Istanbul
erased the Ottoman elements of his past, reducing everything to a teleo-
logical reading of what he had done to contribute to the establishment of
the Turkish nation-state, implying teaching secular ideas to its founder.
A direct connection is thus made between Şemsi Efendi and the secular
Republic. His daughter Marufe ( 1876 – 1936 ) is buried nearby, her photo-
graph depicting a plain woman with short hair and her father’s oval face
and dark eyebrows. On her grave, her father is referred to as “the sheikh
of teachers,” a curious mix of Sufi title and modern profession.
The Dönme who desired to do so were initially able to establish some
of their traditional boundary-maintaining mechanisms in Turkey: living
together, running their own schools, and burying their dead in distinct
cemeteries. Yet they had to abandon two of their primary markers, reli-
gion and transnationalism, which were to be replaced by secularism and
nationalism. Few Dönme tombstones have mainstream Sunni Muslim
religious references. The transregionalism of the Dönme can be seen in
the forms they filled out when forced to leave Salonika. For example, the
documentation of the Mixed Commission set up to assess the value of
Salonikan Muslims’ wealth and property invariably lists their memleket,
homeland, as Salonika, the same concept expressed on many Kapancı
tombstones inscribed a decade later.