Westernization in Turkey Research Papers (original) (raw)

Resat Nuri Guntekin’s novel “Calikusu ” (The Wren) published in 1919 is a narrative from its heroine’s, Feride’s, diary. Feride is the daughter of a woman who came from a rich family, and who exhausted most of her youth with illnesses, and an Ottoman military officer who had to travel from posts to posts in different regions of the Empire. As his wife dies when his daughter is six years old, Feride’s father registers her to a French missionary school, Notre Dame de Sion, as a boarder in order to get her raised in Western understanding which he adores. Feride spends all of her childhood and a major part of her puberty in this school where she receives French education. Following the death of her father in her last year at high school, Feride moves, after her graduation, to the mansion of her aunt who is a widow of an Ottoman pasha. In time, the family, with the approval of the couple, reaches the decision to engage Feride with her cousin, Kamran. However, when Feride finds out about the love affair between her fiancé and a rich widow in the neighborhood, she begins to question her past, and decides to radically change her lifestyle. As a result, she abandons her aunt’s house and applies to the Ministry of Education for a teaching position in a village in Anatolia far away from Istanbul. In Zeyniler village, she encounters with the reality of Anatolia and Turkey. During her duty in Zeyniler, Feride has to fight with the technical inefficiencies in this poor village as well as with old customs, beliefs and traditions of its inhabitants. She also takes part in a war (the author does not mention a specific period or location for this war) as a nurse. Throughout her experiences as a teacher and a wartime nurse, she develops a dual reaction: She loves her country that is about to collapse, but at the same time, as her efforts to contribute to its development in a Western sense usually results in disappointment, she misses Istanbul where her family has a relatively modern life. At the end of the novel, she returns to Istanbul and marries Kamran.
Feride’s story depicts the experiences of many upper-class Turkish women of the late 19th century Istanbul. In this context, it resembles to the biography of Halide Edip Adivar, whose ideas for social and political reform, and views on the place of religion and women in the Turkish society shall constitute the subject of this essay. Both Feride and Halide had lost their mothers when they were very young; both were educated in Western schools under the guidance of their fathers who served for the Ottoman state undergoing transformation; both had a teaching career, and both went to the war fronts as a nurse. More importantly, they both wanted to contribute to the development of their country as women of the reform period in the Ottoman era. They were the daughters of a generation that experienced the first moves of the Ottomans towards Westernization through the Tanzimat (the 1839-1876 period of reform in the Ottoman Empire), and that aimed to raise their children according to Western principles in which they saw the salvation of their country and themselves. Becoming true nationalists with the ideas, norms and principles that they obtained in Western schools, these women rebelled to the backwardness of their country which they observed during their professional career and during the war, as well-educated individuals sought ways for its development, and believed that the only way for this endeavor to be successful was to bring the Western system into their homeland while conserving the essence of the virtues of Anatolian society.
This study aims to understand and explain Halide Edip’s intellectual development in the light of her views on the political and social structure of Turkey in different periods of her life. I shall begin my work by highlighting important factors that affected her life and perspective. The second part, on the other hand, shall be devoted to an analysis of her political and social views, especially on the issues of nationalism, and the place of religion and women in the social and political structure of the new Turkish state.