sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

THE INTERSECTION OF THE PUBLIC AND THE PRIVATE IN AN
AUTOBIOGRAPHY: ONE ERA TWO WOMEN: IN EACH OTHER’S
MIRROR
Nazan AKSOY *
Autobiography is a recently developed literary genre in Turkish literature. Partly due to the
inadequate development of the written culture for a long time, memories were mostly shared orally
both in family circles and among acquaintances. Also people who wished to write their
autobiographies were discouraged by pressure from the state and society, fearing that what they
wrote might violate the principle of privacy. The belated emergence of individualism in Turkey can be
pointed out among the chief reasons that relegated autobiographical writing to the background.
Until 1990s, almost all autobiography writers have typically been from highly educated elite majority
of whose families have had some sort of role in political and economic life in Turkey.
The westernization process and the construction of the Turkish nation‐ state helped unite men
and women along collective goals and the republican project supported the role of the women in the
public sphere. Already in the nineteenth century the traditional structure of Ottoman society was
beginning to decline leading the way to initial steps of modernization. The Ottoman elite that viewed
modernization as a means of emancipation from traditional patriarchal authority both for women
and for themselves thought that women’s liberation was a central issue. As Deniz Kandiyoti put forth,
by pointing out the oppression and powerlessness women had, modernist and reformist men
criticized the aspects of their society which constrain them as well. 1 The ideas on reforms concerning
the question of women were the most important steps in the severing of the ties with the past. In
the process of modernization, women were the crucial symbol both at home and abroad. During the
construction of the nation state women were needed to be integrated in the political and economic
structure since they had gained recognition in the society both through their support of the war of
independence and their active role in economic production.
Nevertheless, the acceptance of women into the public sphere did not guarantee women’s
emancipation. Within the process of constructing a nation state, women’s rights gained momentum
by the aid of the bureaucratic elite and the state itself, but these rights were part of the politics
alongside individual rights and civil rights. These changes in the public sphere helped emergence of
new women and men, yet could not prevent the continuation of the patriarchal conventions
especially in the private life.
The new republican ideology invited new women to public service and many years later these
women published their autobiographies in order to present their exemplary lives and encourage new
generations to participate in the public sphere. Yet nationalism frowned upon individualistic world
views and it suppressed feminist aspirations for the sake of establishing a social cohesion in the
making of a nation.
First autobiographical narratives of pioneering women mostly reveal a kind of success story in the
male world of public life. These women were brought up in the earliest phases of Turkish
modernization. While telling the story of their Bildung, they voiced the painful experiences resulting
from polygamy; they advocated the right of education and called for the eradication of gender
discrimination‐ a demand which was in line with ideas of progressive men of the period. Although
*
Istanbul Bilgi University, Department of Comparative Literature