Istanbul
Akif ’s descendant, who moved to Istanbul at the age of four, told me that
“we were like a community, we had our own way of life, which was a little
different than that of those around us, even different than the Turkish
upper crust. We had parties together, socialized together, worked together
in the same trades.”^17
Boundaries between Dönme were hardly as strict in Istanbul as they had
been in Salonika. Kapancı and Karakaş settled and opened their schools
in the same neighborhoods and buried their dead in separate sections of
the same cemetery.^18 Some distinctions were maintained. The Karakaş
largely settled in Bakırköy, Bayezid, and Sultanahmet. Bakırköy became
a virtual Salonikan colony. In fact, the Karakaş had been there since the
1860 s. Salonikans settled there for business reasons or because of govern-
ment appointments in Istanbul.^19 Bakırköy may also have been the neigh-
borhood most closely resembling Hamidiye. In 1910 , to meet the needs
of the growing numbers of Dönme children the wealthy Karakaş fam-
ily established the Makriköy (Bakırköy) Boarding and Day Union Girls
School. The Feyz-i Ata in Bayezid was united with it in 1922. İbrahim
Alâettin Gövsa, who was also one of the first directors of the Feyz-i Ata,
ran the Makriköy school as well.
There is a street in Sultanahmet today named for the nineteenth- cen-
tury French author Pierre Loti, partly devoted to tourists, partly to resi-
dents, and partly to bureaucrats. According to the narratives of many
Karakaş, from the early 1920 s to the late 1940 s, the area south of Divan
Yolu and today’s Pierre Loti Hotel, then entirely filled with apartment
buildings, was crowded with members of this Dönme group. A Karakaş
descendant proudly pointed to the buildings in which his family had
settled after arriving from Salonika. His grandfather had owned a build-
ing on the corner of Piyer Loti and Medrese streets, and his father had
been born there in 1948 , thereafter joining most other Dönme when
he moved to Nişantaşı. Many of the Karakaş who arrived in the city
with the population exchange settled first in Sultanahmet and Bayezid.^20
Another interviewee told me that Piyer Loti Street behind the Köprülü
Library in Çemberlitaş was full of Dönme families. They remained there
until they moved en masse to be near what she says was their mosque,
the Teşvikiye Mosque in Nişantaşı.^21 Exchangees were originally sent to
places all over Turkey: Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara, Bursa, Çanakkale, Hatay
(Antioch), Samsun (a center of tobacco cultivation), Adana, Trabzon
(an important port), and Gümüşhane (important in commerce with