Selfless Subjectivities that (Re)Build the Nation: Remaking the “Modern Turkish Woman” in the Early Republican Period in Türkiye

Introduction

This study analyzes the newly constructed female subjectivities of the Early Republican Era (1923–1945) in Türkiye. It aims to explore how feminine identities were reconstructed and represented in contemporary women's magazines in line with Republican domestic ideologies. The women's magazines of the Era aimed to reconstruct new identities through popular cultural forms by representing the Republic's ideas and official ideology. Thus, they became one of the tools of social engineering in the way of “transforming the nation” into a “modern,” “Westernized” one. Analysing these magazines help us identify the repertoire of subjectivities and narrative identities from which women drew while making sense of their selves during an era of transformation.

Elsewhere we analyzed the representations of the female body, which was seen as the primary signifier of the “woman of the republic.” ¹ Although transforming and refashioning the body was the basis of becoming the “new modern woman,” the styles and images were numbered and often in conflict. Time and time again, those representations were positioned on a moral continuum prescribing ideal ways of being and performing. This research further analyzes the newly constructed subjectivities focusing on marriage and married lives. It introduces us to the married woman and “the mother of the Republic,” adding to the narrative identities which shaped the women of the time.

Only in the 1980s women's magazines were the focus of scholarly attention in Türkiye. Then, during the second feminist wave, Turkish women began writing women's history from their female perspectives. ² The goal of feminist historiography, as Çakır ³ explains, is securing the visibility of women's experiences and practices in the struggle for their rights and liberties, discussing the reasons for women's invisibility in history, and exposing how women's power and agency were hindered. Researchers attempted to make the invisible visible, usually contradicting the structural and nationalist approaches of official historiography, by illuminating the blurred picture presented by the history of women in Türkiye. ⁴ As one of the main sites for women's voices, magazines were scrutinized during this academic research phase.

Regarding women's magazines, the late Ottoman Era attracted more scholarly attention than the early Republican Era. ⁵ As a result, many works focus on women's issues and their identity constructions during the constitutional periods, and magazines were often the primary data source in these studies. ⁶ However, despite their abundance, women's magazines were not considered sources in the studies that focused on the identity formation of early Republican women. ⁷

Women's magazines of the Era were of interest to academics occasionally. For example, according to Durakbaşa, women's magazines complemented the patriarchal understanding that limited women's power in the domestic sphere as they promoted the rationalization of housework and home economics. ⁸ Zafer Toprak uses magazines in another study to search for typologies of the “ideal” woman. ⁹

This study contributes to the literature by using women's magazines as the primary source for analysing the construction of women's identities in the Early Republican Era. It also differs from the other studies by using thematic analysis based on theories of narrative identity.

Making Sense of the New Identities

The theoretical backdrop of this study is based on the arguments facilitated by the narrative turn, which conceptualizes culture and society as narrative constructions. Here, personal identity is conceived as being constructed through narratives, while national identity is considered a group-defining story with a particular pattern. In the early twentieth century, national meta-narratives were foundational in shaping individual autobiographies (narrative identities). These group-binding stories equip individuals' mental cognitive processes necessary for interpreting events. ¹⁰ We construct our narrative identities by interpreting and articulating our experiences in a story format. Raggatt proclaims, “Identity is an open-ended, dialogical, and narrative engagement with the world, having multiple origins and trajectories.” ¹¹ In other words, remembering past events, interpreting and emplotting them into a story format is always done in and as a community member. Identity narrative is intertextual based on the familial and social narratives found in one's culture. The basis of narrative identity is meaning-making, and children learn how to make sense of the events from their early interaction with their parents and communities. ¹² Through this process of meaning-making, we emplot our stories, put the events in a coherent sequence, and in the end, may have a reflexive idea of what the themes of our own story are telling about “who we are.” ¹³ McLean summarizes this and suggests that “an identity is not the work of a sole-author, but a collaboration: the co-authored self.” ¹⁴

In line with Stuart Hall, we follow the argument that identities are constructed through “discursive work.” ¹⁵ No single identity exists for any person, but a constellation of the identities available in their culture. Narrative knowing, the use of narratives in making sense of the self, is an inherently creative act and involves reconstructing personal experiences through interpretive “plots” that one finds in the repertoire of stories available and learned within the culture. ¹⁶ We argue that the identity narratives the magazines presented as possible subjectivities—although sometimes in conflicting positions—constructed the cultural repertoire of subject positions. Renegotiation of the themes of narrative identities enables women to have a seemingly coherent, stable self with an appearance of consistency during an era of transformation.

