should the seclusion of Turkish women in past generations influence or
interfere with the organizing, administrative or productive capacities
of the Turkish women of this generation? After all women do not
belong to a different race than men, we are the daughters of men and
inherit their qualities--or their faults--their capacities or their
inefficiency, just as much as their sons do. This present generation,
without distinction of sex, has inherited the accumulated qualities or
faults of all past generations. It is not the sex which makes or mars
the individual, which makes or mars his or her talents. Individual
talents, qualities or faults are of course inherited to a great degree,
but they don't descend exclusively from women to women and from men
to men. Furthermore they are especially enhanced by the education,
upbringing and training of the individual and I consider that the
Turkish women of this generation have had individually a better
opportunity than their brothers--or even than their western sisters--to
prepare, educate and train themselves for the work they are now doing.
The Turkish men of this generation have had to struggle for life as
soon as they were out of boyhood and, confronted by the necessity of
earning their immediate living, they did not have the opportunity of
preparing themselves for the lines of activity best suited to their
individual talents--or else and still worse, they have been drafted
into the armies and have fought consecutively for the last fifteen
years. Thousands have perished in these wars, thousands and thousands
have been maimed or otherwise incapacitated for life. As for western
women, those of the higher classes--therefore those who have received
a better education--are caught in a whirlwind of social amusement as
soon as they are little more than children and the greatest majority
keep throughout their lives the earmark of the influence that society
has impressed on them in their early youth. It is therefore only
western women who start life with the handicap of a lesser education
who, through hard work and perseverance, are generally the women who
accomplish things in the Western world. This is not the case with the
Turkish women of this generation. They have had an opportunity to study
and prepare thoroughly until they had reached maturity. They had no
social life to interfere with their studies. It is true that they did
not prepare to enter personally the different fields of activity as
they did not expect that their full emancipation would come so soon.
But they were conscious of being the mothers of the coming generation,
and to prepare their sons and daughters for their task, they equipped
themselves with all the knowledge they desired to impart and they had
plenty of leisure to do this. That is why you see now so many Turkish
women efficient in the activities they have deliberately shouldered.”
“Tell me, my aunt, how did the participation of Turkish women in all
activities of life come to pass? Was it sudden or gradual?”
“When the war came and all the men were called to the front, women
unostentatiously stepped into the employments left vacant. As is
generally the case in all movements of emancipation for which people
are really ready the movement started in the lower classes. Pushed by
necessity, some young girls dared to apply for clerical employments in
shops and offices. At the time hundreds of ladies of the higher classes
were engaged in helping at home the Red Crescent and other relief
works. They had studied nursing. Encouraged by the fact that their less
fortunate sisters had met with no opposition and were working openly in
shops and offices, they in turn offered their services as nurses. Much
of the field work and hospital work of the Red Crescent was confided to
them to liberate men for military service. This is just what happened
in other countries. But the change was greater and more permanent in
Turkey. The daily contact of Turkish women with the public during
the war years resulted of course in tearing down the social walls
which had so far secluded them and once these walls were destroyed no
one desired to build them up again. Turkish women had proved their
administrative and organizing capacities in relief and charitable work
during the war. There was no reason why they should not continue to
give the country the benefit of their services even after the general
war was ended. Furthermore there was still much relief and charitable
work to be done and Turkey needed good administrators and organisers
in many fields. So within a few years, but with gradual steps, the
emancipation of Turkish women became complete, and to-day it is so
thorough that any woman in Turkey can fill any responsible position as
long as she has shown herself capable of it. In Anatolia, we have a
woman, Halidé Hanoum, who was elected Minister of Public Education by
the National Assembly.”
I wanted to know how Anatolia and the rural districts had reacted to
this emancipation of women.
