Academic

Featuring a woman on its currency for first time leads to debate in Turkey

By Ann Bartow

From this article:

… With the coming change in Turkey’s currency, there will be, for the first time in Turkish history, a picture of a woman — Fatma Aliye, Turkey’s first female novel writer — on a Turkish banknote, and this move has stirred fierce political and historical debates. …

… Aliye, who was born in ?stanbul and, due to the circumstances of the times, was not sent to school, educated herself and learned French. She married when she was 17 and had four children. In order to start her literature career as a translator she had to wait for 10 years to get the permission of her husband. She signed her first translation, of “Volente” by George Ohnet, simply as “a lady.”

After 1891 she began to write novels in which she was critical of the oppression of women. She elaborated on love and the importance of the pre-marriage acquaintance of partners. Her heroines were strong, economically independent women. She regularly contributed to the private women’s magazine Han?mlara Mahsus and defended the rights of women, albeit within a traditional context. She was also the founder of Turkey’s first women’s association, established in 1897 and aimed at helping the families of soldiers.

Hülya Gülbahar of the Association for Education and Supporting Women Candidates (KA-DER), an association aimed at increasing female representation in politics, said there was no reason to discuss Aliye’s political ideas, adding that featuring a woman on a Turkish banknote for the first time in Turkish history is important in and of itself. “One of our slogans that we use frequently is ‘women exist.’ We are still trying to show the fact that we are here. In this regard, featuring a woman on the banknotes for the first time is something very positive,” she says.

According to Gülbahar, another positive part of featuring Aliye is to teach the people that the struggle for women’s rights is not new in Turkey. “It is important that it teaches that women’s struggle for their rights did not start after the founding of the republic. During the Ottoman Empire, women did a lot for their rights, too. But the official history tells us that the women’s struggle is something new,” she stressed, adding that Aliye was not alone in this struggle and that there were many other efforts and women.   …

Read the whole article here.

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on October 12, 2008 (boomark / email).