We follow the poststructuralist approaches to nation-building and suggest that nations are constructed within ideology and discourses and that there is no core or essence to national identity. Instead, national identities are based on exclusive stories. ¹⁷ The concept of the Nation can be understood as a narrative identity that is shaped through a shared defining story, characterized by stability, coherence, and consistency, and serves to define the boundaries and norms of a particular group. However, like all other historical narratives, this story also serves the political agenda of the times of its creation, and it is constantly negotiated and temporal. These historical narratives are transmitted to the next generations to reproduce the Nation. Feldman argues that all national narratives are romances in genre where a hero is opposed by “a much stronger but morally inferior antagonist with whom he has a climactic battle in the end after a series of lesser adventures.” ¹⁸ Feldman also suggests that a national romance can be emplotted as a “quest” story. The main characters in such stories are primarily anonymous or sometimes embodied as national heroes who represent the whole “imagined community.” ¹⁹

All narratives have twists and turns when a crucial change is attributed in the protagonist's stance to a belief or a conviction and that s/he is freed in “their self-consciousness from their history …” ²⁰ Turning points are vital in the historical imagination as they generally end an era and start another one. Therefore, the Republic and its accompanying revolutions are widely regarded as the most significant turning point in recent Turkish history. ²¹ It must be noted that individuals in the Turkish Nation were also compelled to reconsider, reimagine, and reconstruct their identities during this Era. After all, individual identities were constructed based on the national one, and such an intense turning point in the Nation's history affects all narratives in the society.

We find two antagonists emerging in the Republican Turkish national narrative. Firstly, there are the Western states who sought to colonialize Turkish territories at the end of WWI. The Turkish Nation had to defeat them to establish a free land and a culturally authentic nation-state. The second antagonist was the Ottoman family and state, which had to be undermined and abolished to find a modern republic serving “Turkish” people better. ²² The new Turkish national identity was imagined as “modern” but discerned from the Western World. ²³ Turkish national identity was also narrated as separate from and in resistance to the former Ottoman identity, which was considered as belonging to the “old” world order while also serving in line with the interests of the Western states rather than its people. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding President of the Turkish Republic, presented this as a “quest” to find or remember the Turkish national essence, which was “forgotten” during the Ottoman centuries. ²⁴

The resistance to the Ottoman imagination was also embodied in the “New Turkish Citizen,” who would not accept to be a “subject” of the Sultan anymore but fight for his/her rights to be a free member of the Republic. Thus, Ataturk aimed to construct each citizen as the subject (protagonist) of this new narrative rather than fashioning them as the undifferentiated obeying subjects of the Sultan. One of the most striking and liberating new protagonists of the Republican narrative was “the woman of the republic” (cumhuriyet kadını). The Tanzimat and Meşrutiyet Eras, which were marked by reforms to “westernize” the Ottoman Empire (19th and the first decade of the 20th C), had created the “new woman” (yeni kadın) and “the contemporary woman” (asrın kadını). This “new woman” was now “the woman of the republic” and was produced with a whole narrative of “how to be” and “what to do” as the “mother” or the reproducer of the Nation. Although it was represented as a “singular” identity, most of the time, “the woman of the republic” consisted of many of the conflicting subject positions that “the new woman” contained.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was no homogeneity in Ottoman Culture. Through the realist novels or the narratives of the Westerners, we observe that there were contradictory ideas, concepts, themes, values, and morals in the imagination and the definitions of the “new woman.” ²⁵ Besides, some aspects of the “republican woman” were not in praxis for many women who were already “modernized” by the reformations of the Ottoman Empire. However, there was a narrative turning point for all women, and they had to re-negotiate the values, morals, and norms in their identity narratives. We assume that a reconstruction of the personal narratives would be dialogically influenced by various subject positions represented through popular culture (especially the magazines) with conflicting values, “normals,” and morals. For most, the national turning point and the Republican reconstruction of women as “citizens” urged women to re-think and re-negotiate the themes of femininity they took for granted.

