Ataturk's Turkey Overturned By HILLEL HALKIN

Some 12 or 13 years ago, when I was reporting from Israel for the New York weekly, the Forward, I wrote a piece on Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern secular Turkey, that I submitted to the newspaper with some trepidation.

In it, I presented evidence for the likelihood of Ataturk's having had a Jewish — or more precisely, a Doenmeh — father.

The Doenmeh were a heretical Jewish sect formed, after the conversion to Islam in the 17th century of the Turkish-Jewish messianic pretender Sabbetai Zevi, by those of his followers who continued to believe in him.

Conducting themselves outwardly as Muslims in imitation of him, they lived secretly as Jews and continued to exist as a distinct, if shadowy, group well into the 20th century.

In the many biographies of Ataturk there were three or four different versions of his father's background, and although none identified him as a Jew, their very multiplicity suggested that he had been covering up his family origins.

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