Forgetting to Forget, 1923–1944 their difference but of the fact that they were Jews by blood. Faik Ökte
checked Muslims’ backgrounds to see if they were Dönme, and when he
believed they were, he taxed them at a higher rate, making them pay twice
as much as Muslims, yet half as much as Christians and Jews. Three of the
four categories of the tax he imposed in Istanbul included Jews, or those
perceived as Jews: non-Muslim (Armenians, Jews, and Orthodox Chris-
tians), foreign (including Jewish refugees from Germany), and Dönme
(Jewish converts to Islam). Ökte’s actions clearly indicate a racial under-
standing and inquisitorial mentality; after all, Dönme were descendants
of people who had converted three centuries before.
Many argue that the tax was implemented because of the close relations
between Turkey and Nazi Germany and Nazi sympathy prevalent among
many Turks, including the prime minister. But anti-Dönme sentiment
and fears of Dönme economic power existed two decades before the tax
was applied. In the 1940 s, the state did not forget that the Dönme had
been distinct and a potential economic threat. Popular perceptions of se-
cret Jewish economic power and treachery for not using their wealth to
help in the struggle for independence dovetailed with conspiracy theories
of Dönme power, which still had resonance twenty years after the group
arrived en masse in Turkey. The fact that some Dönme also did not keep
their end of the deal by not becoming sincerely secular and continued to
pursue a separate identity also played a role in their being categorized as a
distinct group. The Turkish nation-state reactivated an Ottoman practice
of social division by demarcating Muslims from non-Muslims, but then
added a modern touch by separating Dönme from Muslim.
How did the state know who was a Dönme? Many have speculated that
the Dönme carried a special number on their identity cards that identified
them as Dönme, that the state marked them when they arrived in 1923
and 1924. In fact, more important than the state were the neighbors of the
Dönme who implemented the tax. Secret commissions met behind closed
doors to draw up lists of those liable to the tax and to fix an arbitrary
amount that taxees had to pay in cash within two weeks. The tax was im-
plemented by neighborhood committees. The people among whom the
Dönme resided turned them in to the authorities. This meant that their
neighbors always knew of their identity. The Dönme had arrived in Tur-
key at the end of the population exchange in clusters of Kapancı, Karakaş,
and Yakubi family groups. Their arrival was accompanied by the spirited
debate in the press—kicked off by one of their own, Rüştü—about their