Loyal Turks or Fake Muslims? Rüştü continues by stating it was time for the Turkish Grand National
Assembly to eliminate this problem definitively, saving the society and
economy from this danger. He argues the population exchange had been
established to bring in Turks. The government did not even accept Mus-
lim Albanians, and the non-Turks were dispersed to the far corners of
the country. The aim was to create a Turkish people. How could it then
accept the Dönme, who were not Turks, never having intermarried with
any other group, “not grafting themselves onto another root,” nor ac-
cepted assimilation, and not Muslims, “as has been known for centuries
by the Muslim Turks who lived near them,” and as Rüştü can attest. This
being the case, Rüştü asks rhetorically how the Turkish Grand National
Assembly can allow this wealthy foreign group, which falsely hides behind
Islamic and Turkish masks, to settle and gain fortunes in Istanbul, Izmir,
and Bursa, the very economic gates of the country. He asks just because
the military victory has been won, should they not continue the same
vigilance of soldiers on the front? Life is a struggle, he argues, social, eco-
nomic, moral, and political, and all require vigilance.
In the end of the article, Rüştü makes his request to the MPs, which
allows for the probability that the Dönme will not be sent back to Greece.
He petitions “that you either let these old refugees who are not of your
blood or religion remain outside of the national boundaries, not accept-
ing them as immigrants, or that you determine which ones are Salonikan
Dönme, mark them, disperse them to every corner of the country, and
pass a law ensuring that they mix with Turkish families and thus are as-
similated.” Doing so, he continues, will save the pure and moral Turkish
people and Turkishness, and even himself, who works for the lofty aims
of Turkishness, from being besmirched by the dirty name and stain of
the Dönme. He signed the petition “in the name of the enlightened ones
honestly desiring the Dönme mixing with the Turks.” Rüştü holds out
the possibility that the Dönme may mix with Turks, although this contra-
dicts his understanding of being Turkish. He mentions intermarriage as a
strategy of integration, which may have offered a way for the Dönme to
belong while acknowledging their stark difference. One wonders whether
Muslims would accept the Dönme into the heart of the nation if they
were actually marked as Rüştü desired.
Rüştü’s “Open Letter to All Salonikan Dönme,” which appeared in
Vakit three days after the first article appeared is a phenomenal statement
of racialized nationalism.^9 Rüştü begins by claiming that the Dönme had