36. The Young Turks

Committee of Union and Progress 

The Ninth Zionist Congress in December 1909 celebrated the Young Turk revolution as “a miracle.”[1] The Zionist leadership hoped that the influence of the Young Turks within the Ottoman government would demonstrate greater sympathy for Zionist aspirations in Palestine.[2] The immediate reason for which the Zionists were working from within the Young Turk movement, British Ambassador Sir Gerard Lowther (1858 – 1916) explained to Hardinge in 1909, “is the practically exclusive economic capture of Turkey and new enterprises in that country.”[3] Explaining their ultimate goal, he added, they “have entangled the pre-economic-minded Turk in his toils and as Turkey happens to contain the places sacred to Israel, it is but natural that the Jew should strive to maintain a position of exclusive influence and utilize it for the furtherance of his ideals, viz. the ultimate creation of an autonomous Jewish state in Palestine or Babylonia as explained by Israel Zangwill in his article in the ‘Fortnightly Review’ of April.”[4] Zangwill’s article had expressed the hope that Ibrahim Hakki Pasha (1862 – 1918), then Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, “may be trusted to advise the Porte soundly on the subject,” that is, in favor of a Jewish autonomous state in Mesopotamia.[5]

The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), a Masonic political party, also known as the Young Turks—largely comprised of the Dönmeh Jews[6]—carried out a military coup against the crumbling regime of Abdul Hamid II, who they overthrew and ultimately seized power over the empire in 1908. The Young Turks forced the Sultan to restore the liberal constitution of 1876, instituted by the Young Ottomans, thus bringing about the Second Constitutional Era. The significance of the transformation was summarized by Kemal H. Karpat:

 

The most important and undoubtedly the most fateful period in Ottoman history is the Young Turk or Union and Progress era in 1908-18. The final disintegration of the Ottoman empire, the rise of independent states in the Middle East, the intensification of conflicts over Macedonia, the full emergence of Turkish and Arab nationalisms, the start of the Muslim anti-imperialist mobilization through struggle in Libya in 1911, and other events of vital importance in the social and political history of the area occurred during the Young Turk era. It was a historical watershed which marked simultaneously the end of an imperial form of political organization in the Middle East and the beginning of a new political existence in the form of national states.[7]

 

Sultan Abdul Hamid II mentioned in his diary: “Both associations [Young Egypt and Young Turks] worked in the same path to impose constitutions and laws instead of the Sharia and to abrogate the Islamic Khalifate. In this matter Jamaluddin al-Afghani said that the salvation of the government is the Parliamentary regime in the European style.”[8] Among his many subversive activities, Jamal ud-Din al Afghani—who was a friend of Vambery’s student, Ignaz Goldziher—had also been part of the creation of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which was dominated by Bektashis, Bahais and Masons.[9] A report on al-Afghani submitted to Sultan Abdul Hamid II stated:

 

Sheikh Jamal al-Din is one of the elders of the Babi Society and a bandit, and he is a man who is not respected or trusted by any party. And the aforementioned person has relations and secret communications with the Masonic society and Armenian committees and the Young Turks organization.[10]

 

The Young Turks are said to have regarded Afghani as “an important pillar and the perfect spiritual teacher for the CUP.”[11] The CUP was established as a secret society on June 2, 1889, by Ibrahim Temo (1865 – 1945), Mehmed Reshid (1873 – 1919), Abdullah Cevdet (1869 – 1932), and İshak Sükuti (1868 – 1902), all of whom were medical students of the Imperial Military School of Medicine in Constantinople. Among his many subversive activities, Jamal ud-Din al Afghani—who was a friend of Vambery’s student, Ignaz Goldziher—had also been part of the creation of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which was dominated by Bektashis, Bahais and Masons.[12] Afghani used to invite Young Turks to conferences in his man-ion in Istanbul and influenced them deeply. The journal Kanun-i Esasi, first published by the Ulema and later the official organ of the CUP in Cairo, described Afghani as “an important pillar and the perfect spiritual teacher for the CUP.”[13] CUP organs published articles extolling him as an advocate of Islamic reform.[14]

However, although the Sultan and Afghani initially seem to have been favorable terms, eventually the Sultan and the Ottoman government became very suspicious of his political activities. Grand Vizier, Halil Rifat Pasha, who had also declined an offer from Herzl extended to him by Newlinski, Afghani was the mentor of Abdullah an-Nadeem, an Egyptian nationalist banished to Tripoli of Barbary, and maintained a secret correspondence with three other Young Turks, also in Tripoli of Barbary.[15] The Prime Minister Halil Rifat Pasha called for Afghani’s expulsion for the following reasons:

 

While Shaykh Jamalu’d-Din is a leader of the Babi society (Babi Cemiyeti erkamndan) and an agitator (erbdb-i fesad’ dan), he is an unimportant man who is not to be held in esteem and trusted. He has relations and secret correspondence with Freemasons, Armenian committees, and the Young Turk gang. By feigning that he is attached to our Lord [the sultan], although he is a nobody, he slowly expands his society by attracting and seducing certain people who are uninformed of him, his personality and character… Because the Babi sect is originally identical with the Druze sect, Jamalu’d-Din expands his mischief by attracting young Druze students from Syria and Lebanon, and the mischievous and malevolent [Babi] gang... In short, recently also the Egyptian mischief-maker named ‘Abdu’llah Nadim whose expulsion from Istanbul was proposed, changed his old dress and put on the garb of Babism these days and follows the doctrine and school of al-Afghani.[16]

 

