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There is another side to the issue, we the socialist revolutionaries thought that social
problems would not be solved unless the revolution took place. Provided that the major
conflict, that is the labour‐capital, got resolved, other problems would also be resolved.
The solution of the woman’s question, nature‐nurture conflict, ethnicity question, the
Kurdish question, environmental and all other problems awaited the revolution…I may be
exaggerating a little bit, but neither the party [illegal Communist Party] nor the state had
any women who were in the administrative, influential or power positions. At best, such
women took place in the local administrations and their number was scarce. The laws
were protective rather than positively discriminating. In sum, the patriarchal power and its
structures stood strong. 5
In many autobiographies the writer views the past from a time lapse. Her/his memory is the only
entity s/he can rely on in constructing her/his past. As what will be narrated remains in the past, it
cannot be perceived concretely. In fact what gives way to the writing instinct is not the need to
reflect the past as it is but the need to interpret it under the present conditions. The time lapse
between the narrated past and the writing period of the text has resulted in the emergence of new
conditions which have rendered the past illusionary rather than realistic. To put it in another way,
autobiographies are written to legitimize the author’s present condition. Women’s autobiographies
in the nationalistic tradition very often reinforced the narration of the past from the present
perspective in order to give a particular meaning and significance to their existence in the nation
state building process.
However Oya Baydar and Melek Ulagay breach this tradition by coming to terms with both their
own failures in the past and those of the socialist movement in general. Consequently, their
approach to their personal history as well as to history in general is more distanced and critical as
well as realistic and objective. Their aim is not to exalt their political struggle; on the contrary, it is to
highlight the failures of the left.
Especially in Turkish female autobiographies published before 1980s the public and private
spheres are sharply distinguished and none of them is exalted. For example, in some autobiographies
particularly the childhood period is narrated at length although the main concern of the author is
highly political ‐Selma Ekrem’s and Samiha Ayverdi’s books are cases in point. In contrast, in other
autobiographies only grown up public identities are reflected whereas personal dimension of their
lives are almost completely neglected. For example, Sabiha Sertel’s autobiography is dedicated
totally to her political struggle as a communist; she does not mention her private life at all.
However in recent autobiographies of Turkish women a development similar to that in the West
in the twentieth century can be observed; that is, women tend gradually to write more about private
issues. The autobiography of Oya Baydar and Melek Ulagay is strikingly innovative in this respect as
well. In order to evaluate this innovation, we have to examine the Turkish left’s attitude towards the
private/public life dichotomy. It is certain that what was important for the left was the public sphere,
and private life was often ignored, even looked down on. Baydar and Ulagay, in contrast, tell a lot
about relations, love affairs, marriages, foibles, family issues, which used to be eliminated from
political accounts of past histories. While narrating their stories, they attempt to express the intimate
and the emotional frankly, yet regarding prudency about the privacy of others concerned.
Taking the feminist motto ‘what is private is also political’ as their starting point, Baydar and
Ulagay, while narrating their political struggles, also relate their private lives which run parallel to
their public identities. In other words, their political and private lives are intertwined with each
other. Their love affairs, marriages, children, relationships with their parents are an inseparable part