Between Empire and Nation-State
that were seen as having mixed origins or as being rootless were despised.
The anonymous author begins by including the Dönme among those
“groups whose religion and nationality are unknown” ( 6 ). He defines the
group as “a community that emerged in Salonika two and half centuries
before, which since that time has been known as the ‘Dönme’—neither
Muslim, nor Jewish, or in other words, the Avdeti [those who return to
their original religion].” They remain in a state of corruption between
Islam and Judaism ( 9 ). Worse, Shabbatai Tzevi was a vagabond Jew who
acted strangely and attracted Copts, Zoroastrians, and Jews to his side.
The problems with the Dönme cascaded from their being people with-
out roots and of confused origins, the anonymous author of Dönmeler
asserts. The Dönme had turned in on themselves, forming a new com-
munity, and endogamous marriage within a small group had endowed
them with peculiar biological traits. Whereas the Hunyos [Karakaş] and
Kavayeros [Kapancı] “resemble each other in type, the Sazan or Sazaniko
[Yakubi] type is distinguished from the others by large, arched noses” ( 8 ).
The author illustrated this with what purported to be the profile of a
large-nosed Sazan male, wearing a tie and coat, who would seem to be
a civil servant. A sazan is a type of carp, and when it turns in the water
in sunlight, its scales reflect different colors. Similarly, the anonymous
author claimed, the Dönme appeared different to outsiders depending
on the circumstances. In addition, just as carp can live in both fresh and
salt water, the Dönme, the author implies, could not be pinned down to
being Jewish or being Muslim.^59
Even worse, to the author, endogamy “has paved the way for some
chronic and contagious diseases to spread and increase among them.”
Because of this, “in order to ameliorate the health of their offspring,
since the Constitutional Revolution, some of them have begun to take
Muslim girls in marriage, and even to marry vigorous, good-looking Eu-
ropean girls.” Muslims who give their daughters in marriage to “those
among whom tuberculosis and neuralgia / neural disorders are wide-
spread are committing murder, and Europeans who marry them are also
endangering themselves” ( 10 ). Some Dönme girls, the author asserts,
“speak like the crowing of roosters, and while speaking incessantly move
their eyes, eyebrows, and even their entire bodies in strange and bizarre
gestures, as though they were crazy,” a manifestation of the nervous dis-
orders prevalent among the group. An unflattering illustration appears
immediately following this, labeled “the profile of a Dönme woman.”