Loyal Turks or Fake Muslims? sion about who belonged to the Turkish nation and the Muslim commu-
nity. Two Dönme, Mehmet Karakaşzade Rüştü and Ahmet Emin Yalman,
presented to the anxious public radically different interpretations of their
group’s identity, the ability of the Dönme to integrate, and the boundar-
ies of being Turkish, Muslim, and Jewish. An investigation of the debate
about whether the Dönme belonged in Turkey provides insight into how
the Dönme struggled to legitimize their existence in the new republic and
come to terms with the radical new situation.
Karakaşzade Mehmet Rüştü: Organic National Identity
Ironically, in 1924 the public debate over the Dönme was incited by the
proclamations of one of their own, Karakaşzade Mehmet Rüştü (hereafter
Rüştü), a forty-five-year-old nationalist whose views primarily represented
an organic understanding of national identity. To him, Dönme could not
be considered members of the Turkish race, since Turks were Muslims by
birth and not by conversion.
Befitting the group’s international ties, Rüştü, a Karakaş Dönme gradu-
ate of the Feyziye school in Salonika, was a Dönme trader (of knitted
goods—socks, stockings, blankets—and rainwear—galoshes and umbrel-
las) who owned stores and properties in Salonika as late as 1915 and in
Berlin and Istanbul.^4 He had been married and divorced several times,
and the reason for his public fulmination against the group may have had
to do with marital discord, or he may have been paid to reveal the secrets
of the group. Some questioned Rüştü’s motivations. Were they financial?
One newspaper asked whether he had secretly set up an anti-Dönme
commercial organization to enable Turkish merchants to take control of
Turkish commerce.^5 Was he simply trying to ruin his economic competi-
tors, had he thrown in his lot with the Muslim Turks? He also apparently
quarreled with some Dönme over loans and payments, and went to court
in a dispute over alimony and ownership of properties with his Dönme
ex-wife. He may have decided to take out his anger at these people by
castigating all Dönme. Or did he have deep problems struggling among
given, ascribed, and desired identity? Tiring of being referred to as a Jew,
excommunicated from his community, did he go to Ankara to be awarded
an envoy posting abroad where he could start a new life? In the Istanbul
daily Vakit (Time), the Salonika correspondent Ahmet Arik wrote that
Rüştü had been banished from the community at the age of fifteen, yet