As noted by M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, “Another relationship to be considered is that between the Young Turks and the Babis and Bahais, who played an important role in the Persian revolutionary movement.”[17] The Babis had established ties with the Young Ottomans as early as the 1860s. Abdullah Cevdet probably first came into contact with the Bahai religion in around 1902 when he was abroad, but it is possible he encountered it even as early as the 1890s when Babi ideas were discussed among the Young Turk leaders. As a result of Nasser ad-Din Shah’s assassination 1896 by Afghani’s Azali co-conspirator Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, early Young Turk leaders like Temo, Sükuti and Ahmed Riza (1858 – 1930) became interested in Babism.[18] Sükuti had a deep interest in the Bahai philosophy and studied its works.[19] Babi militants were known to have helped distribute the Young Turk journals. Temo revealed in his memoirs that he had received the banned and smuggled newspapers Hayal and Istikbal through Kermani.[20] CUP organs commented: “The vengeance of the Babis, who were oppressed forty-eight years ago, opened a door of rejuvenation and progress in Iran. We do hope that the sighs and wails of the victimized [members] of the CUP will not be in vain.”[21] Temo wrote a eulogy for Kermani, entitled “May Abdul Hamid’s Turn Come Next,” and distributed it through the CUP network.[22]

Abdullah Cevdet, who ultimately converted to the Bahai Faith, considering it an intermediary step between Islam and the ultimate abandonment of religious belief, would go on trial for defense of Bahais in a periodical he founded.[23] Cevdet met and thanked Theodor Herzl for one of his poems published in Neue Freie Presse in 1903. After this acquaintance, he started to help Herzl by translating his letters into Turkish.[24] Herzl reported in his diaries that he met with Cevdet, who had accepted a post as physician to the Ottoman Embassy at Vienna in 1903. In the same year, Herzl also talked with Ahmet Riza, an early CUP member, and other Turks and conferred in Paris with Max Nordau, co-founder of the WZO.[25]

Because of his political activities, Cevdet was arrested several times and had to leave the country. While in exile in Geneva, Paris and Cairo, he wrote critically of the despotic Sultan Abdu Hamid II and his purportedly repressive regime. Cevdet published articles on political, social, economic and literary issues in Ictihâd (Ijtihad), which he founded in 1904 in Geneva, with the permission of the Swiss government.[26] Cevdet used the journal to promote the idea that “Western civilization” was the light the Ottoman Empire must follow: “The West is our teacher; to love it is to love science, progress, material and moral advancement.”[27] Cevdet believed that religion in its present form could not adequality server its social functions, it was necessary to modify it according to a changing society. Taqlid must be abandoned and the “Doors of Ijtihad” reopened.[28]

Among the Young Turks with whom Abdul Baha met were Namik Kemal, Ziya Pasha and Midhat Pasha, who was known to be a Jew who concealed the truth of his religion in order to succeed in assuming important Ottoman states such as the State of Syria.[29] Namik Kemal, who was influential in the formation of the Young Ottomans, was a member of the Masonic lodge Union d’Orient in Istanbul that included Afghani’s associate Malkam Khan.[30] In his letters of the CUP, Abdul Baha thanks them for their “zeal and justice (himmet ve adalet)” in liberating him in 1908 and adds that through the Young Turk Revolution “the radiating light of the morn of liberty illumined the horizons of the country.”[31] Abdul Baha made contact with the leading Young Turk Bursali Mehmet Tahir Bey (1861 – 1925), a member of the Malamatiyya Sufi order and director of the Military School at Salonica, where he taught Captain Mustafa Kemal (c. 1881 – 1938), later known as Atatürk.[32] Many Jews in Salonica claimed that Atatürk was a Dönmeh.[33] Atatürk had founded the underground organization Vatan ve Hürriyet (“Fatherland and Freedom Society”) in Damascus in 1905 and had come to Salonika to open a branch there, to which the Dönmeh Mehmed Cavid (1875 – 1926) became an active member.

 

Veritas and Macedonia Risorta 

The Fatherland and Freedom Society became the Osmanli Hürriyet Cemiyeti (“Ottoman Freedom Society”), co-founded by Tahir Bey and Talaat Pasha (1874 – 1921) in 1906, all of whose members were Freemasons, and which merged with the CUP in 1907.[34] “The role of the Dönmeh in the CUP, like their role in Freemasonry,” explains Marc Baer, author of The Donme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks, was significant.”[35] The CUP, founded in Istanbul, later spread to Paris and Cairo, and then to cities throughout the Ottoman Empire, including Salonica, now Thessaloniki in Greece, in the geographic region of Macedonia. In 1492, when Mehmed the Conquerors’ successor, Beyazid II (1481 – 1512), offered refuge to Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal, many of them settled in Salonica, which became the only Jewish-majority city in Europe. By the 1680s, about 300 families of Sephardic Jews, followers of Shabbetai Zevi, had converted to Islam, becoming Dönmeh, and migrated to Salonica, establishing an active community that thrived for about 250 years.[36] By the turn of the twentieth century, the population of Salonica numbered about 140,000, of whom 80,000 were Sephardic Jews, and 20,000 Sabbateans or Dönmeh.[37]

The leading figures of both of the First and Second Constitutional Eras were organized in Masonic lodges consecutively in Istanbul and then in Salonica, a stronghold of the Dönmeh. Therefore, as Arslan and Enzo note:

 

The Ottoman dignitaries realizing the First Constitutional Era were organized in the Proodos and Envar-i Sarkiye lodges of the French Obedience in Istanbul, and the ones realizing the Second Constitutional Era were organized in the Macedonia Risorta and later also in the Labor et Lux lodges of the Italian Obedience in Salonica.[38]

 

A contemporary account traces the founding of the Young Turks to Cleanthi Scalieri, Grand Master of the Proodos lodge in Istanbul. According to the report, following the reforms implemented under the brief reign of Murad V, with the help of Malkam Khan and other European Masons, it was deemed necessary to teach the basics of their program to a group who would have influence over the population, and to increase the number of their adherents. With that in mind, Scalieri established, under the auspices of the Grand Lodge of France, the Enver-i Sharkiye lodge, which conducted its affairs in Turkish. The lodge became famous due to the influence of its members, which included politicians and high-ranking members of the Ulama. It was from this nucleus, claims the source, that the movement of the Young Turks was born.[39]

