Istanbul
principle with the Dönme way of being: the importance of maintaining
purity and distinction between insiders and outsiders.
Nationalism is based on binary dualisms such as purity and impurity.
But purity is an irreconcilable dualism. Mixedness is related to contami-
nation, and nation-states such as the Turkish Republic denied the actual
composite origins of its citizens and foreclosed a transcultural mestizo
future out of fear for the health and perpetuity of the race. In the new
Turkish Republic there was a desire to create a Turkish race by deny-
ing its actual mixed elements and precluding further mixing. Citizens of
the new Turkish nation-state anxiously wondered what would happen if
“true” Turks intermarried with Dönme, and whether this would harm the
future of the Turkish race, causing it to degenerate. The roots of the Turk-
ish plant were pure, it was believed, and would grow without grafting;
neither hybridity nor cross-fertilization was desired. The Dönme could
not be seen as a bridge to the future; rather, they represented the encircl-
ing vines of the Ottoman past, which needed to be uprooted, or the dead
past, which was to be expunged.
As with matters of racial contamination, others voiced a general con-
cern about a Dönme economic threat. An economist interviewed by the
same newspaper worried that Dönme would “take the nation’s economy
completely in their hands.” Yet some historians claim that a Dönme led
the government-backed National Turkish Commercial Union (Milli Türk
Ticaret Birligˇi), which aided the Muslim takeover of finance and bank-
ing and the purchase of Christian and Jewish businesses, and that many
other members of it were also Dönme. Alexis Alexandris suggests that
Ankara backed the Union as a ploy to win over the Dönme.^29 In the
light of everything we know about opposition to the Dönme, and gov-
ernment knowledge of who was a Dönme, however, this does not appear
to be a logical claim. It makes little sense when there was popular and
official fear of Dönme and Jewish economic domination. In parliament,
two MPs called for ridding the Turkish economy and government of-
fices of Jews. They argued Jews posed a threat, and immediately should
be kicked out of the Istanbul Stock Exchange, and that others should be
aware that some so-called Turkish merchants were actually secret Jews.^30
Moreover, when one examines the list of the founding members, current
officeholders, and members of the National Turkish Commercial Union,
as reported in a British ambassadorial report, which contains no reference
to them being Dönme, despite British attention to such details in other