“The peasant women were always more emancipated than the city women,
my son. Our peasants have remained in a way much nearer to the
original precepts of our religion and to the old traditions of the
Turks than our city dwellers. We have deviated from our religion and
racial traditions by the contact we were forced to enter into with
the degenerate Levantine elements dwelling in the cities. Muslim
laws placed women on equality with men long before western laws did
so, and at the time of the Prophet women were allowed more freedom
than they ever had before. The Koran is full of mentions of women who
were participating in public life and the only restriction placed on
women in the Holy Book--a restriction which was necessary to correct
the customs of the Arabs living in warm climates--is that women should
not appear in public unless they were covered from the breasts down
to the ankles. This is a simple rule of decency and modesty. As for
the original Turkish customs they used to be so liberal that women
participated in public affairs among the nomad Turkish tribes roaming
on the plateau of Pamir, centuries ago. Many a Turkish woman was then
the recognized chieftain of her tribe. Many a Turkish Joan of Arc has
fought on the battlefields shoulder to shoulder with her warriors.
It is only after the Muslims and the Turks came in contact with the
decadent Byzantine Empire, it is only after the Turks conquered the
dissolute colonies of old Rome and ancient Greece in Asia Minor that
the Turks--especially those who settled in the cities--adopted certain
customs of the conquered races. Unfortunately these customs are
identified to-day, in the eyes of the foreigners, with the Turks and
the Muslims as if they had originated with them. But that is not the
case. While polygamy was not strictly forbidden so as to prevent--as
was then the case in Europe--the increase of bastards and illegitimate
children, Harems in the original sense of the word did not exist in
Muslim or Turkish countries until they assimilated byzantine customs.
The seclusion of women in separate apartments where they were condemned
to lead the life of recluses pampered and spoiled solely for the
pleasure of their master, can be retraced to the “Gyneceum” of Byzance.
So can the custom of veiling the women when they went out, as evidenced
by the pictures on old Grecian vases. The barbarous institution
of Eunuchs is exclusively Byzantine. All these were certainly not
originally Turkish customs and they have nearly never been practised by
the peasants and country people of Turkey, except the custom which made
it obligatory for women to be entirely veiled in the presence of men.
Otherwise the rural population never restricted its women in any way.
They always participated in the every-day life of their men. You should
have been with us when I went to Eski-Shehir, in Anatolia, with your
uncle during the war.” Here my aunt drew such a picture of her arrival
at Eski-Shehir that I will try to give an account of it, in her own
words.
“It was before your uncle was taken ill,” she said, “and he was
considering starting some local industries in Anatolia. He chose
Eski-Shehir on account of the railroad facilities it offers and we
went there. Only a few men who had been prevented from going to war
on account of old age or infirmity were left in the country. But the
people who had heard that a pasha from Constantinople was coming with
his wife, sent a delegation to meet us at the station. They insisted on
our being their guests and they informed us that they had especially
prepared a house for us. To refuse would have hurt their feelings.
They had chosen the best available house in the whole neighbourhood.
It was located far in the country at an hour and a half's ride in a
carriage from the station. We arrived in the evening and by the time
the customary greetings had been exchanged with the delegation it was
already dark. The whole delegation insisted on forming an escort of
honour and accompanying us to our lodgings. We took a carriage and
the ten or twelve peasants which formed the delegation got on their
horses, two preceding us, the rest forming a semi-circle around our
carriage. In the dark night we went through valleys and hilltops
escorted by this most picturesque cavalcade; mostly old men with white
beards, but sitting straight on their horses. Of the only two young
men who were there, one was blind in one eye, and the other was lame.
They all wore their country costumes: trousers cut as riding breeches
but worn without leggings, wide belts of gay colour wrapped from hips
to the middle of the breast and tight-fitting tunics crossed by
cartridge-bearing leather thongs. With their turbaned heads and their
rifles swinging from their shoulders they made a martial picture in
contrast with their courteous demeanour, their subdued voices and their
most peaceful eyes. I must say, however, that it was a reassuring
escort to have for crossing the country at night.
“We arrived at the house, a darling little farmhouse of one floor in
the midst of tall trees which reflected their spectral shadows in the
gurgling black waters of a stream. Our escort dismounted and entered
the house with us where we were received by a committee of women. They
had prepared supper and had made everything ready for us. They were
dressed in long, flowing robes, their heads covered with a veil and
they stood respectfully with their hands folded, watching us carefully
so as to anticipate our smallest wishes. Dear, pure, honest country
folk of Anatolia! How much they can teach us, how much they can
teach the western world of hospitality, modesty and faithfulness! The
women were veiled in the presence of men, but they acted their part
as hostesses while the men talked in the same room with my husband.