Many of the Jews in Salonica acquired Italian citizenship and became Masons affiliated to Italian lodges. A prominent member of a Sephardic Jewish family in Salonica and an official of the Italian B’nai B’rith, Emmanuel Carasso (1862 – 1934), was Grand Master and founder of an Italian Masonic lodge there called Macedonia Risorta (“Macedonia Resurrected”), which was the headquarters of the CUP.[40] The lodge was a revival of a lodge named Macedonia, founded in 1864 in Salonica, one of the firsts Masonic lodges in the Ottoman Empire.[41] Carosso was a leading Mason not just in Salonica but throughout the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed Talaat Bey, joined in 1903.[42] It was Carosso who came up with the idea of making the Masonic lodges available to CUP, of which Carosso chairman from 1908 to 1918.[43] The rites of initiation into the Young Turks were strikingly similar to those of the Freemasons.[44]

A Martinist lodge, Veritas, was established in Salonica in 1904, with a warrant of the Grand Orient of France and one of the Papus’ Martinist Order.[45] Papus’ journal L’Initiation had announced in July 1892, that a representative of the Groupe indépendant d’études ésotériques (“Independent Group of Esoteric Studies”), founded in 1890 by Papus and closely linked to the Martinist Order, would be soon appointed in Istanbul. Likewise, that many circles of correspondents of the group were established in Egypt were seen as a sign of “increasing success of occultism in Egypt.”[46] In two letters dated 1893, Papus asked his spiritual master Maître Philippe for a “psychic intervention” in favor of Sultan Abdu Hamid II. An author of L’Initiation wrote the following text about the Ottoman Empire and its sultan:

 

Mingling the esoteric traditions of Islam and the Western science, the Turkish religious schools have taken an unexpected place in the European intellectualism, especially since the sultan Abdülhamid II, who is broad-mindedness, didn’t hesitate to give the study of philosophy and of the hermetical science the wider place it deserve. The foundation in Turkey of a university that was constituted according to the traditional teachings of esotericism, won’t have a scientifically impact only, but also political”. We wonder here if “esoteric” and “esotericism” in the mind of the writer means Sufism. It should be the case since we know the considerable influence of some Sufi shaykhs on the Ottoman sultans.[47]

 

Members of Veritas were predominantly Dönmeh.[48] Many prominent Dönmeh, observed Marc David Baer, were Freemasons as well as Sufis, belonging to orders like the Bektashis and Mevlevis. Baer lists the journalist Fazli Necip, the future final Ottoman Finance Minister Faik Niizhet, and Osman Adil, the son of Mayor Hamdi Bey, who was a regular contributor to Gonca-i Edeb, who were members of Veritas. 150 members of Veritas in 1908 included 129 Jews and 15 Dönmeh, including one of the founders of the Terakki school, Tevfik Ehat. Veritas also included at least four CUP members, two future Grand Viziers, Ali Riza Pasha and Huseyin Hilmi Pasha becoming members after 1908. One-third of the members of L’Avenir de l’Orient (“The Future of the East”), a lodge of the French Grand Orient in Salonica, were Muslim or Dönmeh.[49]

The British ambassador to Istanbul, Sir Gerard Lowther, in a letter in 1909 to Sir Charles Hardinge, of Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, referred to the CUP as the “Jew Committee of Union and Progress,” repeating the opinion of his chief dragoman G.H. Fitzmaurice (1865 – 1939).[50] Lowther lists as examples Mehmed Cavid, a Dönmeh Jew who became Minister of Finance, and Talaat Pasha.[51] After the CUP succeeded in restoring the constitution and parliament in 1908, Talaat Pasha was elected as a deputy from Edirne to the Chamber of Deputies. When the first Ottoman independent Masonic body, the Ottoman Grand Orient, was founded in 1909, the Grand Master of the Talaat Pasha.[52] Lowther concluded that “The invisible government of Turkey is thus the Grand Orient with Talaat Bey as Grand Master.”[53] On the basis of reliable sources, notes Kemal H. Karpat, we know now that the Masonic lodges and the Jews of Salonica played important roles in shaping the ideology and policies of the CUP.[54] He mentions as examples Emanuel Carasso, head of the Masonic lodge in Salonica and later deputy in Istanbul, and several other Masons such as Primo Levi, Oscar Strauss, and Jacob Schiff, who were close at one time or another to Talaat Pasha and Mehmed Cavid. [55] Primo Levi was appointed consul-general at Salonica by Italian Government. Oscar Strauss was the American Minister in İstanbul from 1887 to 1889 and again from 1898 to 1899.

 

Le Jeune Turc

The significance the Young Turk Revolution was not lost on the Zionists, who saw in the Young Turks an important opportunity to lead to the liberation of Palestine towards the creation of a Jewish state. As explained by Joseph B. Schectman, who worked closely with Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880 – 1940)—the founder of Religious Zionism and the intellectual forefather of the right-wing fanaticism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party—and served as his biographer:

 

This event both impressed and encouraged the Zionist world. It was generally felt that it would be easier to conduct settlement and cultural activities in Palestine under a constitutional government, and it was widely believed that the political activities of Zionism would meet with understanding and sympathy on the part of the victorious Young Turk revolutionaries. Ambitious plans were made for a systematic political enlightenment campaign in Constantinople, and for the Zionization of Turkish Jewry which so far had remained almost completely untouched by Jewish national and Zionist tendencies. The Central Committee of the Russian Zionist Organization took the initiative for creating in Turkey a network of press organs and conducting widespread Zionist propaganda. For this purpose it raised considerable funds and put them at the disposal of the Zionist Inner Actions Committee with headquarters in Cologne; this body was headed by Herzl’s successor, David Wolffsohn.[56]

