Not too long ago I received a shocking and intriguing email from History Yahoogroups, saying that Ataturk once confessed being Jewish and that he was even a descendant of a false Jewish prophet. I’ve never heard about that before! Here is a part of the email:
**To this date, there is extreme confusion among Muslims and non-Muslims alike regarding who was Mustafa Kemal, the dictator of Turkey. Recently, new evidence has surfaced that Mustafa Kemal, the ruthless dictator of Turkey, was not only a non-muslim, but a secret Jewish descendant of the Jewish Sabbati Zevi! The evidence comes not from tracing his genaology, but from the statements he himself made. **
(. . . )
I would never have asked had I not recently come across a remarkable chapter while browsing in the out-of-print Hebrew autobiography of Itamar Ben-Avi, son of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the leading promoter of the revival of spoken Hebrew in late 19th-century Palestine. Ben-Avi, the first child to be raised in Hebrew since ancient times and later a Hebrew journalist and newspaper publisher, writes in this book of walking into the Kamenitz Hotel in Jerusalem one autumn night in 1911 and being asked by its proprietor:
" ‘Do you see that Turkish officer sitting there in the corner, the one with the bottle of arrack?’ "
" ‘Yes.’ "
" ‘He’s one of the most important officers in the Turkish army.’ "
" ‘What’s his name?’ "
" ‘Mustafa Kemal.’ "
" ‘I’d like to meet him,’ I said, because the minute I looked at him I was startled by his piercing green eyes."
Ben-Avi describes two meetings with Mustafa Kemal, who had not yet taken the name of Ataturk, ‘Father of the Turks.’ Both were conducted in French, were largely devoted to Ottoman politics, and were doused with large amounts of arrack. In the first of these, Kemal confided:
“I’m a descendant of Sabbetai Zevi - not indeed a Jew any more, but an ardent admirer of this prophet of yours. My opinion is that every Jew in this country would do well to join his camp.”
During their second meeting, held 10 days later in the same hotel, Mustafa Kemal said at one point:
" ‘I have at home a Hebrew Bible printed in Venice. It’s rather old, and I remember my father bringing me to a Karaite teacher who taught me to read it. I can still remember a few words of it, such as --’ "
And Ben-Avi continues:
"He paused for a moment, his eyes searching for something in space. Then he recalled:
" ‘Shema Yisra’el, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Ehad!’
" ‘That’s our most important prayer, Captain.’
" ‘And my secret prayer too, cher monsieur,’ he replied, refilling our glasses."
Although Itamar Ben-Avi could not have known it, Ataturk no doubt meant “secret prayer” quite literally. Among the esoteric prayers of the Doenme, first made known to the scholarly world when a book of them reached the National Library in Jerusalem in 1935, is one containing the confession of faith:
“Sabbetai Zevi and none other is the true Messiah. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
It was undoubtedly from this credo, rather than from the Bible, that Ataturk remembered the words of the Shema, which to the best of my knowledge he confessed knowing but once in his adult life: to a young Hebrew journalist whom he engaged in two tipsily animated conversations in Jerusalem nearly a decade before he took control of the Turkish army after its disastrous defeat in World War I, beat back the invading Greeks and founded a secular Turkish republic in which Islam was banished - once and for all, so he thought - to the mosques.
Ataturk would have had good reasons for concealing his Doenme origins. Not only were the Doenmes (who married only among themselves and numbered close to 15,000, largely concentrated in Salonika, on the eve of World War I) looked down on as heretics by both Muslims and Jews, they had a reputation for sexual profligacy that could hardly have been flattering to their offspring.
The email quotes a few websites, it goes on to say that the Doenme had ties with Freemasons and that the revolt of the Young Turks began in Salonika where Ataturk was originally from. The email also says that Atatürk didn’t really defeat the Brits, but made a deal with them. They worked together to get rid of the khilafat. It says that Atatürk was a Jewish Freemason and when the Muslim Turks realised what really happened, it was too late.
I’ve never heard about this before, it certainly is a different interpretation of history and I’m not sure what to think about this. All the Turks I’ve known in my entire life, most of them Muslims, honour Atatürk, just like we honour Muhammad Ali Jinnah, our Qaid. Reading this email was a shock. I once read that our Qaid also admired Atatürk. It would be sad if all this about Atatürks character could be true. If the character of Atatürk really would be as negative as that email says, then there wouldn’t be a greater difference between him and our Qaid.
What is the truth? Allah O Alim.
These links go more in detail about Ataturk, his background (Muslim mother whom he didn’t obey and Jewish father, being born in Greece, etc.) and his Jewish Freemason ties, the registers of the freemasonic lodges he had joined, etc., if it’s all really true:
This website has pages on everything about this version of the life of Atatürk:
http://www.atajew.com/
Kemal Ataturk the Father of Zionism:
There was also a link to ‘Satanic Voices’ by Pidcock, on one of the websites about this topic, because there is a chapter in ‘Satanic Voices’ about how the Khilafat was ended:
Satanic Voices : Ancient & Modern - Chronology (download links bottom of the page)
