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The word Dönme means ‘convert’ in Turkish. The Dönme community represents the adherents of the self-proclaimed Jewish messiah, Sabbatai Sevi (1626–1676).
Sevi, who lived in the Ottoman Empire and managed to attract a group of believers to his messianic claims, was forced to convert to Islam by the Ottoman authorities. This led him to lose the majority of his followers. Those who continued to believe him formed the Dönme community. Although they converted to Islam like Sevi, they maintained their faith. This crypto-Judaic community appeared to be Muslims in public life, and attempted to preserve their secret by avoiding marrying outsiders. The majority of the Dönmes lived in Salonica during the period of Ottoman rule until the early 20th century. After the city became a part of Greece, most migrated to Turkey. While there is no official information about the current demographics of the Dönme community, Sisman estimates that there are around eighty thousand people of Dönme origin in Turkey, of which only three to four thousand still believe in Sevi’s messiahship.
Since the early 20th century, conspiracy theories accused Dönmes of secretly manipulating Turkish society and politics. The conspiratorial rhetoric initially emerged after Theodor Herzl wanted to buy Palestine from the Ottoman Empire in 1899 in order to establish a state there. The Ottoman ruler, Sultan Abdulhamid II, did not grant the request , and in 1908, he was toppled by a coup d’etat. Some conspiratorial accounts claimed that the coup was Jewish revenge for his refusal to sell Palestine and used the involvement of Dönme Mehmed Cavid Bey and Jewish-freemason Emmanuel Carosso in the coup as supporting evidence of the conspiracy. We can identify three distinct periods for the conspiracy theories about Dönmes in modern Turkey: the single party era (1923–1950), the multi-party democracy era (1950–1990), and the current era beginning after 1990.
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