Emanuel Karasu

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Emanuel Karasu (1862-1934) was a lawyer and a member of the prominent Sephardic Jewish Carasso family of Ottoman Salonica (now Thessaloniki, Greece). He was a prominent member of the Young Turks. The name is also spelled Karaso, Karassu, Karasso and Carasso.

Karasu was a member (some sources say founder) and later president of the Macedonian Risorta Masonic lodge in Thessaloniki and pioneered the masonic movement within the Ottoman Empire.[1] Masonic lodges and other secret societies in Salonica were meeting places for sympathizers of the Young Turks, including Talat Pasha. Karasu was one of the first non-Muslim members of the Ottoman Freedom Society, which later became part of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP); when the CUP came to power, he became the Salonica deputy in the Ottoman parliament.^[1] Karasu was one of the three men who told Sultan Abdülhamit II of his deposition in April 1909. He was worked for the cooperation of various Jewish organizations in Turkey, and insisted that Turkish Jews were Turks first and Jews second; he opposed Zionist settlement in Ottoman Palestine. He lost favor under Atatürk and went into exile in Italy; he died in Trieste in 1934. ^[2]

He was the uncle of Isaac Carasso, the founder of Groupe Danone.

[edit] References

1. ^ Ahsene Gül Tokay, "Macedonian Reforms and Muslim Opposition during the Hamidian Era: 1878–1908", Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 14:1 (2003)
2. ^ Encyclopedia Judaica as quoted in Google answers