 

In 1908, the Berlin Executive office of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), sent Ze’ev Jabotinsky to the Ottoman capital Constantinople where he became editor-in-chief of a new pro-Young-Turkish daily newspaper Le Jeune Turc (“Young Turk”) which was founded and financed by Zionist officials like WZO president David Wolffsohn and his representative in Constantinople Victor Jacobson.[57] In 1903, Jabotinsky was elected as a Russian delegate to the Sixth Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. After Theodor Herzl’s death in 1904, he became the leader of the right-wing Zionists. He was educated as a young man in Italy, and later described Mazzini’s ideas as the basis for the Zionist movement. Jabotinsky arrived in Turkey shortly after the Young Turks seized power, to take over the paper. The paper was owned by a member of the Turkish cabinet, but it was funded by the WZO.[58]

Funded by the WZO, Le Jeune Turc was one of several organs of the Zionist press network that had been created in the Ottoman Empire. After the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, Jabotinsky was sent by the Saint Petersburg journal Rassvyet (“The Dawn”) to Istanbul, where he met with several Ottoman ministers and leading figures of the Young Turks, including Mehmed Cavid and Enver Pasha (1881 – 1922), who were looking then to gain international support to their cause.[59] While in Istanbul, Jabotinsky also met the director of the Zionist liaison, Victor Jacobson (1869 – 1935), operating under the aegis of the Anglo-Levantine Banking Co.[60] He then held meetings with the leaders of Jewish communities, including Rabbi Naim Hahum, as well as with Emmanuel Carasso, Nissim Mazliah, and Nissim Russo, all Ottoman Jews and CUP deputies.[61] In an interview published in the Salonican paper L’Epoca, Carasso stated that after a conversation with Jabotinsky and Jacobson, he was “in complete agreement with them with regard to Zionism.”[62] Mazliah and Russo expressed “a keen interest in Zionism.”[63] Wolffsohn asked these statesmen to explain in Ottoman parliament that “Zionism did not have a separatist aspiration.”[64] Mazliah remained close to Talaat Pasha and was also engaged in supplying and in obtaining money for him and the Young Turk operations in Berlin.[65]

The Zionists also gained the support of Rïza Tevfik Bölükbashi (1869 – 1949), a popular member of the CUP at the time, Grand Master of the Ottoman Grand Orient and a famous Bektashi poet.[66] Rïza Tevfik helped introduce modern Western philosophy into Turkey. Rïza Tevfik was also a writer on Sufism, Muslim esotericism. In particular, he attempted to reinterpret Batiniyya and Hurufism in philosophical terms, through, for example, a comparative study of Herbert Spencer’s agnosticism and Henri Bergson’s spiritualism.[67] In a speech at a Jewish club in Istanbul in March 1909, Riza Tevfik would declare that:

 

[A] good Ottoman could be a Zionist… I myself am a Zionist. Zionism is fundamentally nothing more than the expression of the solidarity which characterises the Jewish people. What is the aim of Zionism? A humanitarian one: to find a more friendly fatherland for unfortunate co-religionists, where they can live as free men in the enjoyment of their rights... Palestine is your land more than it is ours.[68]

 

After meeting Jabotinsky, Jacobson “warmly” recommended to Wolffsohn that he be offered a position in Istanbul.[69] In June 1909, there was a meeting in Istanbul of Jabotinsky, Wolffsohn and Nahum Sokolow (1859 – 1936)—the latter two representing the Zionist headquarters in Cologne—with Menachem Ussishkin (1863 –1941), a Russian-born Jew who served as Secretary of the First Zionist Congress, and I.A. Rosov of the Russian Zionist Cultural Committee and, “as a result of their deliberations, a Zionist controlled press network was established.”[70] A significant Zionist press network had already established itself by then in the Ottoman Empire. Connections were developed with two papers in Istanbul, Le Courrier d’Orient (“The Courier of the Orient”) and Tasvir-i Efkâr (“The Description of Opinions”). Both were owned by Ebuzziya Tevfik, who was also an outspoken anti-Semite.[71] An agreement was also reached with another Turkish daily, Iṫtihad (“The Union”), which was linked to Mazliah and Russo and which would take a sympathetic stance towards the Zionist publications, and extend the Zionist connection to the ranks of the CUP.[72]

Jabotinsky was appointed to be in charge of the entire press network.[73] At an August 1909 meeting of the WZO, a committee was created to direct the network. It consisted of Jabotinsky, Jacobson, and Sami Hochberg (1869 – 1917), an ex-professor of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Iran.[74] It was stipulated that any change in the composition of the committee could only take place with the consent of the powerful Zionist Inner Actions Committee headed by the three members of the Executive of the WZO, Wolffsohn, Otto Warburg (1859 – 1938) and Jakobus Kann (1872 – 1944), as well as of the representatives of the Russian Zionist Organization, and of the committee itself.[75] In October, when a disagreement emerged between Ebuzziya Tevfik and Celal Nuri İleri (1881 – 1938), an editor of the Le Courrier d’Orient, the latter left the journal and founded Le Jeune Turc.[76] According to the stipulations of the contract between Celal Nuri, Hochberg and Jacobson, the journal would support the CUP and its policies, as well as support Zionism, whose purported aim was only to create a Jewish cultural center in Palestine, whose establishment which could only benefit the empire as a whole.[77] Its most prominent contributors, such as Ahmet Ağaoğlu (1868 – 1939) and Munis Tekinalp (1883 – 1961), were members or sympathizers of the CUP.[78] Born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Macedonia, Tekinalp went to Salonika to study at the school run by the Alliance Israélite Universelle, later in the Jewish Teachers’ College where he was ordained as a rabbi, though he never practiced.[79]

