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The Dnme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries and Secular Turks

Nur Bilge Crissa
a
Bilkent University,

Online publication date: 29 September 2010

To cite this Article Criss, Nur Bilge(2010) 'The Dnme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries and Secular Turks',

Turkish Studies, 11: 2, 294 298

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Book Reviews

However, his attempts are valuable for further discussion on the AKPs identity
and its future fate. Arda Can Kumbaracibasis Turkish Politics and the Rise of the
AKP: Dilemmas of Institutionalization and Leadership Strategy is recommended for
scholars of Turkish politics who are specifically studying the political party system
in Turkey and who think that its radical transformation is an urgent need as it never
has been.

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Cemil Boyraz
Istanbul Bilgi University
2010 Cemil Boyraz
Notes
1. mit Cizre, Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party
(New York: Routledge, 2008).
2. Cihan Tugal, Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism (Palo Alto, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2009).
3. Angelo Panebianco, Political Parties: Organization and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988).
4. Serif Mardin, Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics, Daedalus, Vol. 102, Winter,
pp. 169190.
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The Dnme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries and Secular Turks

Mark David Baer
Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8047-6868-9
The Dnme were/are descendants of a group of Ottoman Jews who converted to Islam
following their messiah, Rabbi Shabbatai Tzevi, in the seventeenth century. They
were accepted as Muslims in the Empire and rose to prominent positions in Salonica
(Thessaloniki) as businessmen, bankers, financiers, educators, and civil servants. The
Dnme were not considered to be Jews by the Rabbinate or the Jewish community,
but some people believed that they secretly practiced Jewish rites of the Kabbalah.
Baer tells their story after arduous research and detective work in many countries.
In the twenty-first century, conspiracy theories abound in Turkey as identity maps
of prominent people are reconstructed or deconstructed, usually to belittle them.
Thus, sensational revelations in books such as Soner Yalns Efendi: Beyaz
Trklerin Byk Srr (Master: The Big Secret of the White Turks), and Efendi 2:
Beyaz Mslmanlarn Byk Srr (Master 2: The Big Secret of the White Muslims)
became bestsellers in 2007. Identity politics, more often than not, verge on racism.
Such books were not an exception. The word white moreover, denotes the
privileged and secular decision-making elites of the late nineteenth century Ottoman
Empire as well as Republican Turkey. Yaln somehow detects Dnme ancestry,
hence crypto-Jewishness, whatever that means, to the elite.

Book Reviews 295

It is not clear whether Turkeys current prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
was inspired by the word white or if Yaln was inspired by the prime minister,
but Erdogan used to refer to the true believers (as opposed to the seculars) as the
black people of the country. Accordingly, they had been shunned and oppressed
throughout Republican history, implicitly until the incumbent Adalet ve Kalknma
Partisi (AKP, the Justice and Development Party) came to power in 2002.
Nevertheless, the Dnme, are in and of themselves a very interesting group to
study. Baers work, further, stands out as a case study bearing witness to Mark
Mazowers succinct book, entitled The Balkans, from the End of Byzantium to the
Present Day.1 This is particularly the case on the subject of religious practices in
the Balkans. Converts to Islam from Catholicism, Judaism, and the mystic sect of
the Bektasi, as well as country folk, practiced a heterodox faith.
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People who faced especial dangers, such as seafarers, often displayed an ecumenical piety. When the Turks preparations for a voyage have been made, noted
Busbecq, they come to the Greeks and ask whether the waters have been blessed,
and if they say that they have not been blessed, they put off their sailing, but if
they are told that the ceremony has been performed, they embark and set sail.2
Sailors could use all the help they could get, from whichever divine quarter.
Mazower wrote:
The blurring of the divide between the three great monotheistic faiths was a
feature of one of the fastest-growing religious movements of the seventeenthand eighteenth century Balkans-the strain of Islamic mysticism known as
Bektashism They also believe[d] in all the saints, both ancient and modern,
because they believe in Good and worship it.3
On converts, Mazower stated, Movements into a new faith was often and accretion
of new beliefs to older one, rather than an act of renunciation and immersion.4
However, converts, such as the Dnme, practiced their old beliefs in private so as
not to look as if they were not sincere Muslims.
Heterodoxy also resonated in naming the newborn. Sunni Muslims in the
Balkans, as well as the Alawi Turcomans, named male children Musa (Moses), I sa
(Jesus), I smail (Ishmael), Zekeriya (Zacharia), or I lyas (Elijah). Girls named
Meryem (Mary, Miriam) cuts through religions to this day.
In the Preface of his book, Baer wrote, they [the Dnme] fervently maintained
a separate ethno-religious identity and firm social boundaries, preserved by detailed
genealogies, endogamous marriage practices, and separate schools and cemeteries.
(p. x). Their religious practice intersected the Jewish Kabbalah and Islamic Sufism.
The Introduction gives the background, settlement in Salonica, conversion to
Islam, and the relationship they maintained with conversos (Jews of the Iberian
peninsula who converted to Catholicism) abroad, for purposes of trade. The Dnme
in the Ottoman Empire was not a homogenous group: they were split into the
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Book Reviews