Gendered self-narratives of women often arise from official domestic ideologies. They are often closely linked to the gendered division of labour within the household and society, as seen in magazines. We argue that this ideology is represented and constructed through the magazines we analyze. In the aftermath of World Wars, the states had to recreate the meanings and definitions of gendered role divisions. The meanings attached to being a woman and a wife were represented as “general” and “universal,” although temporal and cultural. In the analysis part, we will present how it was represented and constructed through these representations. In other words, new stories of being a woman and a wife entangled with republican and nationalistic ideologies were written to remain in the cultural repertoire of subjectivities for a long time.

In the analysis part, we see the themes of womanhood and marital life, which were offered to Turkish women with which to construct their narratives as “the woman of the republic.” The Republic and the nationalistic group identity offered new subject positions or conferred new meanings to the existing ones. The “working career women” in the Republic were thus (re)formed entangled with motherhood. These created the cultural narratives that formed the cognitive foundation for interpreting events and constructing all kinds of meaning in social and individual narratives. In short, the Kemalist revolution constructed new subject positions and transformed some of the existing subjectivities disengaging people from their existing points of identification and situating them in new discourses and narratives.

Method and Data

In line with our theoretical framework, which is a narrative approach to society and culture, a narrative approach will illuminate the repertoire of identity narratives and stories of “how to be” and “what to think” presented to women through magazines. We will address the contradictory ideas, concepts, themes, values, and morals offered through the social narratives of this media.

The publishing of women's magazines in Türkiye starts in the Ottoman Era and is almost 150 years old. Although their audience is mainly from the upper- and middle-classes, they have formed a social, cultural, and political space through which women can make their claims during the westernization periods. ²⁶ Women's magazines have long been accepted as valuable primary sources in women's history writing as they illustrate the struggles of women during the transformation periods and their changing places within society. ²⁷ During the late Ottoman Era, women's magazines were the space where women could be visible -to some degree- in their resistance to the traditional and restrictive norms, morality, and models of femininity. However, during the Republic's early days, they also appeared to be the ideological tools to disseminate the newly constructed representations of femininity.

The data for this study consist of magazines which date from the language reform (1928) ²⁸

Aile Dostu (AD): 12 issues (No 1–12) published bimonthly from February 1931 to December 1932.

Ev-İş (Eİ): 6 issues (No. 1–6), published between April 1937 and September 1937.

Asrın Kadını (AK): 5 issues (No. 1–5), published between June 1944 and October 1944.

We conduct a thematic analysis of the textual data from these magazines. The magazines openly assumed the role of a constructer of “modern, civilized” society, complete with its reflections on the new republican household. For example, Tahsin Demiray, the Publisher of Ev-İş (1937), begins his article “Why Ev-İş?” in the very first issue: “We have formed a republican, nationalistic, reformist, populist, statist and secular regime” and goes on to observe that “there is a need to reform the household now.” All the magazines we analyzed here openly achieved similar aims and missions by asserting the discourses and ideologies of the Era. Thus, a thematic analysis will give us the main themes by which the women of the period were supposed to live.

In thematic analysis, we begin with the process of data familiarization and go on to identify the main recurring themes which adequately reflect our textual data. Then, we code the articles in the magazines, firstly, with the categories derived through our readings of the historical narratives of the era and secondary sources. Secondly, we search for new categories brought up by the magazines themselves. ²⁹ We may consider thematic analysis an analysis of ideology because it seeks to identify the domestic ideologies of the time that shape gender roles and meanings attached to marriage. The new subjectivities, such as “contemporary woman (asrın kadını),” “flamboyant woman (süs kadını),” and “woman of the republic (Cumhuriyet kadını)” were entangled with the meanings of being a wife and brought about new stories of femininity and motherhood.

