Times.am, Armenia
Feb 13 2011
Some facts on the origins of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
By Times.am at 13 February, 2011, 11:46 pm
By Ara Papyan
Head of the Modus Vivendi Centre
Information on Mustafa Kemal as a donmeh have always existed. Early
publications about Kemal always make mention of it. For example, the
very first serious work on the First World War – the landmark work
History of the War by the renowned British daily The Times, published
in 22 parts during 1915-1922 – did not circumvent that fact. It states
in particular: `Mustafa Kemal, reported by some to be of Salonika
Jewish descent, only joined the Nationalist movement openly in June,
1919′. Another well-known Western publication, the American Literary
Digest, describes Mustafa Kemal in 1922 as `[a] Spanish Jew by
ancestry, an orthodox Moslem by birth and breeding’.
The aforementioned do not reveal anything essentially new, but they
merely give an indication of the numerous such statements made in the
press at the time on Mustafa Kemal’s dönmeh origins. Let us add one or
two more.
The Associated Press news agency, citing the Grand Vizier of Turkey,
mentions in an item of the 3rd of July, 1920: `Mustafa Kemal, (the
Turkish nationalist leader) whom the great vizier presents as a Jew,
was born a Turk and his parents were from Saloniki and were Deonmes,
that is converts, as were the parents of Talat and Djavid’.
One more informed source – a high-ranking Ottoman officer (pasha), and
later author Achmed Abdullah, and also well-known businessman Leo
Anavi (both Turkish spies in the British army, having met with Kemal
on numerous occasions and very strong supporters of his) write that
Kemal had Spanish-Jewish ancestry and his origins, as they say, was
`not even of Osmanli blood’. This fact was so widespread in the 1920s
that no-one thought of questioning it. It is not without reason that
one of the greatest historians of the twentieth century, Arnold
Toynbee, likewise believed Mustafa Kemal to have dönmeh origins. The
donmeh roots of Mustafa Kemal are also to be found in the works of
such an informed figure when it comes to crypto-Jews as Joachim Prinze
(1902-1988), who was president of the American Jewish Congress from
1958 to 1966. He writes: `Among the leaders of the revolution which
resulted in a more modern government in Turkey were Djavid Bey and
Mustafa Kemal. Both were ardent doenmehs.
Djavid Bey became minister of finance; Mustafa Kemal became the leader
of the new regime and had adopted the name of Ataturk. His opponents
tried to use his doenmeh background to unseat him, but without
success. Too many of the Young Turks in the newly formed revolutionary
Cabinet prayed to Allah, but had as their real prophet Shabtai Zvi,
the Messiah of Smyrna’.
That Mustafa Kemal was of Jewish descent was a widespread belief among
the people of Turkey as well. Jews of Salonika (Thessaloniki) always
held to the opinion that Mustafa Kemal was a dönmeh. The Jews think so
to this day. An entry on Mustafa Kemal can be found on the Jewish
Virtual Library online, a website which lists information on
celebrated Jewish figures or those of Jewish background.
The Turkish public had and continues to have this same opinion. An
interesting report from 1933 of the US Embassy in Ankara has been
preserved. A survey concluded that a majority of those asked believed
that the cause of the natural disasters punishing the country had been
its leader’s Jewish roots. One in particular said, `It is that Jew
(meaning the President) who is pushing us into the abyss’. It is
evident that such talk went so far in Turkey that the authorities
passed a `Law on Crimes Committed Against Atatürk’ (#5816, 31 July,
1951) to punish as a crime any public insult or dishonour on the
memory of Ataturk.
According to the law, such a `crime’ would be punishable by one to
three years imprisonment, up to five years in some cases. Let us
recall that such racist attitudes prevail in Turkey to this day;
Armenians and Jews are considered to be second-class beings. People
are even punished in that country for calling anyone an Armenian or a
Jew, as that is considered to be an insult.
It can be concluded from the above that it has always been well-known
that the Father of the Turks – Atatürk – was not a Turk, even though
such information has always been glossed over. Now let us see what
basis there is in considering Mustafa Kemal to be a dönmeh. First the
arguments, that is, indirect facts, which indicate the probability of
Mustafa Kemal’s dönmeh background.