Ağaoğlu, who would become one of the founders of liberal Kemalism, was a Mason and also an admirer of Afghani, Writing for a French publication, La Nouvelle Revue, in 1883, Ağaoğlu advised the Foreign powers to take a more open-minded view of their own self-interest and assist the reforming efforts of men like the Bab, Afghani or Malkam Khan.[80] Ağaoğlu knew and admired Afghani’s thought. In his autobiography, he claims to have met Afghani while he was a student in Paris and to have entertained him as a guest in his house for several weeks. Ağaoğlu wrote in praise of Afghani in an article Kaspii in 1899, and an anonymous piece on Afghani which appeared in Türk Yurdu in 1914/15 was also probably written by. In his series of articles entitled Türk Âlemi (“The Turkish World”), Ağaoğlu wrote that it was Afghani who got the Islamist movement away from looking at Western pre-eminence and Islamic decline as a primarily moral question.[81]

Under Jabotinsky’s guidance, Le Jeune Turc became one of Istanbul’s leading and most influential dailies. It was often quoted in diplomatic correspondences and in the international press.[82] Jabotinsky’s writings, a friend noted, “very soon became an event in the world of the press in Constantinople; people read and re-read them, quoted them, looked for the possible meaning between the lines, became enthusiastic over their pungency, simplicity and directness.”[83] In reality, Le Jeune Turc was edited by Lucien Sciutto (1868 – 1947), a leader of the Sephardic Jewish community.[84] A weekly in French, L’Aurore, also edited by Sciutto, was similarly established. In addition there was a weekly in Ladino, El Judeo Ha-Yehudi, edited by David El Kanon, and a weekly in Hebrew, Ha-Mevasser. In this fashion, according to Schectman, all of the main languages of the Ottoman Jews would all be covered.[85] L’Aurore, Jabotinsky reported, “soon earned an authoritative position in all circles of the Jewish intelligentsia in Constantinople and Salonica. It is being read by everybody even by adversaries and indifferents…”[86]

During his stay in Turkey, David Ben-Gurion (1886 –1973), eventual first Prime Minister of the State of Israel, met Emmanuel Carasso and Vladimir Jabotinsky. After attending the Third World Congress of Paole Zion in Vienna in 1911, David Ben-Gurion travelled on to Salonica, arriving there together with Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (1884 – 1963), longest-serving President of Israel, and Israel Shochat (1886 – 1962) a founder of and a key figure in Bar-Giora and Hashomer, two of the precursors of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).[87] Ben-Gurion chose Salonica, he later explained, because it was less expensive than Istanbul, and also because it was “a pure Jewish city… the only Jewish city in the world.”[88] In Salonican Ben-Gurion learned Turkish and moved on to Istanbul eight months later, where he studied law at the university. “In this period,” explains Muriel Mirak-Weissbach, “known as his ‘Ottomanization’ phase, Ben-Gurion embraced the idea of becoming a subject of the Ottoman Empire, studying its laws and working his way up into the political structures, including government positions – all in order to pursue his Zionist aims.”[89]

After the First Balkan War, which lasted from October 1912 to May 1913, when the CUP’s financial state was particularly desperate, Victor Jacobson, in September 1912, met with Kamil Pasha, the President of the Council of State and with Gabriel Noradungian (1852 – 1936), the Minister of Foreign affairs. As a result of the meetings, Jacobson reported that he had gained the impression, “that both men believed in the Zionists’ power” in Europe.[90] Sami Hochberg, now the editor of the Jeune Turc, was the intermediary in an attempt by the CUP Government to get the European Zionists to raise capital for it in Europe. Lucien Sciutto, the editor L’Aurore, did not shy away from mentioning in an article on March 17, 1913, that, “World Jewry,” among other things, “by its financiers too,… is a great force of a different kind to be reckoned with…”[91]

 

Coup and Countercoup 

In the wake of the disastrous events, such as the April 1909 Counter-Coup, the 1912 coup, and the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, the Ottoman Empire fell under the domination of a radicalized CUP following the 1913 Raid on the Sublime Porte. Numerous leading members CUP believed that the counterrevolution of April 1909 was incited partially by the British embassy, and particularly by Gerald Fitzmaurice—British consul to Constantinople and dragoman to Sir Gerard Lowther—who had financed as well as agitated popular opinion with his claims about the Jewish and Masonic links and origins of the CUP.[92] The counterrevolution consisted of a general uprising against the CUP within Istanbul, largely led by conservative Muslims opposed to the secularizing influence of the CUP. Eleven days later, the uprising was suppressed and the former government restored when elements of the Ottoman Army sympathetic to the CUP formed an impromptu military force known as the Hareket Ordusu (“Action Army”). Upon entering Istanbul on April 24, Abdul Hamid II, accused by the CUP of complicity in the uprising, was deposed and the Ottoman National Assembly elevated his half-brother, Mehmed V, to the throne. Mahmud Shevket Pasha, the military general who had organized and led the Action Army, became the most influential figure in the restored constitutional system.[93]

In spring 1909, soon after the April 13, Jacobson and his contacts spoke with Ahmet Riza, who had assumed the office of Presidency of the Chamber of Deputies of the Ottoman Parliament. The result of the conversations  was that the CUP declared that it would oppose Jewish immigration into Palestine, but not elsewhere into the Empire. Despite this decision, however, the new Ottoman governor of Jerusalem, Subhi Bey Barakat (1889 – 1939), who had met with the Zionist officials, Victor Jacobson and Isaac Fernandez in December, 1908, before leaving for his post in Palestine, decided in March, 1909, “apparently on his own authority, first, to allow land sales to Ottoman Jews to continue, and second, to dispense with the need for foreign Jews purchasing land to undertake not to settle Jews on it.”[94] However, that despite this official “hardening,” Jewish colonization continued apace in Palestine during the CUP period.[95]

