freemasonry in turkey a by-product of western penetration ( dumont, paul)

European Review, Vol. 13, No. 3, 481–493 (2005) © Academia Europaea, Printed in the United Kingdom

Freemasonry in Turkey: a by-product

of Western penetration

P A U L D U M O N T

Departement d’etudes turques, Universite Marc Bloch, 67000 Strasbourg,France. E-mail: [email protected]

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, various European Masonicobediences set up lodges throughout the Ottoman empire, many in Istanbul,while another important centre was Smyrna. Freemasons were also active inLebanon, Syria, Egypt, Cyprus and Macedonia. Lodges were established inthe main political, economic and cultural centres of the Empire. There was astrong parallelism between the Ottoman Masonic geography and that ofEuropean colonial expansion. It is easy to delineate the social and ethnicstructure of lodges, but we know less about what was going on behind thewalls of Masonic temples. For sure, Ottoman Freemasons, like their brethrenin other parts of the world, when not busy with ‘table works’ or ceremonies,dedicated themselves to philanthropic activities. A considerable part of theannual income of the lodges was used to finance various charitable works(assistance to orphans, to brethren in distress …) and to fund educationalinstitutions. The lodges were also places for the discussion and exchange ofideas about current themes: socialism, feminism, venereal diseases, progressof science, etc. Some mingled with politics, displaying a highly nationalisticdiscourse. The politicization of Ottoman/Turkish freemasonry climaxedduring the years of the Young Turk revolution (1908–1914), when anautochthonous obedience was created. One of the goals of the neworganization, coldly received by most European freemasonries, was to rid theOttoman Empire of foreign penetration. After the proclamation of theTurkish Republic in 1923, this national freemasonry continued to flourish,except for 13 years between 1935 and 1948 when Masonic activity wasbanned.

A document preserved in the public library of Arles mentions the existence inIstanbul, at the very beginning of the eighteenth century, of a section of an Ordercalled ‘Ordre de la Grappe’, an association organized in the South of France and

482 Paul Dumont

seemingly dedicated to the celebration of good food and good wine. But theIstanbul section of the ‘Ordre de la Grappe’ was not merely an association of jollycompanions. It pursued also esoteric objectives and consequently, seems to havebeen one of the earliest organizations of a Masonic character in the OttomanEmpire.1,2

Later, other groups are heard of from time to time; however, as far as can bededuced from the scarce sources at our disposal, the groups in question wereisolated endeavours and did not live long. For instance, the lodge created inSmyrna under the name of ‘Nations Reunies’ affiliated to the Great Lodge ofMarseilles remained active only for a few months and in 1819 was forced torequest a new foundation act, which was of no use and its members had to interrupttheir work again some time later.3

It is only towards the middle of the nineteenth century, some 15 years after theproclamation of the 1839 Reform Edict, that freemasonry began to be reallysuccessful in the Ottoman Empire.4 Under the reigns of sultans Abdulmedjid(1839–1861), Abdulaziz (1861–1876) and Abdulhamid (1876–1909), variousEuropean Masonic organizations created dozens of lodges throughout the country.This was related to the new receptiveness of western influence, includingeconomic penetration and political influence, receptiveness to ideas prevailing inEurope, and to individuals coming from the West. Thousands of Europeanadventurers flocked to the Ottoman eldorado from the 1850s onwards, withoutwhom Ottoman freemasonry would have developed on a much smaller scale.Another factor is the wide range of guarantees granted to Ottoman subjects as wellas to foreigners in following the Imperial edict of 1856. From then on, Ottomansand, in particular, ‘non-Muslim subjects’ of the sultan, felt themselves much lessdominated by an arbitrary power and could make plans, such as the creation ofphilanthropic associations, without fear of legal proceedings and punishment. Upto a point, Ottoman freemasonry of the 1850s and 1860s can also be consideredas a by-product of the Crimean war. Indeed, British and French soldiers that cameto fight in the East seem to have largely contributed to the introduction of Masoniclodges in this part of the world.