Karakas, Yakubi, and Kapanc groups, and followed nuanced and different forms of
faith. By the nineteenth century there were only 5,000 Dnmes who chose to distinguish themselves from Jews as well as Muslims and practiced endogamy until the
late nineteenth century (p. 17). Most converts to Islam practiced endogamy, so did
the Levantines5 and Anatolian villagers. So, endogamy and heterodoxy should not
distinguish the Dnme as different. Then, what caused othering?
By the late nineteenth century after the Congress of Berlin (1878), the Ottoman
Empire, having lost its major Balkan provinces, had become more homogenously
Muslim. Islamization campaigns that followed opened the way to closely scrutinize
ethnicity and faith:
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Those found wanting in both categories could be especially targeted for reprobation or, worse, exclusion from the body of the nation. It was only then that
the Dnme began to be considered Jews: not by themselves, not by the Jews,
but by the Muslims. (p. 21)
Part I, Ottoman Salonica, Chapter One, Keeping It within the Family, 1862
1908, examines the beginning of exogenous marriage between Dnme women and
Muslim men, first in the case of Mehmet Zekeriya and Kapanc Dnme Sabiha
(Sertel).6 This is considered a first plausibly because the couple became well-known
as journalists and socialists later on. During and after the Greek occupation of
Salonica in the 1912 Balkan War, many Dnme families, just like other Balkan
Muslims, took refuge in Istanbul. However, they left an indelible mark on Salonica
with their architecture; villas, schools, banks, the Grand Mosque, and cemeteries.7
Chapter Two, Religious and Moral Education, begins with discussing the first
school of the Dnme educator Semsi Efendi (the Illuminator), which Mustafa
Kemal (Atatrk) also attended. Baer makes an important point here. Mustafa
Kemals rejection of the neighborhood Muslim school was not a choice between
religious and secular education as interpreted by standard historiography but preference for a modern/progressive school where morals were taught about how to live
ostensibly as Muslims (p. 46).
Terakki (Progress), Feyziye (Excellence), and schools of commerce established
by the Dnme both in Salonica and Istanbul employed modern pedagogy, teaching
methods, combined science and religion, as well as teaching mastery of Ottoman
and French language/literature. Both the schools and literary publications like
Gonca-i Edeb (the Rosebud of Literature) emphasized religion and progress. Consequently, contrary to a wide-held but erroneous belief, students did not graduate from
these schools as avowed secularists alienated from religion.
Chapter Three, Traveling and Trading, discusses the business profession of the
Dnme. Conversos, the Jews who converted to Catholicism in Spain and Portugal,
had the privilege to trade and/or move to the colonies of their countries. Their trade
expanded to Ottoman lands. Consequently, the New Christians and New Muslims,
sometimes through family ties and sometimes through friendship, established
Europe-wide networks for the purpose of trade.
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Book Reviews 297