The Ottoman coup d’état of July 1912 was a coup by military memorandum against the CUP by a group of military officers calling themselves the Halaskar Zabitan (“Saviour Officers”), resulting in the resignation of the  pro-CUP Grand Vizier Mehmed Said Pasha (1838 – 1914). Said Pasha turned over the premiership to the non-partisan Great Cabinet of Ahmed Muhtar Pasha (1839 – 1919). A few days after Ahmed Muhtar Pasha took office, the Savior Officers sent a letter of threat to the President of the Chamber of Deputies, CUP member Halil Bey, demanding that the Chamber be dissolved for new elections within 48 hours. thanks to a law he had passed through the Senate, Ahmed Muhtar Pasha was able, with the sultan’s support, to dissolve the Chamber with ease on August 5. After the dissolution of the Chamber, the First Balkan War erupted early in October 1912, catching Ahmed Muhtar Pasha’s administration off-guard. Martial law was declared, and Ahmed Muhtar Pasha resigned as Grand Vizier on October 29 after just four months in the premier’s office.

The First Balkan War lasted from October 1912 to May 1913 and involved actions of the Balkan League, including the Kingdoms of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro, against the Ottoman Empire. The Balkan states’ combined armies overcame the Ottoman armies, achieving rapid success. As a result of the war, the League captured and partitioned almost all of the Ottoman Empire's remaining territories in Europe. Ensuing events also led to the creation of an independent Albania, which dissatisfied the Serbs. Bulgaria, meanwhile, was dissatisfied over the division of the spoils in Macedonia and attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on June 16 1913, which provoked the start of the Second Balkan War. With his resignation due to the First Balkan War, the ministry of Kamil Pasha (1833 – 1913) came to power.

In 1913, Hochberg established a printing house to propagandize for the Zionist cause by publishing journals and books in several languages.[96] This was accompanied by the CUP’s establishment of a firm grip on power early in the same year. Talaat Pasha had approached Ahmed Izzet Pasha on November 17, 1912, to invite him to serve as Grand Vizier after the planned CUP coup d’état. In 1898, it was through Izzet Pasha that the Aga Khan II had attempted to pass on a proposal from Herzl to Sultan Abdul Hamid II.[97] In 1908, after the Young Turk Revolution, İzzet became chief of the Ottoman general staff. His strong opposition to the military actions of the Ottoman army against Albanian nationalists led to his dismissal and reappointment to Yemen, to crush another revolt, in February 1911. He was made a member of the Ottoman Senate in July. During his time in high command, he played a leading role in the modernization of the Ottoman army under the supervision of German military advisors. Together with Rüdiger von der Goltz (1865 – 1946) from the German military advisory mission, he prepared war plans in case the Ottoman Empire entered a war in the Balkans and with Russia. He advocated for a defensive strategy of war of attrition, and fortified key cities like Edirne and Yanya.[98]

The 1913 Ottoman coup d’état, also known as the Raid on the Sublime Porte, was carried out by a number of CUP members led by Talaat Pasha and Enver Pasha, in which the group made a surprise raid on the central Ottoman government buildings, the Sublime Porte. During the coup, the Minister of War, Nazım Pasha, was assassinated and the Grand Vizier, Kamil Pasha, was forced to resign, and was replaced by Mahmud Shevket Pasha, who took both posts. Shevket was subsequently assassinated six months later. In his place, Izzet Pasha was appointed War Minister in the cabinet of Grand Vizier Said Halim Pasha (1864 – 1921), the son of Prince Halim Pasha, who was forced out of Egypt after a failed coup, and settled in Istanbul, where he became Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Turkey.[99] Said Halim Pasha was educated by private teachers, and learned Arabic, Persian, English, and French. He later studied political science in Switzerland. In 1903, he was exiled from the capital for establishing relations with the Young Turks. He went first to Egypt and then to Europe and established direct relations with the Young Turks, giving them material and intellectual support. In 1906, he was appointed a leading role in the CUP. Following the 1908 revolution, he returned to Istanbul.[100] Soon after the coup, on the eve of World War I, the government fell into the hands of the CUP, now under the leadership of the triumvirate known as the “Three Pashas,” made up of Enver, Talaat, and Djemal Pasha (1872 – 1922). Thereafter, the leadership of the CUP sought Zionist assistance for the propaganda of the empire in Europe, thus inaugurating a new era in CUP-Zionist relations.[101]

Jabotinsky, after his expulsion from Palestine by the British Mandate, settled in Paris in the mid-1920s, where he served as a column writer at the Posaldina Novosti, the most popular Russian exile newspaper in Paris. A number of Jabotinsky’s colleagues in Posaldina Novosti were members of the Northern Star Masonic lodge. This lodge had over 1,000 members, including members of parliament, journalists and military officers. One of the was Pavel Miljukov (1859 – 1943), the editor-in-chief of Posaldina Novosti, who served as Foreign Minister in  the Russian Provisional Government, created immediately after the abdication of Nicholas II in 1917. Two journalists from Posaldina Novosti from the Russian exiles community, Alexander Poliakov and Mikhail Osorgin, decided to ask Jabotinsky if he would want to be a member of the Northern Star, and he agreed. Jabotinsky remained in the lodge for more than five years and reached the degree of a Master-Mason.[102]

 

 


[1] Sir G. Lowther to Sir C. Harding (1909). Cited in Elie Kedourie. “Young Turks, Freemasons and Jews.” Middle Eastern Studies, 7: 1 (1971), p. 95.

