Istanbul
In 1934 , the socialist Mehmet Zekeriya Sertel and the liberal Ahmet
Emin Yalman purchased Ta n (Dawn), and ran it together for two years;
Yalman becoming the head writer and Mehmet Zekeriya and his wife
Sabiha Sertel writers for the paper. The writers of Cumhuriyet, stalwart
Kemalist nationalists, especially the double-chinned owner and head
writer Yunus Nadi (d. 1945 ), like Yalman close to Atatürk, and a former
member of the CUP, began attacking these Dönme journalists. The late
1930 s and first half of the 1940 s witnessed numerous lawsuits filed by one
newspaper or writer against another, and frequent closings of papers.^37
Race was never far from the minds of those who attacked the Dönme. In
1937 , a great dispute broke out between Yalman’s Ta n and Nadi’s Cumhu-
riyet.^38 After Ta n accused Cumhuriyet of defending fascist propaganda in
Turkey, Cumhuriyet quickly shot back, accusing Ta n of spreading Commu-
nist propaganda.^39 Moreover, despite Yalman’s repeated efforts to distance
himself from any associations with Jews, Cumhuriyet also compared Ta n to
a noisy synagogue.^40 The same year, Yalman again criticized the remnants
of the Ottoman cultural mosaic when he wrote a front-page article in Ta n
entitled “Turkish in Public Places,” in which he excoriated Jews for declar-
ing their foreignness by preferring to speak Spanish (Ladino) and French
in public, rather than Turkish.^41 Jews were also publicly urging their co-
religionists to speak Turkish in public during these years, the best-known
example being Avram Galanté / Galanti’s book Vatandaş Türkçe Konuş!
(Speak Turkish, Citizen!).^42 While it was no secret that Galanté was Jew-
ish, the fear about Yalman was that he was a secret Jew. Nadi attacked Yal-
man personally, arguing he was the grandson of the Jewish rebel Shabbatai
Tzevi who had superficially converted to Islam in order to save his life.
Like Sabiha Sertel, Nadi added, Yalman was not a Turk, but belonged to a
people who, although they were of a different race, mentality, and identity,
hid under the Turkish name.^43 No matter how much Yalman attempted
to avoid the topic of the Dönme, his enemies endlessly reminded him of
his background. In 1924 , as reported in the Islamist Sebîlürreşat (Straight
Course), Nadi asserted that Yalman was a “blood brother” of Rüştü, re-
peating the latter’s rhetoric from two decades before.^44
Finally, Yalman used the term Dönme in print for the first time. A mem-
ber of the most Muslim of the Dönme sects, the Yakubi, which he had
claimed a dozen years earlier had completely assimilated into the Muslim
community, Yalman defended himself (and by extension Karakaş Sabiha
Sertel): “You say, ‘You are not a Turk, you are a Dönme, you have no