Historical Background: Rebranding of The Turkish Woman

The turning point of Turkish nationalism occurred after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. However, nationalist tendencies among Ottoman Turks can be traced back to the nineteenth-century reform period and the patriotism of the Young Ottomans. ³⁰ During the Second Constitutional Era, ³¹ influential theorists, such as Ziya Gökalp, Yusuf Akçura, Ahmed Ağaoğlu, Tekin Alp, and Halide Edip, could be considered prominent representatives of Turkish nationalism whose main concern was “saving the empire.” They believed that the salvation of the Ottoman Empire lay in a rapid and top-down Westernization of politics, banking, education, the financial system, industry, commercial relations, agriculture, and communications, as well as domestic and civil life, based on the ideas of enlightenment, science, and rationality. However, since various ideological principles coexisted, there were discrepancies in their proposals to adopt Western ways of doing things. This indeterminacy is evident in the theoretical writings and popular articles of the aforementioned nationalist theorists as they attempt to find the “ideal” degree of Westernization. ³²

At the turn of the century, Young Ottomans’ debates about saving the Empire shifted from reconciling modernization with Islam ³³ or with the cohesive and robust moral traditions of the Ottomans ³⁴ to reconciling progressivism (terakkicilik) with competing ideologies such as Westernism, Islamism, and Turkism (e.g., Gökalp). However, this confusion gradually diminished during the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1922) and the subsequent reform period (1923–1938) under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's leadership, during which a new identity for the Republic emerged. A distinct narrative of secular Turkish nationalism different from the Pan-Turkist and Islamist ideals was constructed by Mustafa Kemal and the other leading figures, based on the idea of “national sovereignty” demarcated by national borders.^35,36

“The women issue” was one of the most discussed topics in this period of Westernization and modernization. However, the position of women in society, especially educated upper-middle-class women, had already improved legally, socially, and educationally with the reforms introduced by the Tanzimat and other revolutionary changes during the constitutional period.

Women were welcomed into secondary and high schools in 1859 and 1880. The Women's Teachers Colleges (Darülmuallimat) began training the Ottoman Empire's first official female teachers in the 1870s. Graduates of these institutions also became the first female leaders in the various women's schools of the Empire. In 1923, the number of female teachers was over a thousand, compared to nearly ten thousand male teachers. ³⁷ Nevertheless, women could not attend Istanbul Darülfünunu (higher education) until 1914. However, the law and medical faculties accepted female students in the early 1920s. On the legal level, women's right to divorce (under certain conditions) was recognized with a 1917 government decree on the family. This decree further empowered women. For example, wives were given the right to prevent their husbands from taking another wife. ³⁸

Women's participation in social and economic life increased amid the war-torn context of the Empire and due to the absence of men during the war. ³⁹ The ideological changes in the women's movement were also influenced by wartime. The Great War and the War of Independence reinforced nationalist sentiments. During the War of Independence, the secularized patriotic “Turkish Woman” gradually replaced the ideal of the Muslim “Ottoman Woman.” Many women in Türkiye also actively participated in both wars; for example, hundreds joined the women's battalion and served in logistics in the Great War.^40,41 Halide Edip (Adıvar), a prominent nationalist and feminist, joined the army as a corporal during the War of Independence.

The Kemalist view considered women's liberation a prerequisite for a broader social revolution. ⁴² The narrative of “state feminism,” which permeated the ideology from top to bottom, was also based on this view. ⁴³ A series of reforms significantly improved women's rights and conditions: The 1924 Education Law secularized the education system and granted equal opportunities to both sexes; the Swiss Civil Code adopted in 1926 banned Muslim polygamy and granted equal rights concerning marriage, divorce, inheritance, and property ownership; the switch to Western-style clothing in 1925 legally allowed women to unveil; and finally, women were granted political rights such as the right to participate in the local elections (1930) and general elections in 1934. ⁴⁴ Nevertheless, a patriarchal mentality continued to prevail, dominating how the new subjectivities were constructed. ⁴⁵ In short, the ruling elites of the Republic claimed the power to “name” women. ⁴⁶