The Masonic network

Many of the lodges were situated in Istanbul. Towards the end of the 1860s, therewere about 15 lodges in the Imperial capital, all connected to various Europeanobediences. Four were dependent on the Great Lodge of England, four others onthe Grand Orient de France, at least five on the Grande Oriente of Italy,5 oneon the German Great Lodge of Hamburg, one on the Great Lodge of Ireland, andone or two on the Meghali Anatoli of Greece.6

483Freemasonry in Turkey

Another important Masonic centre was the city of Smyrna. At the time of theFrench revolution, this important commercial city had witnessed the creation ofa lodge bearing the significant name of ‘Nations Reunies’.7 Under the reign ofsultan Abdulaziz, it sheltered at least six lodges: the ‘Stella Ionia’, set up in1864 and attached to the Italian Grande Oriente; the ‘Meles’, which had beenfounded in 1868 under the aegis of the Grand Orient de France;8 one ‘GreatProvincial Lodge’ created in 1865 and connected to British freemasonry;9 andthree more Italian lodges, the ‘Fenice’, the ‘Orkhanie’ and the ‘Armenak’, setup respectively in 1867, 1668 and 1872.10

A third important seat of Masonic activity was Egypt. The construction ofthe Suez Canal and other major economic projects had driven several thousandEuropeans to settle in this country. As a result, one could find at least sixworkshops of the Grande Loge de France in Alexandria, Ismailia, Port-Said andCairo, already in the 1860, not counting lodges linked to other Europeanobediences. A new growth of Masonic fever occurred in this part of theOttoman lands at the end of the 1880s, when Egypt came under Britishadministration.11

Three centres of lesser importance were Cyprus, where several lodges wereset up in the years that followed the British occupation of the island, theSyrian-Lebanese centre, especially Beirut, where the French backed thefoundation of various Masonic workshops as from the middle of the 1860s, andthe Macedonian centre in Salonika. Here, a lodge called ‘l’Amitie’ existed forsome time in the years of the Napoleonic expansion (before 1804); in addition,the Italian Grande Oriente set up in 1864 the workshop ‘Macedonia’ whichevolved into, many years later, the ‘Macedonia Risorta’, famous for its role inthe preparation of the Young Turk Revolution. By the beginning of thetwentieth century, Salonika, together with cities of lesser importance such asCavalla and Janina, listed more than ten lodges linked to the Italian GrandeOriente, the French Grand Orient and Grande Loge, the Greek MeghaliAnatoli, the Spanish Grande Oriente, the Rumanian Loja Nationala and theDroit Humain, an international order created by Maria Deraismes and open toboth genders.12

Quite logically, lodges were established in the main political and economiccentres of the Empire. These cities had close links with Europe, not onlycommercially but also culturally. We can note a strong parallelism betweenthese Masonic activities in the Empire and European imperialism and thatlodges were most numerous in regions most open to Western penetration(Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Cyprus), or in places characterized by their politicalinstability (Macedonia).

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Ethnic and social structure of lodges

The existing enrolment lists allows us to distinguish four types of Masonicworkshops from the point of view of their membership:

(a) Lodges only for (with very few exceptions) Europeans. For example,the ‘Etoile du Bosphore’, a French lodge set up in Istanbul in 1858.Nearly all the brethren it comprised were French artisans who hadrecently settled in the Ottoman capital, attracted there by a marketwidely open to Western artefacts and ways of life.

