Forgetting to Forget, 1923–1944 demonstrating her transformation into a nationalist and secularist.^116 She
praises Atatürk’s founding of Turkey, bringing down the sultanate and
caliphate, replacing Shari‘a with secular law based on western European
law codes, which saved Turkey, bound to Islam due to Shari‘a, from the
tyranny of Islamic law, separating religion and the state, and removing re-
ligion’s reactionary hold over education. Moreover, Kemalist nationalism,
she says, was, like the nationalism of 1908 , not based on race.^117 Yet her
enemies proved the popularity of racialized nationalism.
Like Yalman, the Sertel couple also faced many lawsuits, especially in
the early 1940 s. The cases usually concerned slander, and pitted the social-
ist Sertels against fascists, such as the writers of Sebîlürreşat.^118 In 1941 and
1942 , Sabiha Sertel was forbidden to write. In fact, Yalman was permitted
to continue bringing out Ta n only on condition that he publish nothing
she had written. At the time, Turkey was seeking to be on good terms
with Nazi Germany, and the government could not stomach her anti-
fascist pieces. For example, she had written, “Hiding behind the mask
of nationalism, racists defend Nazi ideology, praise the wealth tax, and
propagate anti-minority views.”^119 Saracogˇlu was gleeful when the Nazis
attacked the USSR. Seeing the Nazis as the liberators of Soviet Turks, in
one speech he stated: “Turkish nationalism is not a peaceful nationalism.
Just as we have close relations with Turkish races living abroad, so, too is
it every Turk’s duty to wish for their good fortune. We are Turkists and
we will remain Turkists.”^120 He advocated a Greater Turkey and did not
arrest Pan-Turkists until February 1945 , when it was clear the Nazis were
en route to being destroyed. Cumhuriyet, the mouthpiece of the regime
and thus close to Saracogˇlu, labeled Sabiha Sertel a Bolshevik and Gypsy.
Sabiha Sertel was only allowed to write again when Turkey became of-
ficially neutral in 1944.^121
This incessant critic of the one-party state and advocate of multi-party
democracy became the enemy of the ruling RPP party, which had fright-
ening consequences. On a sunny, but cold day in the autumn of 1945 , a
furious mob of 10 , 000 fascist university students organized by the RPP
gathers first before the main gate of Istanbul University. It coalesces in
Bayezid Square, and then marches down Divan Yolu past where many
Karakaş Dönme had settled after being deported from Salonika, toward
the building of the newspaper Ta n in Çagˇogˇlu. Shouting “God damn
Communism” and “God damn the Sertels,” they first destroy a bookstore
selling communist books and then Ta n’s offices and press.^122 The students