|
de Smyrne, 85.
32. AMAEF-Nantes, Ambassador of Athens, A 218, 11 May 1897; also cited in
Lévy, “Salonique et la Guerre,” 70.
33. Acropolis, 2 May 1897. A translation of this article is included in the ar-
chives of the Alliance (AIU). Representatives of the Jewish community for-
warded the question to the British consul in Salonica at the time, asking that he
help calm the situation by acknowledging that most of Salonica’s Jews were not
to blame for the incident (which he agreed to do). See PRO/FO 78/4828, 9 June
Jewish Imperial Allegiance and the Greco-Ottoman War of 1897 · 49
1897, J. E. Blunt to British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The incident
has also been cited by Rena Molho, “The Zionist Movement in Thessaloniki,
1899–1919,” in I. K. Hassiotis, ed., The Jewish Communities of Southeastern Europe:
From the Fifteenth Century to the End of World War II (Thessaloniki, 1997), 330, and
K. E. Fleming, Greece: A Jewish History (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2008), 57–58.
34. Acropolis, 2 May 1897.
35. In the collections of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Série Grèce, IC 40,
25 June 1897.
36. In fact, although none of the sources I have encountered from 1897 ac-
knowledged this, the patterns created during this war were reminiscent of those
developed in other conflicts, most notably the Greek War of Independence
(1821–32). This instance of revolt against Ottoman rule also led to increased
tensions between Ottoman Greeks and Jews, as Jews came to identify, and be
identified, as the ultimate allies of the Ottoman Empire. For a useful review of
these developments, see Lagos, “The Metaxas Dictatorship,” 68–84, and Flem-
ing, Greece, 57–58, 62.
37. These were El Meseret, La Buena Esperansa, and El Nuvelista/Le Nouvelliste.
The last of these sometimes also printed small pieces in French (in Latin charac-
ters), although in 1897 its use of French was quite limited.
38. El Meseret, 22 January 1897.
39. El Meseret, 19 February 1897, emphasis mine.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. In fact, this message merged almost seamlessly with the journal’s mis-
sion, announced in its very first issue. There, its editor explained that he hoped
the paper would serve as the “interpreter between the Jewish community and
the Ottoman authorities.” El Meseret, 15 January 1897. The Ladino paper would
soon include a page in Ottoman Turkish as well; its owner was a local Muslim,
a fact constantly repeated in the paper to reinforce the Jewish-Muslim partner-
ship present in the city.
43. El Meseret, 12 March 1897.
44. Indeed, wartime in Izmir had brought an uncomfortable situation for the
local Jewish community. As it turns out, Greek citizens residing in Izmir, as well
as local Ottoman Greek subjects, began to depart to fight on the side of Greece,
reportedly accompanied by the “cries of massive crowds that had come out to
support them” as they left. Nahum, Juifs de Smyrne, 21.
45. El Meseret, 30 April 1897.
46. La Buena Esperansa, 3 May 1897.
47. La Buena Esperansa, 7 May 1897.
48. See Sabah, 8 May 1897. Also recorded in (AIU) Série Turquie, IC 4, 17 May
1897. I am grateful to Nazan Maksudyan for providing me with these issues of
Sabah during the earliest stages of my research on this topic.
49. Sabah, 11 May 1897. Other Ottoman newspapers give different numbers:
50 · Julia Phillips Cohen
reports from İkdam dated 5, 8, 10, and 13 May 1897 together suggest that sixty-
eight Jewish men from Izmir converted before joining the army during the war.
Tercüman-ı Hakikat, 5 May 1897, and Sabah, 5 May 1897, offer the first examples
of this pattern, citing four and one convert-volunteers in Izmir, respectively.
50. Also cited in (AIU) Série Turquie, IC 4, 17 May 1897. Henri Nahum’s
work on the Jews of Izmir alludes to the conversions of young Jewish men at-
tempting to prove their loyalty to the empire, but provides no citation. Nahum,
Juifs de Smyrne, 156. Elsewhere he concludes that cases of out-marriage and
conversion were extremely rare. Ibid., 56. This view of conversion in the late Ot-
toman world departs somewhat from the picture presented in Leah Bornstein-
Makovetsky, “Jewish Converts to Islam and Christianity in the Ottoman Empire
in the Nineteenth Century,” in Minna Rozen, ed., The Last Ottoman Century and
Beyond: The Jews in Turkey and the Balkans (Ramat Aviv: Goldstein-Goren Dias-
pora Center, 2002), 2:83–127 and in Selim Deringil, “‘There Is No Compulsion
in Religion’: On Conversion and Apostasy in the Late Ottoman Empire: 1839–
1856,” Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 42, no. 3 (July 2000):
547–75.
51. Shortly before the mass conversions in Izmir described here, El Meseret
published an article describing the economic and social causes of conversion,
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