(b) ‘National’ lodges, comprising members belonging to a singleethnic/religious component of the Ottoman population. Three of the‘Italian’ lodges of Smyrna represent good examples of this variety:the ‘Fenice’ was reserved for Greeks; the brethren of the ‘Orkhanie’were all Turks; and the ‘Armenak’ was, as its name indicated,exclusively Armenian.13

(c) Mixed lodges, characterized by a varied spectrum of Ottomannon-Muslims, occasionally alongside a couple of European brethrenand a few Turks. An example was the ‘Veritas’ of Salonika, foundedin 1904. This workshop aimed first at a Jewish audience, but, by 1908,it comprised also four Greeks, two Armenians and five Muslims, allof them belonging probably to the deunmeh community (Jewishconverts to Islam).14

(d) Mixed lodges comprising a large proportion of Muslim Turks, as wellas Egyptians and Persians. In the 1860s, at least three lodges inIstanbul systematically recruited Muslim brethren. The BulwerLodge, set up by Henry Bulwer, ambassador of Great Britain,included – together with the usual non-Muslim brethren, Muslim‘dervishes’ and high officials of the Ottoman state.15 In the sameway, the ‘Union d’Orient’ in 1869, under the leadership of LouisAmiable, a brilliant representative of French freemasonry, had amembership of 143 brethren, 53 of whom were high rankingMuslims.16 The Greek banker Cleanthi Scalieri’s lodge ‘I Proodos’(Progress) included nearly 20 important names of the Ottoman elite,the most renowned being Mustafa Fazil, a member of the Egyptiankhedivial family, the Imperial Prince Murad, and the prolific writerNamik Kemal.17

The recruitment of Muslims seems to have been problematic. Most Muslimswere highly hostile to freemasonry. Such was the case of Ethem Pertev Pasha(1824–1871), who served for some time as Governor of Kastamonu and left


behind him a Habname, one of the numerous anti-Masonic pamphlets. It offereda good compendium of anti-Masonic thought, maintained that Islam andfreemasonry were incompatible and that the sole target of Freemasons was toconvert Muslims to Christianity.18

The difficulty that Freemasons experienced in working among Muslims wasunderlined by Hyde Clarke, who was, in the 1860s, Worshipful Master of the GreatProvincial Lodge of Turkey. In a speech delivered in December 1865 to thebrethren of Smyrna, he stressed bluntly:

Here it must never be forgotten that we are regarded by the mob, of highand low, with hatred, and by the charitable and intelligent with suspicion(…). Our learned Bro. Brown, in a recent correspondence, justly remarkedthat Masonry is not received as yet with favour among Musulmans in thiscountry and the more ignorant consider it quite atheistic in its principles(…) Nothing can be worse founded, and nothing more unjust that theprejudices of ignorant Musulmans, because as the more learned and the morepious know, there is a very intimate association in principle, and a closeresemblance in practice between Masons and the more spiritualistic and devoutMusulmans.19

Whatever their ethnic/religious cocktail, most of the lodges looked very muchalike in their social profile. Usually, the tune was set by a rather large group oftraders and bankers who formed the basic core of the membership. Practically allthe lodges also comprised a varied set of professionals: doctors, pharmacists,lawyers, journalists, writers and so on. European brethren were often craftsmen,army officers and diplomats. Diplomats generally played a major role in thefoundation of lodges; thus, Lord Rading and Lord Henry Bulwer, both of themBritish ambassadors to the Sublime Porte, are considered originators of theMasonic trend in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish anti-Masonic circles stillpresent them as mainly responsible for Ottoman decay.20 Similarly, theambassador Caracciola di Bella contributed towards the creation of the ‘Italia’,probably the first Italian workshop in Istanbul.21,22

The social texture displayed in lodges comprising Muslims, is highlyimpressive. This ‘faith’ not only managed to attract a large number of Muslimclerics and ‘dervishes’, but also recruited among top level officers and membersof the civilian ruling class. For instance, the Grand vizier Mustafa Reshid Pasha,one of the main initiators of the Ottoman reform movement, had been initiatedinto freemasonry by Lord Rading. He is the forerunner of a long line of Ottomanhigh officials, army pashas and statesmen who flirted with freemasonry, regardlessof popular prejudices against this practice. Practically all the leading figures ofthe Committee Union and Progress during the years of the Young Turk revolution(1908–1914) indulged in freemasonry.