[2] “Zeev Jabotinsky.” Jabotinsky Institute in Israel. Retrieved from http://en.jabotinsky.org/zeev-jabotinsky/life-story/public-activity/

[3] Sir G. Lowther to Sir C. Harding (1909). Cited in Kedourie. “Young Turks, Freemasons and Jews,” p. 92.

[4] Ibid., p. 99.

[5] Ibid., p. 99.

[6] David Baer. The Dönme.

[7] Kemal H. Karpat. “The Memoirs of N. Batzaria: The Young Turks and Nationalism.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 6: 3 (1975), p. 276.

[8] Mustapha Fawzi ibn ‘Abdulatif Gazal. Da’watu Jamaluddin al-Afghani fi mizan al- Islam (The Da’wa of Jamaluddin al-Afghani in the Balance of Islam), (Riyadh 1983), p. 99.

[9] Dreyfus. Hostage to Khomeini, p. 123.

[10] Mehmet Hasan Bulut. “Islam’s reformists: Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Pan-Islamism.” Daily Sabah (December 19, 2021). Retrieved from https://www.dailysabah.com/arts/portrait/islams-reformists-jamal-al-din-al-afghani-and-pan-islamism

[11] Alkan. Dissent and Heterodoxy in the Late Ottoman Empire, p. 124.

[12] Shalom Goldman. “Europe’s Jewish Scholars of Islam.” (March 29, 2024). Retrieved from https://www.juancole.com/2024/03/europes-jewish-scholars.html

[13] M. Şükrü Hanioğlu. The Young Turks in Opposition (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 57.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Alkan. Dissent and Heterodoxy in the Late Ottoman Empire, p. 125.

[17] Hanioğlu. The Young Turks in Opposition, p. 56.

[18] Necati Alkan. “‘The eternal enemy of Islam’: Abdullah Cevdet and the Baha’i religion.” Bulletin of SOAS, 68: 1 (2005), p. 5.

[19] Hanioğlu. The Young Turks in Opposition, p. 256, n. 345.

[20] Ibid., p. 57.

[21] Ahmed Riza. “Icmal-i Ahval.” Mesveret, no. 11, May 23, 108 [1896], p. 2; cited in Hanioğlu. The Young Turks in Opposition, p. 255, n. 355.

[22] AQSh, 19/60//814/8; cited in Hanioğlu. The Young Turks in Opposition, p. 255, n. 355.

[23] Hanioğlu. The Young Turks in Opposition, p. 202.

[24] Yaşar Kutluay. “Siyonizm ve Türkiye.” Bilge Karınca (2013), p. 291

[25] Robert Olson. Imperial Meanderings and Republican By-Ways (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2010), p. 106.

[26] Frank Warner Creel. “The program and ideology of Dr. Abdullah Cevdet: a study of the origins of Kemalism in Turkey.” PhD thesis (University of Chicago, 1978). pp. 14, 17, 21.

[27] Abdullah Cevdet, ‘Scîme-i Muhabbet’, Ictihâd, no. 89 (1913); Necati Alkan. “‘The eternal enemy of Islam’: Abdullah Cevdet and the Baha’i religion.” Bulletin of SOAS, 68, 1 (2005), p. 3.

[28] Note by Prime Minister Halil Rifat Pasha, BOA, YEE. 86/87 (31-110/1709), 22 Nisan 1312/4 (May 1896), p. 1; cited in Alkan. “‘The eternal enemy of Islam’: Abdullah Cevdet and the Baha’i religion,” p. 3.

[29] Alkan. “The Young Turks and the Baháʼís in Palestine,” p. 262.

[30] Gábor Ágoston & Bruce Alan Masters. Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire (Infobase Publishing, (January 1, 2009), p. 417.

[31] Alkan. “The Young Turks and the Baháʼís in Palestine,” p. 269.

[32] Ibid., p. 266; David Baer. The Dönme.

[33] Livingstone. Terrorism and the Illuminati, p. 178

[34] David Baer. The Dönme.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Sir G. Lowther to Sir C. Harding (1909). Cited in Kedourie. “Young Turks, Freemasons and Jews,” p. 94.

[38] Arslan & Enzo. “The Rebirth of the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress in Macedonia through the Italian Freemasonry,” p. 102.

[39] Pollatos. Elliniku Tektonismu, pp.52-53; cited in Hanioglü. “Notes on the Young Turks and the Freemasons, 1875-1908,” p. 187.

[40] Arslan & Enzo. “The Rebirth of the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress in Macedonia through the Italian Freemasonry,” pp. 93–115.

[41] Angelo Lacovella, trans. by Tulin Altinova, Gonye ve Hilal, Ittihad-Terakki ve Masonluk (II Triangolo e la Mezzaluna), Istanbul, Tarih Vakfi Yurt Yayinlari, 1998. p. 19.

[42] Arslan & Enzo. “The Rebirth of the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress in Macedonia through the Italian Freemasonry,” pp. 93–115.

[43] Mirak-Weissbach. Through the Wall of Fire, p. 41.

[44] Ibid.

[45] Zarcone. “Occultism in an Islamic Context,” p. 161.

[46] L’Initiation (December 3, 1892), p. 267; cited in Zarcone. “Occultism in an Islamic Context,” p. 161.

[47] L’Initiation (January 4, 1893), p. 275; cited in Zarcone. “Occultism in an Islamic Context,” p. 161.

[48] Zarcone. “Occultism in an Islamic Context,” p. 161.

[49] Marc David Baer. The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010) Kindle Edition.

[50] Pollatos. Elliniku Tektonismu, pp.52-53; cited in Hanioglü. “Notes on the Young Turks and the Freemasons, 1875-1908,” p. 91.

[51] Hans-Lukas Kieser. Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide (Princeton University Press, 2018), p. 44.

[52] Zarcone. “Freemasonry and Islam,” p. 239.

