In my estimation, this is really not true. The Atajew site is by retarded Islamists, while the other article (which at least has a lot of citations) is from an Armenian propaganda site. I appreciate you posted something with a lot of sources and citations here, but it seems very loaded.
Dönmeh Yehuborim were not some hyper elitist Yehuborim sect, they intermarried with the ruling class of Turks and others by the 19th century. Their system of religion had clear Islamic elements by this point, even if many were pretending. Also, they were the primary 'westernizing' group in Salonica by that time.
It is difficult in a city with a 56 percent or so Yehuborim population not to go to some sort of educational institution where Yehuborim are at least present. Yehuborim tended to control modern oral education in Islamic countries, even through the so-called 'French schools'.
To top it all off, Shemsi Effendi is not Shimon Zvi. These are two different individuals, although both are Yehuborim. The claim Shemsi Effendi started a 'school for Yehuborim' is not correct. It was a modernizing school which taught French and Greek, but also Arabic. It had Muslim Turkish students and the reason for that was because Muslim parents saw the French-style schools as encouraging total apostasy, while the Dönmeh ones were relatively modern and catered to both sexes yet encouraged Islamic virtues and an education in the Qu'ran. I can't find any evidence that Hebrew or Ladino was taught at them, let alone kabbalah-blah shit.
Zübeyde Hanım, Ataturk's mother, was a devout Muslim, and as a child he was also sent to an Islamic school and she opposed the idea of him going to the Effendi-run one, which is basically unthinkable for a Yehubor at that point.
The Ottoman state found the Islamic emphasis in these schools to be in line with their goals which prompted them to fund them, and they also found these schools useful due to their lack of connection with foreign powers:
To send a confirmed Yehubor to both an Islamic school and then a mainstream Turkish elite school
first with so many Yehuborim schools already there also makes little sense. It is possible, but it certainly is not the choice that the article is consistent with promoting. Yehuborim also had a completely separate system of educational institutions in Salonica with 100 percent Yehuborim attendance.
Also, one of the reasons these schools were set up and funded rapidly is that many in Salonica only spoke Bulgarian or Vlach, and the Ottoman authorities saw this as a major stumbling block to creating an Ottoman identity and a factor drawing people away from Islam. So how would that make sense if the schools like Feyziye were
only attended by Yehuborim?
Much as I appreciate the citations involved here, the author also does confuse Albanian with Armenian.
If we are to talk about the prevalence of Yehuborim among the Young Turks and their influence in exterminating Greeks (which even declassified British intelligence files speak about) and their influence upon Ataturk that is a different story. Even then, the history of Greece and Turkey by themselves against each other is very ugly in this regard, without direct Yehuborim probing per se.
Beyond such influences, the behavior does not track Yehuborim. As the Atajew site says, this was the biggest enemy and destroyer of Islam, perhaps ever, and he did not encourage communism either. He also renamed the city on the Bosphorus from the name of the scum Constantine to something else.
HPHC's
post is more revealing on this.
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