486 Paul Dumont

What is going on behind the door of the workshop?

First of all, there is no doubt that quite a number of Ottoman lodges attached greatimportance to what French Freemasons used to call ‘travaux de table’ (tableworks), i.e. to lavish banquets, with a lot of drinking, convened in the trail ofMasonic ceremonies. The pre-Masonic ‘Order of the Grape’ seems to have beendevoted to a celebration of wine, as emerged from the action brought against itbefore the cadi of Istanbul, during which the ‘prior’ of the Order considered itnecessary to declare that ‘Wine is a primary attribute of Muslim bliss’.23 Similarly,in the 1860s, the members of the British lodges of Istanbul, were inclined towardseating and drinking; A. Schinas, a high-ranking Freemason of the Ottoman capital,mentions in one of his letters this tendency to hedonism, doing nothing to hidehis disapproval (1863):

Some years ago, an industrialist opened here a cafe, organizing in it, during thewinter season, public balls, something like the ‘Chaumiere’ of former days inParis, or even worse. He also set up there a lodge, which I refrained from visitingthough I was invited several times. (…) Later on, the British residing inConstantinople founded in a restaurant-confectioners a lodge called the‘Oriental’; in accordance with their custom, before and after workshop meetings,a lot of gin and cognac was drunk …’24

One can easily imagine that, in Istanbul, where the possibilities of entertainmentwere scarce, while the spirit of conviviality was highly developed, this kind of‘table works’ contributed to the success of freemasonry.

It is probable that these banquets reminded a certain number of MuslimFreemasons of the symbolic meal that followed the ceremonies of some heterodoxreligious groups, in particular those of the Bektashis or, their popular variant, theAlevis. Indeed, such ceremonies often involved consumption of alcoholicbeverages, one of the virtues of which was to facilitate the contemplation of God.

Other lodges preferred to devote their sittings to activities of a spiritualcharacter, and specifically to ceremonies of initiation. With regard to Muslimrecruits, one of the problems that could arise at these ceremonies was the part thatwas reserved for Christian symbolism (for instance on the Bible and the Gospel).One of the major charges brought against freemasonry by Ethem Pertev Pasha inHabname, was that it was another face of Christian crusades; however, severalworkshops, aiming at a Muslim clientele, introduced into their initiation procedurethe oath on the Koran, together with one on the Torah and the Gospel. Some ofthem also found it useful to translate into Turkish the Masonic rituals. It becamecommonplace in Ottoman masonry to stress the similarities between the Masonicrite and the modus operandi of various Muslim religious orders, especially thatof Bektashis; a number of the persons presented as ‘dervishes’ in the membership


boards of the lodges were either Bektashis or Zealots inclined to heterodoxpractices.

Like Freemasonries in other parts of the world, Ottoman Freemasonry, whennot busy with ‘table works’ or ceremonies, dedicated itself to philanthropicactivities. A considerable part of the annual income of the lodges was used tofinance various charitable works (assistance to orphans, to brethren in distress, etc)and to fund educational institutions, and, when required in the case of fire,earthquake, or famine, lodges went to the rescue. It often happened that theybestowed their charity through institutions that externally did not present Masonicfeatures, such as for instance a society named ‘l’Amie du Travail’ (Friend ofWorkers), set up under the reign of sultan Abdulaziz by the Greek Freemasonsof Istanbul, with the help of the French Grand Orient.25

The lodges were also places for discussion and exchange of ideas, probably oncontemporary questions such as socialism, feminism, venereal diseases and theprogress of science. Workshops like the ‘Italia’ or the ‘Germania’, expressedenthusiasm for Italy and Germany, two newborn states endowed with intensecolonial ambitions. The members of the lodge ‘Ser’ (a word meaning ‘love’ inArmenian), were Armenians and so involved in local politics that the lodge hadto close down in 1894 when the Ottoman government decided to suppressArmenian activism.26