[53] Pollatos. Elliniku Tektonismu, pp.52-53; cited in Hanioglü. “Notes on the Young Turks and the Freemasons, 1875-1908,” p. 91.

[54] Kemal H. Karpat. “The Memoirs of N. Batzaria: The Young Turks and Nationalism.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 6: 3 (1975), p. 280.

[55] Pollatos. Elliniku Tektonismu, pp.52-53; cited in Hanioglü. “Notes on the Young Turks and the Freemasons, 1875-1908,” p. 280.

[56] Joseph B, Schectman. Rebel and Statesman: The Vladimir Jabotinsky Story (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), p. 150.

[57] Joseph B. Schechtman. The Life and Times of Vladimir Jabotinsky: Rebel and statesman (SP Books, 1986), p. 150.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Ozan Ozavci. “A Jewish ‘Liberal’ in Istanbul: Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Young Turks and the Zionist Press Network, 1908–1911.” In Abigail Green & Simon Levis Sullam (eds). Jews, Liberalism, Antisemitism. Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), p. 291.

[60] Ibid., p. 293.

[61] Ibid., p. 294.

[62] La Epoka. 8 January, 1909, cf. Matossian. Shattering Dreams, p. 209; cited in Ozavci. “A Jewish ‘Liberal’ in Istanbul,” p. 294.

[63] Matossian. Shattering Dreams, p. 85; cited in Ozavci. “A Jewish ‘Liberal’ in Istanbul,” p. 294.

[64] Wolffsohn to Mazliah and Russo, 24 January 1909, CZA Z2/7, cf. Matossian. Shattering Dreams, p. 85; cited in Ozavci. “A Jewish ‘Liberal’ in Istanbul,” p. 294.

[65] Olson. Imperial Meanderings and Republican By-Ways, p. 105.

[66] Zarcone. “Occultism in an Islamic Context,” p. 160.

[67] Ibid.

[68] “A Turkish Deputy on Zionism.” The Times (March 12, 1909); cited in Ozavci. “A Jewish ‘Liberal’ in Istanbul,” p. 294.

[69] Ozavci. “A Jewish ‘Liberal’ in Istanbul,” p. 295.

[70] Olson. Imperial Meanderings and Republican By-Ways, p. 104.

[71] Ozavci. “A Jewish ‘Liberal’ in Istanbul,” p. 296.

[72] Ibid.

[73] Olson. Imperial Meanderings and Republican By-Ways, p. 104.

[74] Ozavci. “A Jewish ‘Liberal’ in Istanbul,” p. 297.

[75] Olson. Imperial Meanderings and Republican By-Ways, p. 104.

[76] Ozavci. “A Jewish ‘Liberal’ in Istanbul,” p. 297.

[77] Ibid., p. 298.

[78] Ibid., p. 290.

[79]  “Tekinalp, Munis.” Encyclopaedia Judaica (March 26, 2025). Retrieved from https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/tekinalp-munis

[80] Ahmet (Ahmed Bey) Ağaoğlu. “La Société persane: le gouvernement de la Perse et l’état d’esprit des persans.” La Nouvelle Revue, 83 (September–October 1893), pp. p.523–24; cited in A. Holly Shissler. Between Two Empires: Ahmet Agaoglu and the New Turkey (London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2002), p. 101.

[81] A. Holly Shissler. Between Two Empires: Ahmet Agaoglu and the New Turkey (London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2002), p. 113–114.

[82] Ozavci. “A Jewish ‘Liberal’ in Istanbul,” p. 298.

[83] Schechtman. Rebel and Statesman, pp. 157, 160; cited in Ozavci. “A Jewish ‘Liberal’ in Istanbul,” p. 294.

[84] Olson. Imperial Meanderings and Republican By-Ways, p. 104.

[85] Ibid., p. 104.

[86] Ibid., p. 104.

[87] Mirak-Weissbach. Through the Wall of Fire, p. 41.

[88] Bar-Zohar, op. cit., p. 51; cited in Mirak-Weissbach. Through the Wall of Fire, p. 41.

[89] Mirak-Weissbach. Through the Wall of Fire, p. 41.

[90] Olson. Imperial Meanderings and Republican By-Ways, p. 107.

[91] Neville J. Mandel. The Arabs and Zionism before World War (University of California, 1976), p. 62; cited in Olson. Imperial Meanderings and Republican By-Ways, p. 107.

[92] Ozavci. “A Jewish ‘Liberal’ in Istanbul,” p. 303.

[93] Stanford J. Shaw. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. 2. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 282. 

[94] Olson. Imperial Meanderings and Republican By-Ways, p. 106.

[95] Ibid.

[96] Ozavci. “A Jewish ‘Liberal’ in Istanbul,” p. 311.

[97] The Aga Khan. The Memoirs of Aga Khan (London, Cassels and Co. Ltd., 1954), p. 150–151; cited in Ahmad. “INDIA AND PALESTINE 1896-1947: THE GENESIS OF A FOREIGN POLICY,” p. 301.

[98] Akmeşe Handan. The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman Military and the March to WWI (I.B.Tauris, 2005), pp. 25–98.

[99] Thierry Zarcone. “Feemasonry and Islam.” In Henrik Bogdan & Jan A.M. Snoek (ed.). Handbook of Freemasonry (Leiden: Brill, 2014), p. 239.

[100] M. Hanefi Bostan. “Said Halim Paşa.” İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Retrieved from https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/said-halim-pasa

[101] Ozavci. “A Jewish ‘Liberal’ in Istanbul,” p. 311.

[102] Daniel Galily & David Schwartz. “Zionist Political Philosopher Ze’ev Jabotinsky as a Freemason.” 3rd International e-Conference on Studies in Humanities and Social Science (Belgrade: Center for Open Access in Science), p. 337.

Divide & Conquer