Conclusion lar nationalist state.^15 Because the way religion, education, and culture
were viewed in the Turkish Republic were the same as the modern life
the Dönme promoted, especially in Salonika, it is claimed, they had no
problems in the new state and were never oppressed. Although they had
to suppress their identity in the process, Dönme were not harmed by
policies of Turkification and succeeded in being considered part of Turk-
ishness. According to this understanding, the term “Dönme” can be so
watered down to mean any “Western-leaning” secular Turk in contem-
porary Turkey.
The problem with this thesis is that it is based on looking at the present
situation of the descendants of the Dönme and ironing over the painful
process of Turkification their families experienced in the first two decades
of the Republic. And if they had to suppress their Dönme identity and
lose their Dönme religion, was it a success from the perspective of the
Dönme or of the Turkish state? Oddly, it is claimed that the enemies of
the Dönme were not secular nationalists, but Islamists and Kurds.^16 Per-
haps those who argue this thesis are themselves an example of the Dönme
assimilation of Turkish nationalism, and identification of state interests
with their own. It is hard to imagine how the two most ruthlessly sup-
pressed groups in the early republic, Islamists and Kurds, could have af-
fected the Dönme more than the state. Taking the present for the 1930 s,
one cannot see the past in its own terms. Assuming that the Dönme had
already long been secular in Salonika allows one to make this assertion.
But because the Dönme were religious and cosmopolitan, and not secular
Turkish nationalists, the thesis that the Dönme paved the way for the
republic falls apart. It was the Islamic, plural empire, not the secular na-
tionalist state that tolerated them, did not examine their background or
beliefs and allowed them to rise to the top.
Turkish racialized nationalism that replaced Ottoman pluralism was
reflected at the symbolic level in the new slogan: ‘Unity in language, cul-
ture, and blood.”^17 Such sentiment was a bad omen for the Dönme. In
a homogeneous nation, diverse ethnic identities were to be superseded
by one racial identity; those who were born without the genealogy of
the majority had no right to be citizens. In 1921 , the future justice min-
ister Mahmut Esat (Bozkurt) wrote, “We are Turks not only by religion,
but mainly by race.”^18 Following the 1925 Sheikh Said Kurdish rebellion,
Prime Minister İsmet İnönü declared: “Our duty is to make all those
living in the Turkish fatherland into Turks. We will cut out and discard