§ 2 Religious and Moral Education
Schools and Their Effects
The voluminous writings of Ahmet Emin Yalman, a member of the
Yakubi Dönme sect born and raised in Ottoman Salonika, provide great
insight into the changing circumstances of Dönme life. In his Turkish-
language autobiography, Yalman discusses the pivotal role that education
at Dönme schools played in transforming the city in the late Ottoman
era. The founder of the Turkish Republic and its first president, Mustafa
Kemal, known as Atatürk after 1934 , attended the exclusive school of
the Dönme educator Şemsi Efendi in 1886 – 87 (not the Terakki school
or the Feyziye school, as is popularly believed in Turkey). Yalman tells
of an interview he had with Atatürk at Çankaya Kiosk, the latter’s office
and residence in Ankara, in the winter of 1922 :
§ The horse tram stops in front of the garden home in Çankaya, which
has a view of countless minarets, the city of Ankara, overlooked by the
ruins of the ancient citadel, and beyond, a sunny, calm, wide plain.^1 The
kiosk is a very simple building. Once inside, Yalman passes along a wide,
long hall, with a tiled fountain in the middle. From the hall, he enters
Atatürk’s office. It is filled with books and gifts that have been given to
him, among them the famous sword of the North African Sufi leader
and warrior Sheikh Sanusi in recognition of Atatürk’s help organizing
Libyan resistance against invading Italians just before World War I, other
weapons presented to him, an ode in ornamental gilded Arabic script,
books in French, and two Qur’ans given by Sheikh Sanusi, which sit
on a small table. The eye fills with all the gifts on the desk that foreign
admirers have sent Atatürk.