Istanbul
was Hasan Sabri of the Duhani Tobacco Company.^40 The 1933 board
members continued the trend and added the banker Namık Kapancı
(formerly mainly a money changer in Salonika); Faiz Kapancı, a mer-
chant and Salonikan banker (and sales representative while in Salonika),
who had served on the board of Dönme schools in his former domicile;
the banker İsmail Kapancı; and Dr. Ziya Osman.^41 İbrahim Telci and
Mecdi Dervish would also serve an important function at the school.
The Kapancı had arrived, and they continued to play a leading role in
the school, as they had in Salonika.
An article by Mecdi Dervish in 1934 on Şisli Terakki High School pub-
licized its efforts to modernize and discussed the close connection be-
tween the Dönme community and the school at length, emphasizing the
need for families and schools to work together. If they were not united,
associations must be established to link families and schools, parents and
teachers. “If families ruin the good habits taught at school, then what do
the efforts and hard work of the teachers accomplish? That is why these
associations are needed,” the writer explained. Although family-school,
parent-teacher, and school oversight boards were almost completely un-
known in Turkey, “we have had these associations for a very long time.”
The best proof of this was the fact that the school was celebrating its
fifty-fifth anniversary. Fifty-five years ago, “this institution saved our little
children from the stick and bastinado of the fanatics who ran neighbor-
hood schools. In order to provide them with a school suitable for the age
they established the Terakki.” The article is illustrated with a photo of a
thirtyish Mustafa Fazıl, identified as a lawyer and one of the founders of
the Salonika Terakki school. He wears a fez, symbolizing the Ottoman
past, a past the school was not ashamed to claim.^42
The Terakki school did indeed continue to be a family affair. It was
“our school, our family school. Students were from our family, Saloni-
kans, Jews,” a descendant of the Salonikan tobacco merchant Hasan Akif
told me in an interview. Since Hasan Akif had been one of the founding
board members, members of his family continued to govern, teach in, or
be educated in the school, first in Ottoman Salonika and then in Istanbul
under the Turkish Republic. His son and daughter taught at the school,
and his granddaughter and great-granddaughter were also students, the
latter attending what had by then been renamed Şişli Terakki.^43 In Istan-
bul, Akif Fuat, the grandson of Hasan Akif, became a board member of
the school in the 1940 s.^44