Scholars have firstly pointed out the fact that Mustafa was born and
raised in a city, Salonika, the majority of the population of which
was Jewish in the mid-nineteenth century. Actually, Salonika was the
only city in the world at the time (until Tel-Aviv was founded in
1909) with a majority Jewish population. If we add to the city’s Jews
the donmeh population, who were traditionally counted among the
Muslims, then the Jews and converted Jews (the dönmeh) would make up
an absolute majority of the population. This is why Salonika was
called the Jerusalem of the Balkans then.
The British Ambassador in Constantinople, Sir Gerard Lowther
(1858-1916), shares the information in his communiqué to the Foreign
Office of the 29th of May, 1910, that Salonika has a `population of
about 140,000, of whom 80,000 are Jews, and 20,000 of the sect of
Sabatai Levi or Crypto-Jews, who externally profess Islam’. Greeks,
Bulgarians, and Vlachs (Romanians) were also prominent communities in
the city. There were at least 13,000 Christian. There were very few
Armenians, only about 45 individuals. That is, in the time when
Mustafa was born, only one out of seven of the inhabitants of Salonika
was Muslim (and not just Turkish), while the Jews or the dönmeh
comprised three-fourths of the population. The Turks, as a Turkish
politician who lived in Salonika at the time said, were not many,
simply `more than a few’.
It is also very significant to note that Mustafa’s family lived in a
non-Muslim district of Salonika: `Mustafa Kemal lived [during his
childhood in Salonika] in a quarter in which [non-Muslim] minorities
lived’.
Considering the community-based millet system of the Ottoman Empire,
where each member of a community would live alongside his
co-religionists and fellow community members, then this fact certainly
becomes very important indeed.
The next fact to which we shall turn also has to do with the Ottoman
community system. Each community of the Empire had its own schools and
other educational establishments, maintained by the community’s means.
The sole exception was the dominant Turkish element, for which there
were state-sponsored schools. It is a well-known fact that Mustafa was
first briefly sent to the Turkish Hafiz Mehmet school, and then to the
Shemsi Effendi (or Chemsi Effendi) school.
The Shemsi Effendi (the real name being `Shimon Zwi’) school was one
of the schools of Salonika’s dönmeh community. In Ottoman society, the
schools were established not just according to community, but also to
sub-communal divisions. As the dönmehs of Salonika were divided into
three groups – Yakubi, Karakash, Kapanchi – according to the question
of who would succeed Sabata, each had its own school: the Fryz-i Ati
for the Yakubi, the Feyziye for the Karakash (established in 1883-84),
and the Yadigar-i Terakki for the Kapanchi (established in 1879). As
we know for sure that Mustafa Kemal attended the Feyziye school, about
which he himself spoke in a 1922 interview, then we can likely surmise
that he was a Karakash dönmeh. Also, Mehmed Djavid Bey (Mehmet Cavit
Bey) was a Karakash as well; he was the principal of the Feyziye
school until he became the Finance Minister of the Ottoman Empire in
1908.
It is very unlikely that Mustafa (later Kemal, and then, Ataturk)
would have attended a donmeh school as a Turk. Ottoman society, as has
already been mentioned, was structured on its communities and the
distinctions among them were strictly maintained. Thus, the families
of each community would send their children to their community’s
schools alone.
For example, although among the hundreds of Armenian schools of the
Ottoman Empire there must have been at least a few of high renown, we
do not have an example of even a single child of a Turkish family to
have attended any one. As some would try to demonstrate nowadays, even
if we admit to how progressive Mustafa’s father Ali Riza may have
been, wishing for a European education for his child – an assumption
for which we have no basis – then consider that Salonika had more
prominent French and Italian schools at the time.
It must be emphasised at the same time that the donmeh community was
very self-contained. Aliens could not be a part of that community. The
code of conduct of the donmeh demanded that they not have any
relations with other Muslims. That is, if Mustafa were not donmeh,
then his attendance of a donmeh school would have been unacceptable
both for orthodox Muslims as well as for donmehs.
It must also be borne in mind that the schools of the Ottoman Empire
did not have a single curriculum and that the children would not just
receive a regular education in their community schools, but also be
taught national or religious subjects. It is important to note that in
the Ottoman Empire, as with elsewhere at the time, there were no
secular schools as we would call them today. All schools, no matter
how progressive they may have been, would include elements of
religious education.