After having settled us to their own satisfaction they departed all
together, even the owners of the house insisting on leaving so that we
might be more comfortable. They left us their servants to take care of
us. Next day and all the days of our stay at Eski-Shehir, groups of
peasant girls would come to visit me, to enquire if I needed anything
and to entertain me as best they could. They would shyly stand at the
door until I forced them to come in. I had all the trouble in the world
to break them of the habit of sitting on the floor out of respect to
their guests, as they considered it ill-bred to sit on a level with me.
They would come in the evenings, for during the day they would be busy
working in their fields. Healthy and strong women they were, with red
cheeks and bashful eyes. They were not the type of women living for the
pleasure of their husbands, or of slaves toiling for their masters.
They were wholesome women, good daughters, good wives, good mothers who
had for generations been conscious of their duty to the community and
accomplished it efficiently--helpmates freely helping their men, freely
assisting them or willingly shouldering their husbands' responsibility
in case of absence and taking care of the welfare of their families,
their homes, their fields or their villages and withal keeping their
unassuming modesty intact--the modesty which is, or should be, the
national characteristic of all Turkish women.”
My aunt was silent for a while. Her compelling personality made us
fully share her love for her Anatolian sisters. She slowly got up and
gave the signal for returning home. We walked together. It was our last
day in Erenkeuy and I had not yet exhausted her views on the subject
of the emancipation of Turkish women. I now asked her if she thought
that its influence had been salutory upon general morality in the big
cities.
“It certainly has,” answered my aunt. “In the old days we did not
know the friends of our husbands, brothers or sons. We were excluded
from the company of men and could not therefore help our own sons in
selecting their friends. Much less of course our husbands. We always
feared the deteriorating influence that even one bad associate can
have on a whole crowd. The Turkish proverb says that one bad apple is
sufficient to rot a whole basket full of good apples. Men left to their
own resources are liable to seek distraction in drinking, in cards and
other unwholesome pastimes. Many a Turkish man has suffered in the past
the consequences of the exclusion of women from social gatherings--just
as many a western man suffers now from the consequences of leading
too absorbing a club life. But now that we participate in social
reunions as well as in other activities we can more fully make our
influence felt among the men. Our continuous contact with their friends
has rendered our husbands, brothers and sons more careful about the
character of the men they associate with. Now that you are married you
would not ask to your house a man about whose character you might have
some doubts. But if your wife was not with you, you might not be so
strict about the manners and the behaviour of those you associate with.
“Of course we Turkish women of this generation have a double duty to
perform now that we have acquired our freedom. We must first see that
this freedom is not turned into license as in some western countries,
where young men and young girls are allowed to go out alone in couples,
or--still worse--where husbands and wives cultivate different sets
of friends. We must also watch very carefully over our modesty,
and this is our most difficult task. Many Turkish women are taking
advantage of their new freedom to trample all modesty under their
feet. Alas! too many are already “over-westernized” and associate too
freely with foreigners or with Levantinized Turks in the salons of
Pera. Not that I object to the society of foreign men, but how are
we to know the character and the antecedents of all those foreigners
who are at present in Constantinople? They are mostly officers in a
faraway vanquished country or civilians desirous of staking their
all in get-rich-quick business ventures. How are we to know of their
education, their morals and their principles? We are therefore obliged
to be especially careful with foreign men. Our duty now is to raise
the new generation of girls as rationally as the well-educated western
girls. We want our girls to preserve their modesty, no matter how free
they are, we want them to know how to take good care of themselves,
no matter whom they associate with. We don't want them to abuse their
freedom. We want them to be as rational and thoughtful as my little
American daughter here.”