However, this nationalistic trend coexisted, in most of the workshops, with atypically Masonic discourse exalting the fraternal cohabitation of religions andnations. As early as 1865, Hyde Clarke gives the pitch:

… Masonry will here help to unite the various nations, races and sects on acommon basis of divine worship, charity, virtue and above all brotherly lovecarrying out here a great work as it does in India. We must not, as masons, beunder the suspicion of having any connections with politics or be offensive toany man’s religious convictions, nay, we must be careful of offending the socialprejudices of those whom we live among.

We offer no man a new religion, nor do we interfere with his own. The onlyprogress we are concerned in is the progress not of our own brothers only butof all mankind in true religion, in virtue and in learning. Masonry discounte-nances anarchy, atheism, irreligion and ignorance. Masonry strengthens familyties, improves social relations, promotes patriotism at home and the fraternity ofnations, peace, charity and good will.27

When they were not busy with plans of national emancipation, OttomanFreemasons, whatever their creed or ethnic affiliation, spread dreams of universalbrotherhood.

Contrary to Hyde Clark, however, not all of them viewed ‘divine worship’ asan intangible pillar of Masonic ideal. By the end of the 1860s, most of the lodges

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connected to the Grand Orient de France expressed positivist and anti-theistorientations.

Freemasonry and politics

In his speech, Hyde Clarke put the stress on what was, at the time, a Masoniccommonplace: ‘We must not, as masons, be under the suspicion of having anyconnections with politics’. But in practice, things were quite different. Most ofthe lodges established in the Ottoman Empire expressed political aims, andespecially defending the interests of European powers. Thus, ‘l’Etoile duBosphore’ and ‘l’Union d’Orient’ were forceful advocates of the French policyand finance, doing at the same time their best to push forward ‘French ideas’;Italian, British and German workshops acted in the same way. Feelings of Masonicbrotherhood did not prevent lodges from fiercely competing with each other inrecruiting high-ranking Ottoman officials. By the time of the Tanzimat reforms,the British had managed to enrol the grand vizier Mustafa Reshid Pasha. A fewdecades later, the French went one better by recruiting, Prince Murad, a memberof the imperial family destined to be the next sultan.

Under the reigns of Abdulaziz and Abdulhamid, the relationship betweenFreemasonry and politics only rarely applied outside the lodges. It was only afterthe Young Turk Revolution (1908) that Ottoman Freemasons started to feelself-confident enough to display publicly their political opinions; thus, in the dayswhich followed the overthrow of the Hamidian regime, the inhabitants of Salonicahad the possibility to see, much to their surprise, Freemasons of all creedsmarching side by side through the streets of the city under unfurled flags. TheWorshipful Master of the ‘Macedonia Risorta’ seized this opportunity to indicate,in a harangue addressed to the population, that freemasonry, and more specificallyhis own lodge, had played a crucial role in the organization of the revolution.

There was an ever-growing interest in the problems the Young Turk regime hadto cope with. As early as October 1908, the ‘Veritas’ lodge of Salonica issued acondemnation of the Bulgarian declaration of independence and the annexationof Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Austrian Empire. The conflict between the OttomanEmpire and Italy in 1911, the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913, the Ottoman declarationof war in 1914, inspired all sorts of Masonic initiatives, public lectures, fundraising for the army, appeals directed to governments or to internationalfreemasonry. Especially during the war with Italy, the lodges with an Italianconnection such as the ‘Macedonia Risorta’ could not but feel very uneasy, timidlyapproaching the central administration of their obedience in Rome, the so called‘Palazzo Guistiniani’, in order to obtain its mediation between the belligerents.28