Part II, Between Empire and Nation-State, covers expansive Chapter Four,
Making a Revolution, 1908, and Chapter Five, Choosing Between Greek Thessaloniki and Ottoman Istanbul, 1912-1923. Getting involved in local governance as
of the Tanzimat (Reform) period in the Ottoman Empire (18561876), the Dnme
served in municipalities, as mayors, governors of subdivision of a province (skp,
Skopje), and held positions in commercial courts (Salonica and Serres). They also
held many other government positions in the Balkans (p. 87).
Eventually, some Dnme scions such as Dr. Nzm were to play significant roles
as ideologues of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and in the 1908
Constitutional revolution. Fascinating as their stories are as CUP activists, there
were two watersheds after the coup de main of 19088 for the Dnme. The first
instance was a reaction to the dethronement of Sultan Abdlhamid II in 1909.
Instigated by the Islamist Dervis Vahdeti in his publication Volkan (Vulcan), its
writers blamed the act as a conspiracy of Freemasons (CUP), Jews, and cryptoJews, the Dnme.
Secondly, according to Baer, transmission of Russian anti-Semitism to the Ottoman Empire by Turkic/Caucasian migr intelligentsia such as Yusuf Akura, et al.,
overlapped with nascent Turkism and Muslim identity. Hence, identity politics, long
before it became fashionable in the academic circles of the late twentieth century,
gradually became operational in the worldviews of many Ottoman Muslims. Identity politics, as usual, verged on racism and xenophobia. The Dnme were to
encounter the same exclusionary attitude in Greek Salonica as well as Republican
Turkey (p. 107).
Jewish or Dnme ancestry was used as a tool to denigrate revolutionaries by
opponents both in Russia and in Turkey. In the latter case, having been a refugee/
migr from Salonica was proof enough for smearing people by insinuation and
circumstantial evidence. Opponents of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia
knew anyway that the Bolsheviks were Jews as well as atheists.
Twenty thousand of Salonicas Dnme and non-Dnme had found refuge in
Istanbul in 19121913 (p. 119). However, Islamist polemics started to question their
loyalty to the state, and this continued into the Republican era (pp. 125137).
Part III, Istanbul, narrates in Chapter Six, Losing a Homeland, 19231924,
based on the population exchange of 1923 between Greece and Turkey. Because
they [who had remained in Greece] were considered Muslims by the Greek government, the Dnme of Salonica were subject to deportation to Turkey as part of the
population exchange (p. 148). Chapter Seven, Loyal Turks or Fake Muslims?
Debating Dnme in Istanbul, 19231939, discusses the trials and tribulation of a
nation-building process. Baer argues that biological requirements for citizenship
were at the core of the debate over who qualified as a Turkish citizen (p. 163).
However ironic, the debate was started by a Dnme, Karakaszade Mehmet Rst, in
1924 (pp. 15763). Chapter Eight, Reinscribing the Dnme in the Secular NationState, and Chapter Nine, Forgetting to Forget, 19231944, are about the difficulties that Dnme families, members of whom were prominent citizens of Turkey,
faced.
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Book Reviews

In conclusion, although Baer claims that Dnme identity and religion disappeared
after World War II (p. 258), the lineage and heritage endures despite mixed
marriages, perhaps as a tribute to heterodoxy, which is a strong antidote against
dogmatism, nationalistic, racist, and religious alike. If this book is reprinted, and I
hope it will be after it is sold out, the author might rethink whether ongoing discussions or debates over rescuing Jews from Nazi-occupied territories in Europe by
Turkish diplomats has a place in a book about the Dnme. Rescuing former Ottoman/Turkish Jews or not having done enough for them is very conjuncture-bound
and it belongs in the annals of diplomatic historynot in accounts of anti-Semitism
in Turkey. That said The Dnme is rewarding to read because it is enlightening. The
writing flows beautifully and even gets literally poetic, like when the author
describes Dnme cemeteries in Istanbul. The book is highly recommended to professional historians and the general public alike.
Nur Bilge Criss
Bilkent University
2010 Nur Bilge Criss
Notes
1. Mark Mazower, The Balkans, from the End of Byzantium to the Present Day (London: Phoenix Books
[2000], 2001).
2. Ibid., pp. 6465.
3. Ibid., p. 72.
4. Ibid., p.73.
5. Haydar Kazgan, Levanten Dnyasnda Bir Aile ve ocuk, [A Family and Child in the Levantine
World] in Arus Yumul and Fahri Dikkaya (eds.) Avrupal m Levanten mi? [European or Levantine?]
(Istanbul: Baglam Yaynlar, 2006) pp. 5970.
6. See Yldz Sertel, Annem, Sabiha Sertel Kimdi, Neler Yazd? [My Mother, Sabiha Sertel and her
Work] 2nd. Ed. (Istanbul: Yap Kredi Yaynlar, [1994], 1995).
7. For a comprehensive history of Salonica from ancient times until its total Hellenization in the aftermath of World War II, see Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews,
14301950 (New York: A. Knopf, 2005).
8. There is an ongoing debate among historians in Turkey as to whether the 1908 Constitutionalist action
was a revolution or just a movement to have the 1876 Constitution re-instituted. The first Constitution
had been shelved by Sultan Abdlhamid II (r. 18761909) because of the 18771878 Russo-Turkish
war. Hence, the 1908 move may not technically be categorized as a revolution.
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The Museum of Innocence

Orhan Pamuk
Translated by Maureen Freely
New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009
ISBN-10: 0307266761; ISBN-13 978-0307266767
Orhan Pamuks newest novel, The Museum of Innocence, does not read like a novel.
Rather, it reads like a string of beads. Scenes are linked together and chronologically