Between Empire and Nation-State
1909 and 1912 , and again in 1917 – 18. Although influential, Mehmet Cavid
was overshadowed by his fellow Salonikans Talat Pasha and Enver Pasha,
who were pro-war. Mehmet Cavid’s subsequent fall from grace in the
early Republic has made his role both in the administration of Dönme
schools and the Constitutional Revolution and World War I era particu-
larly sensitive.
It is conventional for those writing today about Mehmet Cavid and
the revolution to put a Turkish republican spin on the era. Mert Sandalcı
writes that his grandfather, who was Mehmet Cavid’s student, shared his
anti-Abdülhamid and pro-freedom, liberal, and democratic thoughts
with students.^102 Ahmet Emin Yalman and Sabiha Sertel, as well-known
journalists in the Turkish Republic, did much to propagate the idea of
Dönme contributions to the construction of the Turkish nation-state. In
her biography of her mother, Yıldız Sertel emphasizes, not only the devout
patriotism of the Dönme, as Yalman does in his autobiography, but also
their fiery revolutionary conviction, both in 1908 and in 1923. Like Yal-
man, she also misleadingly narrates history through the Kemalist prism of
the so-called struggle between the proponents of progress, who believed
in the equality of men and women and in western European law, and
the forces of reaction, who promoted the veiling of women and Shari‘a
( Islamic law), tracing a straight line from the 1908 revolution to secu-
larism, Turkish nationalism, and the republic. She ignores the fact that
Dönme progressiveness, religiosity, and worldliness were interrelated.
Elsewhere in their writings, however, Yalman and Sertel let slip com-
ments that today are avoided by writers who have a favorable view of
the Dönme. When Sabiha Sertel greeted her older brother Celal Dervish
when the revolution started, she said: “It means you are also now a CUP
supporter.” “What do you think?” he replied. “We were raised as revolu-
tionary youth in Salonika. We also became Masons.”^103 “The prosperous,
foreign Free Masonic Lodges afforded convenient opportunities for meet-
ing” for secret organizations in Salonika, Ahmet Emin Yalman notes.^104
The “first spark of revolution” was ignited in him in the 1890 s, when he
was a student at the Terakki school.^105 He subsequently became a member
of the CUP.^106
The prominent role of Dönme in the revolutionary era made a major
impression on the majority, the Muslims, which ushered in an era of racial
and religious vilification of the Dönme, beginning in earnest immediately
after the revolution.^107 Seeing a clump of “secret Jews” at the top, they as-