A few years later, when the allied forces occupied Istanbul at the end of WorldWar I, local Freemasons were to get even more mixed up in politics. After having


supported, over several decades, the ideal of Ottoman brotherhood, Greeks,Armenians and Jews suddenly changed their plans and started to participate in thedisintegration of Turkey. The Greeks were hoping to extend the newly establishedGreek Kingdom, Armenians dreamed of a Great Armenia, and Jews were involvedin Zionism.29

The Young Turks create a national freemasonry

A number of the Young Turks were Freemasons, notably Ahmed Rıza Bey,Mehmet Talat, Nazim Bey, Djemal Bey, Midhat Shukru, Huseyin Hilmi Pasha,and none tried to hide their ties with the Masonic creed. One of the consequencesof the Young Turk revolution was that, from the summer of 1908 onwards, therewas an unprecedented rush to join the lodges. The ‘Macedonia Risorta’ was theprincipal beneficiary of this sudden enthusiasm of the Ottoman elites forfreemasonry.

The revolutionary events of the summer of 1908 paved the way for the creationof a great number of lodges that were attached to various European obediences.Soon, however, the Young Turks began to organize their own workshops. Oneof their objectives was to oppose by this means the proliferation of foreignworkshops that were liable to bring about, in a short time, a real Masoniccolonization of the Ottoman Empire. Freemasons, they were, but they were alsoTurks and considered that one of their major goals should be to free the OttomanEmpire from all aspects of foreign penetration.

In Great Britain, the Grand Lodge of Scotland refused at the beginning torecognize the new Turkish organization; in France, the Grand Orient and theGrande Loge only decided to establish relations with the Ottoman Grand Orienttowards the middle of 1910, a year after it had been created; similarly, the ItalianGrande Oriente expressed ‘great reservations’. It was not only the Ottoman GrandOrient that was viewed with distrust, but also the new regime. In principle,traditional Freemasons had reasons to rejoice that things had turned out as theydid in Turkey. Nurtured in Masonic ideas, the revolutionaries of 1908 had put anend to Hamidian absolutism, re-established the constitution of 1876, and, inconformity with their promises, had laid the foundations for a vast programmeof reforms. For Freemasons, and especially for those of French obedience, thesewere reasons to rejoice. However, after the first months of euphoria that followedthe events of July 1908, the evolution of the regime was disquieting.

The Young Turks had proved unable to effect a lasting reconciliation betweenthe various ethnic and confessional components of the Ottoman Empire;extremely liberal at the beginning, the new rulers had turned increasingly towardauthoritarianism. Liberties that had been generously granted in 1908 weregradually suppressed in view of the need to maintain order.

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The Young Turks had set up the Ottoman Grand Orient and the SupremeCouncil of Turkey in several stages throughout the Spring and Summer of 1909,and counted among their members the principal politicians of the country; it waswhispered that the successor of Abdulhamid, the sultan Mehmed V Reshad, hadjoined. By the summer of 1909, the lodges began to proliferate, with more than20 workshops organized in various cities of the Ottoman Empire. Wanting to endthe development of lodges of foreign obediences, the leaders of the OttomanGrand Orient had drawn up a concordat which gave them the monopoly oncreating new lodges throughout the Turkish territory.

The birth of the Ottoman Grand Orient had negative consequences for manyforeign lodges, such as the French ‘Renaissance’. In 1908, the year of its creation,this lodge had hoped to draw under the banner of the Grand Orient de France‘all the Turkish youth’,30 but was soon forced to realize that the new national elitesturned their eyes elsewhere, indeed to better confine the activities of this lodge,the Turkish obedience had organized in August 1909 a lodge working in French.Called ‘Les vrais amis du Progres et de l’Union’ (True Friends of Progress andUnion), it proved to be very detrimental to French Masonic interests.

