Istanbul
The Karakaş section of the lower level of the cemetery, in great contrast
to the Kapancı section, is far tidier, the flowers in the middle of the graves
are watered, and there is hardly a weed or broken grave. It is obvious that
the graves are cleaned regularly. What is also noticeable about the Karakaş
section is how few photographs there are and the near complete absence
of the identifier “Salonikan.” The leading Karakaş families are represented
here: İpekçi, Dilber, Mısırlı, Kibar, and Balcı. For example, one finds the
simple grave of Ali Macit Karakaş ( 1876 – 1936 ), the son of Mehmet Karakaş,
which is plain, without any adornment, only the name and dates. One
finds in this section the graves of leading Karakaş school administrators and
educators, such as İpekçi İsmail (d. 1936 ). İpekçi’s tomb is a mainly plain
gravestone, decorated only with a floral motif, and there is no photograph,
just black, thick, art deco letters stating his name and birth and death dates.
As will be explained below, however, many Karakaş tombs, befitting the
most antinomian of Dönme groups, contain striking religious language.
The Karakaş and Kapancı dead lie in the Valley of the Nightingales.
The first generation of the population exchange who were members of
the Yakubi group buried their dead in a small cemetery in the neighbor-
hood of Maçka. I visited the cemetery with a descendant of the Kapancı
who has extensive knowledge of all three Dönme groups. The cemetery
consists of several hundred graves, many of which have been robbed, or
their tombstones toppled over. It is overrun with weeds and trees. There is
no caretaker, only a homeless man who resides in the cemetery with five
dogs and four cats. Most photographs have been chipped away, and few
remain. Some tombstones are inscribed in the Latin alphabet, but most
are in Ottoman. Many of the people buried in this cemetery are identified
as “Salonikan,” and most were government officials, military men among
them. Like most of those buried in the Kapancı section of Bülbüldere,
most in the Maçka cemetery were born in Salonika (or, less frequently,
in Monastir, Skopje, and other places in Macedonia) in the 1870 s and
1880 s and died in Istanbul between 1927 and 1931. Most were buried in
1931. The newest tombstone seems to be from 1950. Since that time, most
Yakubis, the smallest group of the remaining Dönme, have been buried in
the main Muslim cemetery in Feriköy.
remembering salonikan originsEstablishing a cemetery is an act of staking a claim to a locality, espe-
cially when those who bury their dead bring the bones or gravestones of