Dönmeh

Etymology

The Turkish word dönme is from the verbal root dön- that means 'to turn', i.e., "to convert", but in a pejorative sense. They are also called Selânikli "person from Thessaloniki" or avdetî "religious convert" (Arabic: عودة‎‎ ‘awdah 'return'). Members of the group refer to themselves simply as "the Believers" in Hebrew (Hebrew: המאמינים‎‎ ha-Ma'aminim), or "sazanikos," Turkish for "carp" in honor of the changing outward nature of the fish. An alternate explanation of this self-nomenclature is the prophecy that Sabbatai Zevi would deliver the Jews under the sign of the fish.

History

Despite their conversion to Islam, the Sabbateans secretly remained close to Judaism and continued to practice Jewish rituals covertly. They recognized Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) as the Jewish Messiah, observed certain commandments with similarities to those in Judaism, and prayed in Hebrew and later in Ladino. They also observed rituals celebrating important events in Zevi's life and interpreted Zevi's conversion in a Kabbalistic way.

There are several branches of the Dönmeh group. The first is the İzmirli, formed in İzmir, Turkey (Smyrna). This was the original sect, from which two others eventually split. The first schism created the sect of the Jakubi, founded by Jacob Querido (ca. 1650–1690), the brother of Zevi's last wife. Querido claimed to be Zevi's reincarnation and a messiah in his own right. The second split from the İzmirli was the result of claims that Berechiah Russo, known in Turkish as Osman Baba, was truly the next reincarnation of Zevi's soul. These allegations gained following and gave rise to the Karakashi (Turkish), or Konioso (Ladino), branch, the most numerous and strictest branch of the Dönmeh. Missionaries from the Karakashi were active in Poland in the first part of the 18th century and taught Jacob Frank (1726–1791), the alleged heir of Russo's soul. Frank went on to create the Frankist sect, another non-Dönmeh Sabbatean group in Eastern Europe. Yet another group, the Lechli, of Polish descent, lived in exile in Salonika (modern Thessaloniki, Greece) and Constantinople.

Several leading members of the Young Turk movement, a group of modernist revolutionaries who brought down the Ottoman Empire, were dönmeh. At the time of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, some among the Salonika Dönmeh tried to be recognized as non-Muslims to avoid being forced to leave the city. After the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1922–1923, the Dönmeh strongly supported the Republican, pro-Western reforms of Atatürk that tried to restrict the power of the religious establishment and to modernize society. In particular, the Dönmeh were instrumental in establishing trade, industry, and culture in the emerging Republic of Turkey, which is partially due to the prominence of Rumeli immigrants in general, and of Salonika in particular, in the early Republic years.

An interesting case is the one of Ilgaz Zorlu, a Dönmeh publisher who founded Zvi Publishers in 2000 and sought recognition as a Jew, but a Beth Din refused to recognize his Jewishness without a full conversion. He claimed to have converted in Israel and then filed a lawsuit for changing his religion from Islam to Judaism in his registry records and identification. The court voted in his favor.

Işık University, which is the part of the Feyziye Schools Foundation (Turkish: Feyziye Mektepleri Vakfı, FMV), and Terakkî schools were founded by the Dönmeh community in Thessaloniki in the last quarter of the 19th century and continued their activities in Istanbul after Greeks captured the city on 9 November 1912.

There is a community of Dönmehs living in Yeniköy district of İstanbul.

The independent scholar Rifat Bali defines the term "dönme" as follows:

"The term Donme is a Turkish gerund meaning ‘to turn, revolve or return' and, by extension, “to betray” (i.e., ‘go back on’) and ‘to convert’ to another religion. It has come in popular parlance to refer to religious converts in general, and, more specifically, to the seventeenth century followers of the Jewish false messiah Sabbatai Sevi and their descendants, who outwardly converted to Islam but retained their secretive religious practices over the next several centuries, maintaining close communal and blood ties and practicing strict endogamy. While the great majority of the community’s members abandoned their practices during the first quarter century, their past identity has continued to haunt them within Turkish society, and the term Dönme itself remains one of opprobrium."

Ideology

The Dönmeh ideology of the 17th century revolved primarily around the Eighteen Precepts, an abridged version of the Ten Commandments in which the admonition against adultery is explained as more of a precautionary measure than a ban, likely included to explain the antinomian sexual activities of the Sabbateans. The additional commandments are concerned with defining the kinds of interactions that may occur between the Dönmeh and the Jewish and Muslim communities. The most basic of these laws of interaction was to avoid marriage with either Jews or Muslims and to prefer relations within the sect to those outside of it. In spite of this, they maintained ties with Sabbateans who had not converted and even with Jewish rabbis, who secretly settled disputes within the Dönmeh concerning Jewish law.

As far as ritual was concerned, the Dönmeh followed both Jewish and Muslim traditions, shifting between one and the other as necessary for integration into Ottoman society. Outwardly Muslims and secretly Jewish Sabbateans, the Dönmeh observed traditional Muslim holidays like Ramadan but also kept the Jewish Sabbath, Brit milah and major holidays. Much of Dönmeh ritual is a combination of various elements of Kabbalah, Sabbateanism, Jewish traditional law, and Sufism.

Dönmeh liturgy evolved as the sect grew and spread. At first, much of the Dönmeh literature was written in Hebrew. Later, as the group developed, Ladino replaced Hebrew as the prominent language and became not only the vernacular language, but also the liturgical language. Though the Dönmeh had branched into several sects, all of them held the view that Zevi was the divine messiah and that he had revealed the true "spiritual Torah" which was superior to the practical earthly Torah. The Dönmeh created and celebrated holidays pertaining to various points in Zevi's life and their own history of conversion. Based at least partially in the Kabbalistic understanding of divinity, the Dönmeh believed that there was a three-way connection of the emanations of the divine, which engendered much conflict with Muslim and Jewish communities alike. The most notable source of opposition from other contemporary religions was the common practice of exchanging wives between members of the Dönmeh.

The hierarchy of the Dönmeh was based in branch divisions. The Ismirli lay at the top of the hierarchy, composed of merchant classes and intelligentsia. Artisans tended to be mostly Karakashi while lower classes were mostly Jakubi. Each branch had its own prayer community, organized into a "Kahal," or congregation (Hebrew). An extensive internal economic network provided support for lower class Dönmeh in spite of ideological differences between branches.

Mehmet Karakaşzade Rüştü

In 1924, Mehmet Karakaşzade Rüştü, a Karakash Dönmeh, made allegations about Dönmehs, branches and wife-swapping rituals to Vakit newspaper. He also accused Donmehs of lacking patriotism and not having been assimilated. Discussions spread into other newspapers including the ones owned by Dönmeh groups. Ahmet Emin Yalman, in the newspaper (Vatan) he owned, accepted the existence of such groups, but claimed that those groups were no longer following their traditions. Then Karakaşzade Rüştü petitioned the Grand National Assembly of Turkey to request the abolition of some Dönmehs' ongoing immigration from Macedonia by population exchange.