42 · Julia Phillips Cohen
Jewish population appeared to have run amok. This development posed
a challenge for the leading elites of Izmir’s Jewish community, who had
until then glibly reported upon the spectacular shows of patriotism being
performed by Jews throughout the war. Perhaps only quite by chance,
this moment arrived just a few days after the disturbance in Salonica.
The first notices of the troubling episode in Izmir came not from the
local Jewish press but rather from the pages of Ottoman journals. A rep-
resentative of the Alliance based in Istanbul noted the occurrence in his
reports back to Paris as well, although he referred to Ottoman papers as
his source. The story sounded familiar enough when it began: it told of
exuberant young Jewish men, caught up in a wave of patriotism, pre-
senting themselves as volunteers in the imperial army. But its predict-
ability stopped there. The Jewish leaders of Izmir suddenly confronted
the unforeseen and—for them—clearly negative consequences of their
community’s sometimes overly exuberant patriotism. As Jewish youths
across the empire presented themselves as volunteers for military ser-
vice, a large group of young Jewish men from Izmir reportedly came for-
ward with a new interpretation of this request: in addition to proclaiming
their desire to serve in the ranks of the Ottoman military, they also made
it known to local officials that they intended to convert to Islam.
The numbers of those who actually underwent this process vary ac-
cording to the source, yet by all counts, the conversions took place over
the space of a couple of days. The largest group was announced by the
Ottoman-language paper Sabah, which claimed that some sixty-five Jews
had converted to Islam while voluntarily enlisting in the army in a show
of total dedication to their empire.^48 The same paper soon cited another
nineteen youths who had requested and undergone the same treatment.^49
By 12 May, it noted, thirteen more were taken into the army with similar
requests and preparations made for their conversion to Islam.^50
Not surprisingly, this news, which showed up in private Jewish sources
such as the correspondence of the Alliance, did not find its way so eas-
ily to the Jewish press. Leaders within the community were no doubt
taken aback by this chain of events. While conversions were known and
in fact somewhat routine occurrences within the Jewish community, they
usually occurred on a smaller scale and for seemingly more personal rea-
sons, primarily economic ones.^51 The reality of any sort of conversion en
masse, then, was so out of the ordinary as to lead to suspicions that foul
play might have been involved or perhaps large-scale disaffection with