Almost from the moment of their arrival in Turkey as part of the popu-
lation exchange, the Dönme were greeted with suspicion about their true
nature. At the beginning of 1924 , a cartoon titled “One Word, Two Mean-
ings” in one of the most popular humor magazines in Istanbul poked fun
at the Dönme.^1 The caption plays on the double meaning of the word
dönme. Two fez-wearing Dönme men, who appear puzzled, are talking.
One says to the other, using dönme as a noun: “I don’t know what we are
doing wrong. They call us ‘apostates from Judaism [Yahudilikten dönme],’
and we call ourselves ‘apostates [dönmeyiz].’ ” The noun dönme here signi-
fies one who has genuinely adopted another faith, but if dönme is regarded
as a verb, the same sentence denies the authenticity of Dönme conversion
to Islam, becoming: “I don’t know what we are doing wrong. They say to
us, ‘Don’t apostatize from Judaism [Yahudilikten dönme],’ and we say, ‘We
don’t apostatize [dönmeyiz].” Treating dönme as a verb would make the
speaker say that they are not sincere Muslims, but in fact remain commit-
ted Jews. The Dönme were used to being declared defectors from Juda-
ism. In the popular late Ottoman / early Turkish republican view of them
as dissimulators of their true identity, they faced the charge that they were
only pretended apostates.
It is conventional wisdom that the population exchange satisfied the
aims of the two states, hastening their national project and utopian dream
of building new homogeneous nations without ethnic or religious differ-
ences.^2 When we shift the focus from states to humans, however, we find
another story. As this cartoon shows, it was not in fact an easy process.
How could Greece and Turkey assimilate large populations that, to the
§ 7 Loyal Turks or Fake Muslims?
Debating Dönme in Istanbul, 1923–1939