Conclusion
groups, the abandoning of endogamy and the “dilution of identity” go
together.^28 In other words, “when men and women from the same ethnic
group choose to marry outsiders, we have a good hint that the morale of
that group is low.”^29
The internal factor of marrying secular Turks, along with several exter-
nal factors, served to allow Dönme disappearance into Turkish society.
The Dönme lost some of their wealth to the exorbitant wealth tax, whose
implementation created an emotional as well as financial loss. They lost
control over the content of the education in their schools, because all
schools were controlled by the secular nationalist central state. Their dis-
appearance is evidence of the success of the Turkish secularization project,
at least with this community. They could no longer give their youth the
same education, and their students were open to outsiders in larger num-
bers than ever before.
The Dönme could not recover from the forced migration and the strait-
jacket of the nation-state mode of being. Due to the conflation of eth-
nicity (Greek or Turkish), religion (Orthodox Christian or secular Islam),
territory (Greece or Turkey), and imagined origins in a pure, ancient past
(whether ancient Greece or Hittite and Sumerian), in Greece, to be Greek
is to be Orthodox Christian; in Turkey, to be Turkish is to be (secular) Mus-
lim. According to this understanding, it is simply inconceivable for one to
be Jewish or especially Muslim and Greek; likewise, one cannot be Jewish
or especially Christian and Turkish.^30 Any other identity means not being
local, not belonging, making oneself unwelcome, and presenting oneself as
a Trojan Horse, a dangerous internal threat left behind by a rival nation.^31
The experience of the Dönme in the Ottoman Empire and early Turk-
ish Republic invites comparison with other groups. Of all the compari-
sons that can be made, that between the Dönme and the Alevi, a sect of
Twelver Shi‘i Muslims who number many millions in Turkey, is most
apt.^32 One cannot convert to either group; membership is determined
by birth. Neither faith is a universalizing religious movement or seeks to
engage in a universal civilizing process by bringing its religion to others.
Historically, members of neither married women of other religions. The
Alevi and Dönme were both also frequently accused of having secret im-
moral rituals.^33
What is most significant is how the Alevi and Dönme historical expe-
riences are mirror images. In the Ottoman Empire, the rural Alevi were
considered disloyal for supporting the Shi‘i Safavi dynasty of Iran and