And so saying my aunt lovingly passed her arm on my wife's shoulders,
in a graceful movement of all-embracing protection. They looked at
each other with comprehending love. The girl of New Orleans smiled her
grateful appreciation in the eyes of the woman of Turkey.
V
LIFE ON THE BOSPHORUS
It was with real regrets that we left Erenkeuy.
A visit in such a congenial atmosphere ends always too soon even if
it has extended over two weeks. But I wanted my wife to know our
cousins who lived on the Bosphorus, to whom we had already announced
our coming, and I wanted her to come in close touch with the different
aspects of home life in Turkey, to see the Turks from different
angles. So we had to tear ourselves from Erenkeuy, after exchanging
repeated promises of seeing each other soon and often in town, promises
which--needless to say--were kept faithfully on both sides.
In the strict sense of the word our cousins are not really cousins
of ours and would not even count as relations in western countries.
However, as I said before, family bonds are so strong in Turkey, the
clan spirit is so developed, that we call cousins even the nephews of
our aunts by marriage. We consider them as such and we are brought up
to feel toward them as such.
Our cousins live on the European side of the Bosphorus, at Emirghian,
about half-way between the Sea of Marmora and the Black Sea, in one of
those old houses built right on the edge of the water. Theirs is one of
the few remaining typically Turkish country houses on the Bosphorus,
most of the others have either been destroyed by fire, fallen in
ruins, or else been replaced by modern structures--villas, apartment
houses, warehouses and depots which have, alas, contaminated with their
ultra-modern and commercial appearance the otherwise smilingly passive
shores of the Bosphorus. Thus this waterway, unique in the world,
this natural canal between two seas, which winds its way in graceful
curves between the green hills of two continents, offers now the sad
spectacle of charred ruins--where a few tumbling walls blackened by
fire are all that is left of the beautiful estates which adorned it but
a few years ago--with here and there a few pretentious buildings whose
showy architecture is a patent proof of the rapidity with which their
owners have accumulated wealth during the war and post-war profiteering
period. Worst of all, the lower Bosphorus is now bristling with quite a
few high apartment houses peopled with chattering and noisy Levantines.
Such apartment houses, with their tenants, are as out of place on the
wonderful shores of this peerless waterway as the corrugated roofs and
asbestos walls of the coal depots and general merchandising warehouses,
hastily erected in recent years under the guidance of interested--if
inartistic--foreign business men.
All the way to Emirghian I gave thanks to the Almighty for having
protected at least a few imperial palaces and a few old estates which
could still give an idea of what the Bosphorus looked like before the
war. A few, low, rambling buildings of one or, at the most, two floors,
growing lengthwise instead of upward, without a thought of economizing
the land, surrounded with parks where grow old trees, are happily still
left as a living proof of past splendour and good taste, and complete
disregard of business advantages.
Our cousin's house is one of them, possibly a little more dilapidated,
a little less comfortable than most of the other surviving buildings,
as it has been for a very long time deprived of the yearly repairs that
so large a house always needs. But what do we care: within the walls of
its almost limitless entrance hall, on the wide steps of its gorgeously
curved classical stairways, behind the latticed windows of its immense
rooms, the hospitality we find is as sincere and as great as the one
extended generations ago by one of the most brilliant Grand Vezirs of
Turkey, who was then the head of the family, at a time when to be the
Grand Vezir of Turkey really meant all the splendour that the world
suggests.
Our hostess is a widow who speaks French so fluently that she would
be taken for a French woman if she did not have the graceful poise
and dignity so typical of Turkish women. Her husband filled a
most important position in the Imperial palace in the time of the
late Sultan, and was one of the most accomplished men I have ever
met anywhere. Besides being a distinguished diplomat he was an art
connoisseur and had accumulated a priceless collection of antique
pictures, porcelains, carpets and books. Alas, this collection was
destroyed a few years ago when their town house fell the victim of one
of those all-destroying fires characteristic of Constantinople. Only
a few of the secondary pieces of the collection which were left in
their country house on the Bosphorus can still be seen there and are
an attestation of what the collection used to be. To cap it all, the
collection was insured in pre-war days in Turkish pounds which at that
time had a gold value, and the fire having taken place during the war,
and insurance being paid after the armistice, the family could only
collect Turkish paper pounds. Thus, besides the irreparable moral loss,
they had to suffer a very large material loss by recovering only one
seventh of the value the collection was insured originally for. This is
another example among millions of the terrible losses suffered in the
last years by the Turks for reasons absolutely outside their control.
