Between Empire and Nation-State
great amounts of territory, and reports of Bulgarian and Greek atrocities
committed against Muslim soldiers and civilians alike. Muslims, especially
in the major Ottoman cities of Edirne, Istanbul, and Izmir, seething from
these material and psychological losses, influenced by an influx of Balkan
refugees, looking for traitors who had caused the defeat, searched for means
to avert further disaster. They railed against the role of imperialists and
their assumed comprador non-Muslim allies in the economy and promoted
measures such as boycotts that would strip them of that role and create a
Muslim business class and Muslim-controlled economy in their place.^63 For
example, because they held Italian citizenship, wealthy Jewish industrialists,
such as the Allatini family in Salonika, in whose villa Abdülhamid II had
been kept under house arrest, were driven out of their hometown by a boy-
cott of Italian goods following the 1911 Italian invasion of Tripoli (Libya).^64
Efforts to create a new Muslim economy occurred alongside efforts to as-
similate non-Turkish Muslims into Turkish culture. Thus 1913 was a turn-
ing point in the history of Ottoman society, when many sectors of society
explicitly turned away from the formerly prevailing plural Ottoman culture
and politics of Ottomanism in favor of a more Turkish Islamic one.
This was only the beginning. Crisis, the end of World War I, the occu-
pation of Istanbul by Allied forces, and the beginning of the Greco-Turkish
or Christian-Muslim war, as after the Constitutional Revolution a decade
earlier, caused writers to lump Dönme together with non- Muslims and for-
eigners and sparked renewed concern about the religion of the Dönme and
their political loyalty. Syncretistic elements, especially the Dönme, were
considered unworthy of acceptance. In 1919 , along with the anonymous
Dönmeler: Hunyos, Kavayeros, Sazan, other books attacking the Dönme
and their apparent greed and disloyalty began to appear. The historian
Ahmet Refik Altınay wrote that while the Turks suffered, Greeks, Arme-
nians, and Salonikans (Dönme) became wealthy. Worse, the Salonikans
deceived the Turks by hiding under a Muslim cloak.^65
Defining who was a Turk became important when the possibility
emerged that other peoples would try to pass as Turks. Opponents of
integration searched for a new way to mark difference. Voices and body
parts, such as noses and hands, were suddenly critical, as illustrated in
Dönmeler: Hunyos, Kavayeros, Sazan. If the racial or inherent difference
could be proven, if there were essential essences that biologically hindered
people from integrating, then Dönme could not be made into citizens.
Their difference meant they would not have to be given full rights, for