Between Empire and Nation-State
city after the Greek takeover, among them the families of Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk and Ahmet Emin Yalman. At the beginning of World War I, after
returning from Columbia University, Yalman became assistant professor of
philosophy and sociology at Istanbul University and news editor of Tanin,
the CUP’s organ and daily.^51 In 1917 , on a return train trip to Istanbul
from Germany where he was a war correspondent for Tanin, Yalman met
Atatürk. He introduced himself as a journalist and son of one of Atatürk’s
teachers at the military preparatory school in Salonika. Atatürk knew of
his teacher’s son’s writing and remembered his father, who had always paid
special attention to him.^52 Yalman went on to become editor-in-chief of the
daily Sabah, and then founded Vakit (Time) at the end of the war.
Between 1912 and 1919 , the Kapancı Dönme who migrated from Sa-
lonika mainly settled in Istanbul in the newer, centrally located upper-
middle-class and religiously and ethnically mixed districts of Nişantaşı
and Şişli. These districts, which had significant numbers of Armenian,
Greek, and Jewish inhabitants, lay at the frontier of the built and unbuilt
areas uphill and north of the geographically and culturally cosmopolitan
center at Taksim and Galata. Galata boasted the city’s western European
churches, embassies, schools, businesses, and residences. Dönme did not
settle in the Asian half of the city. Yıldız Sertel offers a snapshot of a com-
munity in motion and in transformation, and the continuities between
their Salonikan and Istanbul lives:
The Dönme who migrated from Salonika settled in Nişantaşı. There Sabiha
[Sertel] found her old friends and family members, and got caught up on
the latest gossip. Emine became engaged to Aziz, the son of aunt Faize. Aziz
went into the textile business with his brothers, and the business was going
well. Seniye married Dr. Santur while they were still in Salonika. They had
decided to open a hospital in Nişantaşı, called “House of Health.” Seniye was
happy, but the hospital kept her so busy that she did not even have time to
blink. Teacher Atiye, together with the teachers and administrators from the
Salonikan Terakki school, had begun to establish a new school. They were
thinking of naming it “Şişli Terraki.” Another group of Salonikans was about
to establish a school named “Fevziye.” Teacher Atiye was about to become
engaged to a teacher from this school. Thus the community that migrated
from Salonika had begun step by step to establish its own culture and health
centers. For all, a new life was beginning in Istanbul. Most worked in these
educational institutions, or in the professions as lawyers and doctors, or went
into business. Older brother Mecdi began to work in the flour trade.^53