The only possibility offered to foreign lodges striving to survive was to jointhe Turkish Masonic organization; thus, the ‘Constitution’, a Spanish lodge whichhad managed to recruit key figures such as the sheikh-ul-islam Musa KazimEfendi, the minister of Finance Mehmet Cavit Bey and the philosopher RizaTevfik, was won over to the Ottoman Grand Orient in 1909; and the Italian‘Bizanzio Risorta’ decided in February 1910 to part from the Grande Oriente ofthe Palazzo Giustiniani and join the Turkish obedience.31

The Ottoman defeat in October 1918 caused the end of the Ottoman GrandOrient. This did not arouse much grief, chiefly because European obediencessuspected some of its members of having been involved, in one way or another,in wartime massacres. But the history of freemasonry is full of ups and downs.In 1923, when Mustafa Kemal proclaimed the Republic, the Turkish Masonicnetwork had already been partially restored. Most of the members of the newgovernmental personnel were Freemasons. In the decades that followed, exceptbetween 1935 and 1948 when Masonic activity was banned, Turkish freemasonryflourished, recruiting the republican elite, politicians (including scores ofministers and at least two Presidents of the Republic), high ranking officers of thearmy, academics, numerous representatives of the professional classes, bankers,engineers, etc.32 From the 1960s, in particular, nationalist and islamic politicalorganizations attacked freemasonry, presenting it as a tool in the hands ofZionists.33 However, much of the secret influence attributed to Turkish masonsseems to have existed only in the imagination of the polemists; indeed, it was onlyfor a very short while during the Young Turk decade that freemasonry succeeded


in becoming a kind of ‘church’ of the new regime. And contrary to what is oftenasserted, the Ottoman Grand Orient, in the course of those years, did not serveas a tool in the hands of Western powers, nor did it serve the interests ofnon-Muslim minorities within the Ottoman Empire.

References and Notes

1. Thierry Zarcone (1986) Francs-macons et Bektachis: analogiesrituelistiques et philosophiques, Table ronde sur l’Ordre des Bektachis(Strasbourg). Unpublished version of the paper presented at theconference.

2. Thierry Zarcone (1986) Francs-macons et Bektachis: analogiesrituelistiques et philosophiques, Table ronde sur l’Ordre des Bektachis(Strasbourg).

3. Jean Bossu (1969) Les debuts de la franc-maconnerie en Turquie,Juvenal, 30 May 1969.

4. See for instance P. Dumont (1983) La Turquie dans les archives duGrand Orient de France: les loges maconniques d’obedience francaise aIstanbul du milieu du XIXe siecle a la veille de la Premiere GuerreMondiale. In: Jean-Louis Bacque-Grammont and Paul Dumont (eds)Economie et Societe dans l’Empire Ottoman (fin du XVIIIe siecle-debutdu XXe siecle) (Paris: CNRS), pp. 171–202.

5. Concerning these Italian lodges, see Angelo Iacovella (1997) IlTriangolo e la Mezzaluna (Istanbul: Istituto Italiano di Cultura diIstanbul).

6. See Ioannis Loukas (1991) Istoria this Ellinikis Masonias kai EllinikiIstoria (Athens: Ekdoseis Papazisi).

7. Jean Bossu (1969) Les debuts de la franc-maconnerie en Turquie,Juvenal, 30 May 1969.

8. P. Dumont (1992–1994) La franc-maconnerie dans l’Empire ottoman. Laloge grecque Promethee a Jannina, Revue de la Mediterranee et dumonde mediterraneen, LXVI, 106.

9. Resat Atabek (1984) 1861–1880 Yılları Arasında Istanbul ve IzmirVadisinde Masonik Faaliyet, Mimar Sinan, no. 53, pp. 4–14.

10. Angelo Iacovella (1997) Il Triangolo e la Mezzaluna (Istanbul: IstitutoItaliano di Cultura di Istanbul), p. 43.

11. On Egyptian lodges, see Jacob Landau (1965) Prolegomena to a study ofsecret societies in modern Egypt, Middle Eastern Studies, 1, pp. 135–186and from the same author ‘Farmasuniyya’, Encyclopedia of Islam.