It is a wonder that, despite all, they keep their composure and their
dignity. Calm before the most unimaginable trials, keeping a firm front
through the worst calamities, never complaining, never discouraged,
never losing faith--truly the Turkish race is the most stoical of all.
Our young host, the only son of the family, is just on a leave from
Germany where he went during the war to finish his studies and where he
has remained since then, having obtained a leading position in one of
the largest electrical engineering enterprises in Germany. His mother
is justly proud of the success of her son and we frankly rejoice with
her that one of us, a pure Turk in all respects, has evidently acquired
such a complete technical knowledge and has shown so much capacity as
to be picked out to fill a responsible position in one of the leading
firms of a country known the world over for the technical ability of
its electrical engineers. We ask Kemal to tell us his experiences in
Germany, but he is too modest to talk of himself. He prefers to tell
us how his firm is organized. He greatly admires the Germans for their
efficiency but is not otherwise very keen about living with them. He
finds the Germans too machine made, too materialistic to suit a Turk.
His one ambition is to perfect himself in his profession and then to
settle in Turkey where he will be able to give to his country the
benefit of the knowledge he will have acquired. He wants to return to
Germany for this purpose, but when we press him to tell us if it is for
this purpose alone he admits that he has another more personal reason:
he is engaged to a young girl in Munich and at the end of his leave his
mother will accompany him to Germany where he will get married. The
poor boy is heartbroken that his father, Ismet Bey, did not live long
enough to meet his wife. Kemal speaks English most perfectly and says
that his future wife does so also. He is therefore looking forward to
having her meet her new cousin, my wife.
The drawing-room in which we were was a spacious room with many doors
and windows. The lattices were up and the windows opened and the
breeze from the Bosphorus is so cool at this season that the great
open fireplace where big logs burned was barely enough to warm the
room. We sat near the windows on a wide divan which skirted about
one-fourth of the walls of the room, and to keep us warmer they had
placed at the corner nearest to us, a big brazero of shining copper,
filled with glowing charcoal. The windows were nearly over the water,
so near in fact that the rustling of the current, which is quite
strong on the Bosphorus, was plainly audible. It gave the impression
of being on a ship: the blue waters ran southward in an endless chain
of racing wavelets and the house seemed to be floating toward the
north. But opposite us the green hills of Asia, with a line of houses
skirting the shores and with big Anatolian mountains towering the
blue-gray horizon reminded us that our seeming flight toward the Black
Sea was only an illusion caused by the incessant rush of the current.
Big “mahons” or Turkish barges which have kept the graceful lines of
the old caiks, passed before our eyes, gliding silently on the blue
wavelets, their Oriental triangular sails swelled in the breeze. A
large Italian cargo boat plowed its way toward some romantic port of
the Black Sea: Costanza, where Roumanian peasant girls will purchase
its cargo of vividly coloured textiles in exchange for oil, so much
needed in Italy, or perhaps Batoum, where a cosmopolitan crowd of
traders will give flour, sugar and other food supplies to the starving
population of Caucasia against non-edible jewels, furs or platinum of
limitless value. Who knows? Perhaps it goes to Odessa or Novorossisk
to try bartering with Tartars and Russians, Mongols and even Chinamen
who now form the motley crowd of Bolshevik Southern Russia. The
Bosphorus is the gate of a whole world--a world fraught with mysterious
possibilities; tempting opportunities of stupendous gains, frightful
danger of very real losses, commercial and political possibilities of
such magnitude that it makes you shudder to think of them. And here
we are at the very gate of this world, a gate patrolled as usual by
England. See that gray destroyer, slim as an arrow, speeding toward its
base, the harbour of Constantinople. It flies the British flag and is
coming back from the Black Sea.