Many women participated in the discussions on what the modern woman or “the ideal Turkish woman” should be like. However, the contradictory qualities of such an idealized prototype were mainly denoted by the masculine voice of men. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, Halide Edip and Nezihe Muniddin, two prominent female figures, complied with some of those characteristics from an essentialist view of femininity. These characteristics were not new in terms of biological and mental attributes. The image of the “New Woman” drawn by the modernizing elite was neither unique nor an invention of the Republican period, despite their widespread tendency to standardize their discourse. ⁴⁷ The Kemalists saw the ideal Turkish woman as a symbol of national identity and the progress of the Republic. As we also see in women's magazines, the ideal republican woman was represented as a selfless superheroine who knew her duties to family, society, and the Nation. She was an enlightened mother and wife in the private sphere and a dutiful citizen in the public sphere. However, women's bodies still represented the vices and virtues of the new republican ideals in both spheres. ⁴⁸

Rewriting the Story with New Themes: Reinventing the Turkish Women and Family

The women's magazines of the Era present us with different subject positions, represented throughout various texts, including images taken from Western sources. When we consider their outlooks, we see enlightened career women in suits; salon women attending balls with fashionably designed traditional gowns; the dutiful, selfless, soberly dressed housewives with modest make-up; the beauty queens who carry the characteristics of ancient beauty which are fit and healthy; actresses with fashionable outfits; and the working women who took up men's jobs as well as their costumes. This body of representations and the constellation of identities presented to the “new women” of the republican period points to narrative identities which could only be dialogical and fluid, not fixed and stable. A woman who chose to “change” along with the republican imagery would be rewriting herself following the ideologies of the young Republic. However, she could also resist the new imagery and stick to the traditional choices. From the perspective of the time, the fashion choices a woman makes would also be about making moral choices on a new continuum, with the fallen, corrupt, “too-Western” [süslü koket] women at one extreme and the backward, karaçarşaflı (the ones in a black hijab) at the other. The Turkish woman who is traditional in morals and virtues, enlightened by Western education, and modestly “modern” in looks would be the “ideal.” ⁴⁹

Concluding Remarks

The foundation of the Republic was a turning point in the narrative of Turkish Republican History and Türkiye's Westernization. “Transformation” in the political, cultural, and social spheres was the central theme of this narrative. We argued that women's identities and subjectivities were considered building blocks of modern society. As the homeland was associated with home, family, and women's place within the family were considered the foundation of the new Republican society. Thus, the new image was that the whole homeland was a “home” to women for whom they would selflessly labour. It meant that as soon as women were granted certain rights as individuals and citizens, they were also offered a new representation of selfless subjectivity. Their freedom was limited in the public imagination. The individual now existed for the Nation.

As we argued elsewhere, different subject positions were presented to the women by the magazines in various representations: the enlightened career women in suits; the dutiful, selfless housewives with modest make-up; the fashionably dressed salon women who attend balls; the beauty queens who bear the traits of ancient beauty, who are fit and healthy; and the professional women who take on both men's jobs and costumes were represented by the women's magazines of the time. ⁵¹ It suggests a corpus of representations and a constellation of identities presented to the “new women” of the Republican Era to build their own narrative identities.

Women were constructed as story characters: they were first given the aim of reproducing the Nation, with certain qualities. In the way of being their children's first teachers, they were expected to acquire a scientific outlook for their whole life. Thus, they were now expected to be knowledgeable and educated. It was the main idea behind opening the way of formal education to the whole population. On the one hand, women were expected to work outside the home; on the other hand, they had to reproduce the Nation.

The presence of professional women in a marital setting was once believed to bring about a more egalitarian marriage and household. However, this notion of gender equality in the context of marriage was novel and met with resistance due to the belief that a woman's professional pursuits would undermine her ability to submit to her husband's authority in the household. Consequently, women were forced to navigate a complex web of conflicting roles and identities. While they enjoyed greater autonomy and prosperity, constructing a new identity narrative was challenging as they contended with various subject positions that often entailed divergent and incompatible themes.