Religious and Moral Education board, windows, and doors. Only twenty students—the children of police
and bureaucrats—remained at the school after that. Şemsi Efendi opened
a new school in his own home, but it was also attacked. This time he saved
himself by hiding. Although they didn’t touch his home, they again de-
stroyed his blackboard, symbol of infidelity. Years later, Şemsi Efendi told
Galip Pasha how they had caught him, beaten him, and threatened him at
knifepoint, ordering him to leave Salonika or stop teaching. But he paid
no heed and taught students at their homes at night.^17
Şemsi Efendi’s innovation was based on new pedagogical methods,
such as using Ottoman texts with vowels to make learning to read easier.^18
His school became a model for others, notably, the Terakki and Feyziye
schools, founded by Dönme inspired by his example.^19
The Kapancı Terakki and Karakaş Feyziye Schools
Galip Pasha (Pasiner) and Atatürk use the example of Şemsi Efendi to
illustrate the turn from old ways to the new. This idea was reflected in
the name of the next Dönme school to be founded. In 1879 , the founders
of the first new Dönme school after Şemsi Efendi’s school opted to use
the term terakki (progress, renewal) in naming it, expressing their belief
in the Enlightenment concept that humans could influence the process
of natural human progression and improvement. In accordance with this
positivist view, largely influenced by the work of August Comte, the only
way to progress was through a solid education in the arts and sciences.
Education, seen as the basic means of societal improvement, thus became
the most important field of reform and experimentation in the late Otto-
man period.^20
Leading Kapancı Dönme financiers, who had connections especially
in western Europe (France and Belgium), including Mehmet, Yusuf,
and Ahmet Kapancı and Duhani Hasan Akif, funded the construction
of a school that shows how the Dönme adopted a modern view equat-
ing religion with morals and using education to effect social and cultural
change. The sixteen Kapancı Dönme who made up the committee that
established the Terraki school included leading members of the business
and professional classes and civil service: textile and tobacco merchants,
directors of tobacco factories, lawyers, teachers, bankers, and Abdi Bey,
Ottoman consul in Iran.^21 Among the members of the first Terakki school
board were Ahmet Kapancı (chairman), Consul Abdi Efendi, tobacco