Durham E-Theses The portrayal of women in modern Turkish literature Browning, Barbara Janet How to cite: Browning, Barbara Janet (1981) The portrayal of women in modern Turkish literature, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7547/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk ABSTRACT The thesis is concerned with the position of women in Turkish society since the founding of the Republic in 1923, and the portrayal of these women in selected novels, short stories and plays of Turkish authors from 1922 until 1979. The thesis examines whether the subordination of women in society is ascribed in literary works to their supposed innate inferiority as women, or is shown to be a consequence of women's circ= cumscribed position and limited possibilities. It investigates literary interpretations of thB concept of honour and shame and the nature of female sexuality, as well as analysing the portrayals of women in their different roles % from familial and domestic to independent and r©volu= tionary0 The study illustrates the extent to which literature appears to reinforce old ideas and expectations about women, and how raeeh it tends towards 8 deeper analysis of character and behaviour. It identi= fies works which deliberately set out to increase awareness of and sensitivity to the injustices suffered by women„ and to show women in roles which enable them to gain fulfilment as individuals end indepen• dence as a group. It is apparent that the increasing participation of women in public life and thsir entry into paid employment in particular have posed a threat to the old order of female domesticity, and the fear of the disruption that this might cause in society and in the family is a recurrent theme in literature. On the other hand there are also striking portrayals of outstanding women l@aders as well as character^ isations of more ordinary women struggling to maintain their integrity*, The copyright of thi9 thssis rests with tho author« No quotation from it should be publishsd without her prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledgedo THE PORTRAYAL OF li/OWEN IN MODERN TURKISH LITERATURE Barbara Janet Browning Thesis submitted for the degree of Plaster of Arts The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. University of Durham School of Oriental Studies Durham 1981 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Foreword iii Glossary of Turkish Words w Note on Quotations and Translations of Literary Texts vi Chapter I s Introduction 1 1 - The Nature of the Research 1 2 - General Background Information 10 3 - Women*8 Emancipation in Turkey 13 4 - An Outline of the History of Turkish Literature 22 5 = Presentation and Organisation of the Material 27 Chapter II : A Survey of Existing Studies of the Portrayal of Women in Turkish Literature 39 Chapter III ; Desired and Portrayed Characteristics of Woman 57 1923-1940 57 The 1940s and 1950s 68 The 1960s and 1970s 81 Chapter IV : Honour, Shame and the Sexuality of Women 112 1923=1940 112 The 1940s and 1950s 125 The 1960s and 1970s 134 Chapter V : Women in the Family and their Roles as Mothers, Wives, Sweethearts, Etc 163 1923-1940 163 The 1940s and 1950s 179 The 1960s and 1970s 204 Chapter VI : Women as Independent, Autonomous Beings 246 1923=1940 246 The 1940s and 1950s 259 The 1960s and 1970s 273 Chapter VII : Conclusion 308 Appendix I : Some of the works included in this study which have been serialised or dramatised for reproduc• tion on radio and cinema films 317 Appendix II : Selected Koranic passages concerning women 318 Bibliography 319 FOREWORD The main part of this thesis derives from work carried out in my own home but with regular and frequent visits to the office of my super• visor and friend John Norton in the Turkish Department of the School of Oriental Studies in Durhams It is to John Norton that I owe the greatest debt of gratitude for his constant and kindly encouragement and assistance. There are many more friends in Durham, especially Turkish friends, with whom I had the benefit of discussing my choice of literary works and different aspects of women's position in society both in Turkey and elsewhere, and without whose assistance and interest my work would have been much more arduouse They are too numerous to name, but I must record my thanks to Judith Okely and Marie Johnson, both in the Anthropology Department in Durham, who kindly read parts of the thesis and whose constructive criticisms and comments helped to bring the thesis to its final form0 I was very fortunate in receiving a grant which enabled me to spend three weeks in Turkey in Way 1979 in order to carry out interviews and obtain access to books and obtain new publications, I know I shall never be able to repay the hospitality shown to me by Zehra and Cahit Kavcar in Ankara and Suzan and Fikri Aydin and their family in Istanbuls and I am immensely grateful to them alio I also wish to express my sincere thanks to all those people = each prominent in her or his own field = who granted me an interview and who were, without exception, most generous with their time and interest,, I am particularly grateful to Gungor Oilmen Kalyoncu whom, although he had V GLOSSARY OF TURKISH WORDS a §a lord, masters local big landowner baslik money paid by the bridegroom to the bride's family <parsa f women's outdoor overgarment gecekondu unauthorized construction set up in one night, squatter's house, shanty imam prayer leaderj religious leader kuma second wife (of two) lise high school mahalle street; quarter^ district mevlud a religious meeting held in memory of a deceased person, in which the Mevlud (poem written by Suleyraan Celebi depicting the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, sung only by special singers) is chanted namaz ritual worshipj prayer pace veil salvar baggy trousers seriat > canonical law vilayet a province governed by a vali (Definitions taken from New Redhouse Tugkish-English Dictionary Istanbul, 1974). iv once been resident in Durham, I did not meet until seeking him out at the ^ehir Tiyatrosu in Istanbul in the Spring of 1979. It was Gungor Oilmen's play Kurban which inspired me to embark on a study of the portrayal of women in Turkish literature, and which has continued to inspire me throughout, and it was delightful to have the opportunity to discuss the play at length with its creator. Finally, I should like to thank Zulkuf Aydin, who has helped me from almost the first days when I was trying to learn Turkishj he has been a constant source of support and encouragement, correcting my trans<= lations of Turkish idioms, and some of my ideas. Without him to stimulate my occasionally flagging morale I could not have brought this study to a conclusion. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1 - THE NATURE OF THE RESEARCH The subject of this study is the position of women in Turkish society since the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, and the portrayal of these women in selected novels, short stories and plays of Turkish 1 authors from 1922 until today. I have taken literature as a medium through which to try to gain an insight into what the revolutionary formal changes wrought in the early years of the Republic have amounted to in practice, and what effect these changes have had on the daily domestic lives of men and women. While a study based on a severely limited number of literary works is doubly representational, its inherently representational nature can be given a more favourable interpretation, for literature can be said to "single out a pattern of experience that is sufficient• ly representative of our social structure, that recurs sufficiently often mutandis mutatis,, for people to 'need a word for it' and adopt 2 an attitude towards it." Furthermore, there has been a conscious effort by many modern authors in Turkey to educate and to influence society's attitudes through their works. Professor of Sociology, Kemal Karpat, goes so far as to say that literature in Turkey plays an instrumental part in preparing the state of mind and emotional 3 background for social evolution. <smr* 2 Literary criticism cannot, of course, be a substitute for social history, but I should like to stress the importance of taking account of the social base from which literature arises, the kinds of human situation that literature reflects, and the ways in which it reflects them,. Stories of violence and murder reported in the press all too often prove to be the eruption of underlying tensions and stress gen• erated by the contradictions and ambiguities locked within society,, Reports of such tragic events taken from real life have inspired the stories of contemporary Turkish authors such as Bekir Yildiz, Fakir 5 Baykurt and Necati Cumali.