The classes would begin, for the most part, with the chief prayers of
the given religion or denomination. As the best scholars of the issue
have stated, `The Semsi Efendi school continued to teach and practice
Donme religious rituals’. The school simultaneously aimed at
establishing relations among the dönmeh: `Unlike other Muslims, the
Donme maintained a belief that Shabtai Tzvi was the messiah, practiced
kabalistic rituals, and recited prayers in Ladino, the language of
Ottoman Jewry’.
Mustafa Kemal’s belief in kabbalistic signs, in the power of the
occult, was maintained throughout his life. According to one account,
a green square cloth was to be found on his desk, with esoteric
markings. The same account indicates that Kemal, an infidel from the
Islamic point of view, believed in the virtue of those signs.
Ultimately, men believe in the things which they have been taught to
believe since their childhood.
Accordingly, we may note that Mustafa Kemal received not just a
general education at the Shemsi Effendi school, but also received
religious upbringing. The education ran so deep that even decades
later he would still recall the prayers he had learnt.
It is not without reason that the tombstone of Shemsi Effendi himself
is marked as `Muallim Semsi Ef.[fendi] Ataturkun hocasi’, that is,
`the teacher of Ataturk’. What is noteworthy as well is that Shemsi
Effendi (Shimon Zwi) is being referred to not just as Ataturk’s
`muallim’, teacher, but his `hoca’, mentor or preceptor, a religious
guide.
Doubtless all of the aforementioned are serious arguments in favour of
Mustafa Kemal being a donmeh. Now let us see if there are records of
direct facts supporting the claim. Strange as though it may seem, some
do indeed exist.
Among such accounts, the most important is, of course, that of the
memoirs of Itamar Ben-Avi, who described a meeting with Mustafa Kemal
in 1911 in the Hotel Kamenitz, as the latter was en route to Libya to
take part in the Italo-Turkish War. Itamar Ben-Avi (1882-1943) was the
son of the Father of Modern Hebrew, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, being the
first child to in modern times to speak Hebrew. He cites the following
from what Mustafa Kemal said: ` `… At home I have a very old Tenakh
printed in Venice, and if I remember correctly my father sent me to a
Karaiti teacher who thought me to read it: a few words have remained
with me, like …’. At that point he paused for a moment and his eyes
[looked as if he was] searching the air.
Then, just as suddenly, he remembered: `Shma’a Israel, Adonai
Eloheinu, Adonai Echad!’ `That’s our greatest prayer, Captain Sir.’
`And also my secret prayer, Cher Monsieur,’ he answered and poured us
both another drink’.
Some, with political implications in mind, have doubted the veracity
of this account. As a main argument, they say that Captain Mustafa
Kemal travelled by sea from Istanbul to Alexandria in Egypt to take
part in the Italo-Turkish War (18 December, 1911 – to 24 October,
1912), and so could not have been in Jerusalem at the time. This is a
distortion of the facts, if not an outright falsification. The facts
undeniably state that Mustafa Kemal took a land route to Libya,
passing through Syria and Palestine.
The following statement comes from the British spy Harold Armstrong,
who was well aware of issues pertaining to the Middle East at the
time: `Except by the long route through Syria and Egypt, Turkey was
cut off from North Africa. The Italians had control of the sea and had
closed the Dardanelles. […] With two friends Mustafa Kemal took the
land route. They traveled across Asia Minor and down by Syria and
Palestine, using the railway where it existed, but doing the rest on
horseback or with carriage’.
It is completely unreasonable to believe that Itamar Ben-Avi would
have made up such a story in his memoirs, especially as the motivation
for it would be unclear. Ben-Avi did not even know in writing his
memoirs whether or not they would even be published. He died in 1943
and his memoirs were not published until 1961; the aforementioned
section remained unnoticed for a very long time.
Mustafa Kemal himself once gave a very interesting answer to an almost
direct question from one of his close friends, Nuri Conker, about his
roots. Kemal replied, `For me as well as some people want to say that
I’m a Jew – because I was born in Salonica. But it must not be
forgotten that Napoleon was an Italian from Corsica, yet he died a
Frenchman and has passed into history as such’.
It is with confidence that one may say that, apart from his origins,
Mustafa Kemal lived and died as a Turk, a real Turk. In the Armenian
sense of the word – a Turk. In that case, a question may arise: what
difference does it make where Mustafa Kemal’s roots lay? For me, none
whatsoever. However, as it is an important point for racist Turkish
society, therefore it is for them that all of these facts have been
put forth on display. Enjoy.
/Times.am/
From: A. Papazian