in his 2010 book, “The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks.” “They were depicted as disloyal, sponging parasites who hoarded their wealth and did not sacrifice any part of their fortune for the sake of the nation.”In response, the Dönme assumed a very low profile, and in due time the pressure to assimilate led to an almost complete loss of culture among the group’s members.“After the establishment of the republic, any kind of minority was suspected, because they had two centuries of war and rebellion before that,” explained Kösemen, who published a book about Dönme graves.Still, Turkey today continues to host a centuries-old, mostly Sephardic Jewish population of some 17,000 that has survived over many generations by adopting a low-key communal profile. Each branch had its own prayer community, organized into a "Kahal," or congregation (Hebrew).The Dönmeh’s history of Sabbatean theological and ritual secrecy grounded in Jewish tradition, coupled with public observance of Islam, make accusations of secret Jewish control convenient, according to Baer.Additionally, the crypto-Jewish conspiracy claim has been used throughout modern Turkish history by rightists and Islamists to undermine the legitimacy of incumbent political leadership, and, today, by leftists and secularists seeking to undermine the political legitimacy of Erdogan and the origins of Islamism more broadly. November 1881 in Istanbul; † 4. The secrecy also makes the religion more special and exclusive.However, Osman is open to speaking about his faith in the hopes of ending common misconceptions.“The more you hide and deny things, the more people start to make up nonsense about you, your community and your belief,” he says.
For example, the country’s highest selling book of 2007 falsely “accused” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of being Dönme. Although the Dönme may be Turkey’s ultimate outsiders, about half the country doesn’t fit into the AKP’s New Turkey.“For them [] we’re not human. Weiker, Walter F. (1992). In 1922 Turkey defeated the invading Greeks, who fled in …
“He kind of looked favorably on us.” But both Osman and Cem insist that the Dönme have never felt more uncomfortable than they do under the country’s current rulers. Most of Zevi’s followers abandoned him, but about 300 families, believing his actions to be divinely ordained, converted with him.
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