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of their political and intellectual life. Viewed from this angle, it can be said that women give more
importance to their domestic life in contrast to men due to the fact that they are expected to take on
the burden of domestic problems. However this does not result in evading from their political
responsibilities: Only four days before the military intervention Oya Baydar goes abroad for a political
mission leaving her new born son to her mother’s care and she cannot return back to Turkey. Later
on, while in exile as a political escapee, again she leaves her son to her husband in order to attend
the training in Moscow Communist University. In the process of political struggle, the traditional role
of women has undergone a great change. Melek Ulagay, during her husband’s imprisonment, travels
to Ankara to attend his trials and visits him every week. And at the same time she struggles in
Istanbul while bringing up her son and taking care of her mother and father who have health
problems. 6
Throughout the book, Ulagay and Baydar narrate their experiences chronologically and in great
detail. At times the story attains the pace of an adventure narrative as in the part where Ulagay
escapes from the police and in the end flees to Palestine with a comrade, and after his death in a
confrontation with Israeli soldiers she flies to Switzerland to meet her friends there. While telling
about the events they always refer to their relationship with the people they met. The intertwining of
their political and private struggles is always brought to the foreground in the narrative.
All in all, as the examples cited above clearly demonstrate, Baydar and Ulagay attain the status of
active subjects in their political struggles. As active subjects, their experiences help us to question the
hegemonic discourses about submissiveness of femininity while providing a unique historical
narrative showing the inseparability of the public and the private. However this is not the kind of
woman’s voice that bears the consciousness of the necessity to censure or cleanse the elements of
male agency. What woman’s voice of a generation has achieved in Turkey is to rely on the dominant
leftist/liberal but still patriarchal discourses to utilize those in the service of women’s liberation.
Keywords: Autobiographies, Women's testimonies, Public life, Private affairs, Political activism
Prof. Nazan AKSOY
Istanbul Bilgi University,
Department of Comparative Literature
nazan.aksoy@bilgi.edu.tr
Notes
1
Deniz Kandiyoti, Cariyeler Bacılar Yurtaşlar (İstanbul: Metis Yayınları, 1997), 16.
2
Oya Baydar and Melek Ulagay, Bir Dönem İki Kadın: Birbirimizin Aynasında (Istanbul: Can Yayınları,
2011), 44.
3
Ibid., 43.
4
Ibid 11.
5
Ibid., 394.
6
Ibid., 388.
Bibliography
Baydar, Oya and Ulagay, Melek. Bir Dönem İki Kadın: Birbirimizin Aynasında. Istanbul: Can Yayınları, 2011.
Kandiyoti, Deniz. Cariyeler Bacılar Yurttaşlar. İstanbul: Metis Yayınları, 1997.