Between Empire and Nation-State
governor’s building. The Feyz-i Sıbyân was located one block southeast;
the Feyziye built during Mehmet Cavid’s time as director of school was
one block northeast, and the dorm and girls’ school were barely two
blocks southeast, between the Feyz-i Sıbyân and Şemsi Efendi schools.
The proximity of Dönme schools to the seat of the governor was symbolic
of the heavy proportion of Dönme in government service in the city. As
noted in the provincial yearbook, many graduates of these schools served
in the administration of education in the province.^33 Ahmet Kapancı
served as president of the Municipal Council. In 1908 , Namık Kapancı,
son of Meh met Kapancı, was elected member of the municipal council.^34
At the end of February 1912 , following municipal elections, and just be-
fore the end of Ottoman rule in the city, the governor appointed Hamdi
Bey’s son Osman Said, a municipal councilor, as the city’s new mayor.
The Dönme Role in the Constitutional Revolution of 1908
The Dönme took on more importance when students and educators
at Dönme schools, the writers and audience of Dönme literary journals,
those who endowed Dönme buildings, and civil servants who shared in
Dönme visions of the new Ottoman society turned from local to larger
concerns and entered imperial politics with the aim of promoting wide-
scale reform and progress. At a time when both local municipal and cen-
tral administrative power were increasing, it is not surprising that what
happened locally, such as in Salonika, mattered empirewide. Writing in
Gonca-i Edeb, Fazlı Necip sent a veiled message to the sultan: “let us carry
out justice, let us be free of oppression and we shall always be happy and
fortunate.”^35 Salonika was a site of great political fermentation, because it
was the cradle of the Young Turk revolutionary movement and the center
of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and socialist organiza-
tions. It had the highest concentration of factory labor, particularly in the
tobacco industry, in the empire, its Workers’ Solidarity Federation, headed
by a Bulgarian Jew, Avram Benaroya, was considered by the Second In-
ternational to be the spearhead of the proletarian struggle in the East. It
was a center of Masonic activity.^36 Salonika was one of the Ottoman cities
best supplied with schools, including a Law Faculty, and army headquar-
ters, both of which were open to new currents of thought. Professionals
and civil servants who shared a progressive outlook, especially employees
of the Post and Telegraph Department (such as Talat Pasha) and members