Between Empire and Nation-State
in 1895 , and exiled to Salonika. There he got to know Dönme, who helped
him in the political cause, and he became a member of the executive com-
mittee of the CUP’s first branch in the city. He argues that although the
Dönme were accused of being greedy and mainly concerned about com-
merce, in fact, he found that among all those engaged in the struggle, the
Dönme, who ran the best schools in the empire, were the most loyal and
self-sacrificing proponents of liberty and supporters of the overthrow of
despotism (i.e., the sultan), going “well beyond their Muslim brothers in
struggling for freedom.” He mentions how ignorant Muslims in Salonika
cast doubt on their Islamic character and being true Muslims—which he
argues was based on resentment that the Dönme were such a closed group
that they did not intermarry—yet he asserts that they fulfilled all of their
religious obligations like other Muslims, and that there was no reason
to doubt their fidelity to Islam or to the Ottoman state. He concedes,
however, that these descendants of Jewish converts did not marry other
Muslims, “and in this way guarded the boundaries” of the group.^95
Compelled to reinstate the constitution of 1876 in 1908 and to recon-
vene parliament, Abdülhamid II was left formally in power. But less than
a year later, following an anti-revolutionary uprising, in 1909 , he too
ended up in Salonika. He was placed under house arrest in the architect
Poselli’s Allatini Villa.
Mehmet Cavid had had the duty of relaying to Abdülhamid II the
news that a deputation had a communication to make to him. Emmanuel
Carasso was a member of the delegation that conveyed to the sultan the
news of his downfall.^96 That the first was a Dönme and the second a Jew
would become pegs upon which Muslims and then Turks could hang
their fears of Jewish conspiracy.
Foreign diplomats, who considered the Dönme Jews, noted the role
of the Dönme in local politics following the revolution of 1908. “Ahmet
Effendi Kapandji, a wealthy Deunme who has also acted for some time as
President of the Municipality,” is mentioned in a cable from the British
consul general at Salonika to his ambassador in Istanbul in early 1909.^97
A fascinating cable from the French consul in Salonika to the French
foreign minister, Stephen Pichon, in the spring of 1910 discusses the re-
sults of the election of the municipal council that March.^98 Six men were
elected, half of them with Jewish names and half with Muslim names.
Of those with Muslim names, two are identifiably Dönme: Osman Said
(Yakubi), and Kibarogˇlu Abdurrahman (Karakaş). The cable says that the