§1 Keeping It Within the Family,
1862 – 1908
The marriage of the Muslim Mehmet Zekeriya and the Kapancı
Dönme Sabiha, daughter of Nazmi Efendi (later Sertel), in 1912 was a
revolutionary act, breaking down walls of distinction. It is believed in
Turkey to have been the first between a Dönme woman and a Muslim
Turkish man. As we see in the biography of Sabiha and in Mehmet Ze-
keriya’s autobiography, Dönme greeted the decision with a mixture of
shock and celebration:
§ Sabiha’s Salonikan home was turned into a battlefield by the strong-willed
teenager’s decision to marry a Muslim man.
“Dönme do not marry outsiders,” her sister warned her. “It would only
bring disaster.”
“Dönme are narrow-minded,” Sabiha replied. Look how they say, ‘We
are all one, religion, language, nationality make no difference among us.’... Will they then still refuse to intermarry?”^1
“Are you crazy? You are a Dönme. How can you marry a Turk [i.e., a
Muslim]?”
“I do not know whether I am a Turk. We are all humans. We match, he
wants me, and I am pleased to accept.”^2
Her older brother, Hidayet, was outraged: “What? Our sister, a Dönme,
marry a Turk? Choose her own husband? This one is crazy. Mother, she
will ruin the honor of the entire family. She will humiliate us in the eyes
of all Dönme!” He advises his mother to keep the seventeen-year-old at
home so that she cannot humiliate the family any further.^3
Meanwhile, her prospective groom was being congratulated.
“Dönme have collected information about me,” Mehmet Zekeriya
thinks to himself, “and have decided to meet with me once and see me