Istanbul
was still embarrassed when people referred to him as a Jew.^6 Claiming to
have spent his whole life among Turks, and far from the Dönme (which
did not explain how he had learned so much about them), he stated that
he hated the Dönme because they did not conform to Turks’ religion,
morality, or nationality.
As large numbers of fellow Dönme began arriving in Turkey, Rüştü
engaged in a campaign to alert the public to what he considered their
true identity. He petitioned the Grand National Assembly, met with
Atatürk, as Yalman repeatedly did, was interviewed by all the major
newspapers in Ankara and Istanbul, and published an open letter to the
Dönme. For Rüştü the problem was simple: the Dönme were Jews in
origin and their disposition was absolutely alien to that of Muslims. His
message to the Dönme was also clear: “O Dönme youth, who are still
asleep! Wake up! The time for radical change has arrived!” His writings
were a sensation. The Dönme reacted harshly: one young man warned
that Rüştü would be killed by Dönme.^7
Rüştü offered a simple answer to the complex question whether the
Dönme had any relation to Turkishness and Islam. On January 4 , 1924 ,
Vakit carried a story on its second page entitled “Petition Concerning
the Dönme—Petition Asks That the Salonikan Dönme Not be Subject
to the Population Exchange.”^8 Rüştü had petitioned the Turkish Grand
National Assembly declaring that the group of which he was a member,
the Salonikan Dönme, were neither Turks nor Muslims, and thus should
not be accepted in Turkey in exchange for the Orthodox Christians or
Greeks of Anatolia. “This is the age of nations,” he claimed, and the very
first principle of nationalism was that every member of a nation had to
be the same in mind and body. But the Dönme “hid themselves under
the name and cloak ‘Muslim,’ despite the fact that by origin and race they
were Jews, and neither by soul nor conscience did they have any connec-
tion to Islam. Like other Jews, for three centuries they never mixed with
Turks and Muslims and lived apart, preserving their own communal rites
and particular conscience.” Ever since they had accepted Islam they had
been considered Muslims by the Ottoman authorities, but they always
deceived Muslims by outwardly appearing and dressing like them: “With
a thousand types of hypocrisy and false airs and costumes, they insinuated
their way among the Turks. Masquerading as Turks they gained a great
deal of wealth, acquiring the main commercial and economic positions,
thus becoming an important and dangerous factor.”