12. See P. Dumont (1984) La franc-maconnerie d’obedience francaise aSalonique au debut du XXe siecle, Turcica, XVI, 65–94.


14. P. Dumont (1984) La franc-maconnerie d’obedience francaise aSalonique au debut du XXe siecle, Turcica, XVI, 71–72.

15. Le Monde maconnique (1863).

492 Paul Dumont

16. P. Dumont (1983) La Turquie dans les archives du Grand Orient deFrance: les loges maconniques d’obedience francaise a Istanbul dumilieu du XIXe siecle a la veille de la Premiere Guerre Mondiale. In:Jean-Louis Bacque-Grammont and Paul Dumont (eds) Economie etSociete dans l’Empire Ottoman (fin du XVIIIe siecle-debut du XXesiecle) (Paris: CNRS), pp. 179–181.

17. Constantin Svolopoulos (1980) L’initiation de Murad V a lafranc-maconnerie par C. Scalieri. Aux origines du mouvement liberal enTurquie, Balkan Studies, V, pp. 441–447.

18. K. S. Sel, Turk Masonluk Tarihine Ait Uc Etud (Istanbul: Mimar SinanYay), pp. 47–61.


20. Several Turkish internet sites mention both names, displaying aparticularly violent animosity towards Lord Rading.

21. Thierry Zarcone (1994) Mystiques, philosophes et francs-macons enIslam (Paris: Maisonneuve), p. 212.


23. Thierry Zarcone (1993) Rıza Tevfik ou le soufisme eclaire. Mecanismesde pensee et reception des idees occidentales dans le mysticisme turcsous le deuxieme regime constitutionnel ottoman (1908–1923) (Paris:Maisonneuve), pp. 132–133.

24. Archives of the Grand Orient de France (Bibliotheque Nationale –Paris, FM2 866), Union d’Orient, letter of April 1863.

25. P. Dumont (2000) Osmanlıcılık, Uluscu Akımlar ve Masonluk (Istanbul:Yapı ve Kredi), p. 170.

26. The information available on this point is ambiguous. However, thedocuments preserved in the archives of the Grand Orient de France(Bibliotheque Nationale – Paris Res. FM2 157) hint at a connectionbetween the brethren of the lodge Ser and the Armenian nationalmovement).


28. Angelo Iacovella (1997) Il Triangolo e la Mezzaluna (Istanbul: IstitutoItaliano di Cultura di Istanbul), pp. 65–77.

29. P. Dumont (1985–1986) French Free Masonry and the Turkish strugglefor independence (1919–1923), International Journal of Turkish Studies,3(3), 1–16.

30. P. Dumont (2000) Osmanlıcılık, Uluscu Akımlar ve Masonluk (Istanbul:Yapı ve Kredi), p. 40.

31. Ilhami Soysal (1978) Turkiye ve Dunyada Masonluk ve Masonlar(Istanbul, Der Yay), pp. 222–223.

32. Ilhami Soysal (1978) Turkiye ve Dunyada Masonluk ve Masonlar(Istanbul, Der Yay), pp. 376–401.

33. See for instance, on this theme, a pamphlet published in 1977 by M.Ertugrul Duzdag, Turkiye Masonlarının Gizli Tarihi (Istanbul: CihadYay).


About the Author

Paul Dumont is Professor of Turkish language, literature and history at the MarcBloch University of Strasbourg. Most of his work deals with the intellectual andsocial history of Modern Turkey, including minorities, travel literature, andfreemasonry. Currently, he is engaged in a study of Islamic trends in present-dayTurkey. Recent publications include Du socialisme ottoman a l’internationalismeanatolien (Istanbul, Isis, 1977) and Ottomanism, national mouvements (inTurkish, Istanbul, Yapı ve Kredi Yay., 2000).

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freemasonry in turkey a by-product of western penetration ( dumont, paul)

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