Formation Of Gender Identities In Republican Turkey And Women's Narratives As Transmitters Of 'Herstory' Of Modernization

Journal of Social History, Fall, 2001 by Ayse Durakbasa, Aynur Ilyasoglu

Writing history in Turkey has always been problematical because of the role assigned to officiat history writing in the construction of the nation-state after Turkey emerged as a young Republic out of a nationalist struggle in 1923. Women's history has also been written within such an ideological perspective for a long time, telling about the benefits of the state-initiated reforms related to women and the mobilization of women within the nation-building project. Women have been depicted as thankful to the Republic by dedicated 'daughters of the Republic' almost assigned to praise the new women representing Turkish nation. (Inan, 1969; Taskiran, 1976)

The feminist criticism which developed in parallel to the women's movement in the 1 980s has been critical about the 'state feminism' of the Republican period and has emphasized the symbolic significance of modernized images of women for the general outlook of the nation as a 'civilized nation' and the new Republic as a democratic state facing the West. (Tekeli, 1988) Feminists discussed the meaning of Republican reforms for women and basically argued that these reforms did not aim at women's liberation for they essentially defined women as breeders and educators of the new generations, i.e. 'enlightened mothers of the nation'. (Tekeli, 1988; Kandiyoti, 1987)

Most of these studies are based on an evaluation of official or other public discourses such as Ataturk's speeches, literary works, male ideologues' polemical writings, newspaper articles, etc. Women's oral history and the study of written life documents by women constitute more recently discovered areas of research. Women's oral history tries to uncover women's voices by depending on personal narratives rather than public rhetoric and discourses. The modernist (male) elite has defined the 'required and sufficient degree of modernization' over women 's bodies, behavior and social conduct. Women's own self definitions, perceptions, their own theories of self and moral social conduct, however, can best be understood studying their own accounts and analyzing their own construction of their lives and life histories.

Women fiction writers have long been better than historians at highlighting the personal crisis that women had to solve as they adopted the new ways of socializing with men in Republican Balls or at tea parties and meetings of various sorts. One well-known novelist, Adalet Agaoglu, in the essay she wrote about Mevhibe Inonu [1], following her death, tells about those forgotten women who were the real persons, real carriers of modernization.

... Why have those women been the ones whose inner worlds have been the least of interest? Why haven't they been written about with a deep interest of seeing and knowing? When they were written about, they were written merely from the angle that showed their social missions. The wife of a statesman, head of an association, volunteer nurse, corporal, teacher, the first lawyer, loyal wife, perfect mother ... "Those women" were women who could overcome all those "ill eyes" over them, without losing their balance. They were the ones who had to read in Latin alphabet the next day, although they were writing in Arabic script the day before; they were the ones who had to regulate the degree of intimacy with great caution and meticulous attention as they danced with men who were total strangers to them; those who looked properly dressed although they gave up the yashmak and the carshaf.

... Even if the Great Principles of the Republican Revolution, and the leaders of those principles were backing you, still these were not deeds easy to accomplish ... Now, it seems easy to tell. (Agaoglu, 1993, p. 148-150)

Various ideological discourses defined the 'new women' as 'modem but virtuous' and set the limits as to what degree the women could be 'modernized' while 'traditional womanhood' was scrutinized. The tensions that these women lived through between tradition and modernity, and how they responded to the prescriptive discourses have not been revealed except through some perceptive literary works. Our oral history interviews with mostly educated women, of the same age as the Republic, provide vivid first-person narratives about women's feelings and the adaptive strategies they developed to cope with such tensions. We will be using the material produced by the Women's Oral History Pilot Project [2] by the Women's Library, Istanbul and other interviews that we carried out seperately. The interviews that we are referring to are mainly with women who were considered as agents of modernization, educated, professional women, such as teachers, academics or doctors plus the group of women that were the first target of the Republican ideals and rituals, wives of civil bureaucrats, diplomats or military staff. These women lived out the changes in the daily practices in home life and social life. The research materials we are using do not reveal the differences in experience of those women who stand at a greater distance from the modernization project, those women from working class or peasant families.