Halide Edib Adıvar | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of the Grand National Assembly | |
| In office 14 May 1950 – 5 January 1954 | |
| Constituency | İzmir (1950) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 11 June 1884 Constantinople,Ottoman Empire |
| Died | 9 January 1964(1964-01-09) (aged 79) Istanbul, Turkey |
| Resting place | Merkezefendi Cemetery, Istanbul, Turkey |
| Citizenship | Turkey |
| Nationality | Turkish |
| Spouse(s) | Salih Zeki Adnan Adıvar |
| Education | American College for Girls |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Awards | Şefkat Nişanı |
Halide Edip Adıvar (Ottoman Turkish:خالده اديب[hɑːliˈdeeˈdib], sometimes spelledHalidé Edib in English; 11 June 1884 – 9 January 1964) was aTurkish novelist, teacher, and a nationalist andfeminist intellectual.[1] She was best known for her novels criticizing the low social status of Turkish women and what she saw from her observation as the lack of interest of most women in changing their situation. She was aPan-Turkist and several of her novels advocated for theTuranism movement.[2][3]
Halide Edib Adıvar is also remembered for her role in theforced assimilation of children orphaned during theArmenian genocide.[4][5]
Halide Edib was born inConstantinople (Istanbul),Ottoman Empire to an upper-class family. Her father was a secretary of the Ottoman sultanAbdul Hamid II.[3] Halide Edib was educated at home by private tutors from whom she learned European and Ottoman literature, religion, philosophy, sociology, piano playing, English, French, andArabic. She learned Greek from her neighbors and from briefly attending a Greek school in Constantinople. She attended theAmerican College for Girls briefly in 1893. In 1897, she translatedMother byJacob Abbott, for which the sultan awarded her theOrder of Charity (Şefkat Nişanı).[6] She attended the American College again from 1899 to 1901, when she graduated. Her father's house was a center of intellectual activity in Constantinople and even as a child Halide Edib participated in the intellectual life of the city.[7]
After graduating, she married the mathematician and astronomerSalih Zeki Bey, with whom she had two sons. She continued her intellectual activities, however, and in 1908 began writing articles on education and on the status of women forTevfik Fikret's newspaperTanin and the women's journalDemet. She published her first novel,Seviye Talip, in 1909. Because of her articles on education, the education ministry hired her to reform girls' schools in Constantinople. She worked withNakiye Hanım on curriculum andpedagogy changes and also taught pedagogy, ethics, and history in various schools. She resigned over a disagreement[clarification needed] with the ministry concerning mosque schools.[8]
She received a divorce from Salih Zeki in 1910. Her house became an intellectual salon, especially for those interested in new concepts of Turkishness.[9] She became involved with theTurkish Hearths (Türk Ocağı) in 1911 and became the first female member in 1912. She was also a founder of the Elevation of Women (Taali-i Nisvan) organization.[10] Among the people with whom she associated during this period was the Armenian priest and composerKomitas, whose music she highly valued and regarded as Anatolian rather than Armenian.[11]
She married again in 1917 toDr. Ali Adnan (later Adıvar) and the next year took a job as a lecturer in literature atIstanbul University's Faculty of Letters. It was during this time that she became increasingly active in Turkey's nationalist movement, influenced by the ideas ofZiya Gökalp.[citation needed]
In 1916–1917, she acted as Ottoman inspector for schools inDamascus,Beirut and theCollège Saint Joseph inAintoura (or Antoura),Mount Lebanon. The students at these schools included hundreds of Armenian, Arab, Assyrian, Maronite, Kurdish, and Turkish orphans.[12] In the course of theArmenian genocide and under the direction of Halide Edib Adıvar andDjemal Pasha, about 1,000 Armenian and 200 Kurdish children were "Turkified" at the Collège Saint Joseph.[4][5] The children at the Aintoura orphanage were taken from existing orphanages, not saved from the streets by Djemal Pasha as Halide Edip later asserted. Most of the Armenian orphans at Aintoura returned to their Armenian identities after the Ottoman withdrawal.[13]
Halide Edip's own account of her inspectorship—the accuracy of which has been questioned by modern scholarsSelim Deringil and Shushan Khachatryan—and a few other accounts emphasize her humanitarian efforts and claim that she did not impose a strict policy of Islamization of the orphans. She claims that she was opposed to the policy of Turkification and initially refused to take part in the Aintoura orphanage but ultimately accepted "as a duty towards humanity".[14][13] Deringil writes that Halide Edip "was personally involved in the project of Turkification and Islamization at Antoura".[13]Robert Fisk wrote that Halide Edip "helped to run this orphanage of terror in which Armenian children were systematically deprived of their Armenian identity and given new Turkish names, forced to become Muslims and beaten savagely if they were heard to speak Armenian".[15]
Karnig Panian, author ofGoodbye, Antoura, was a six-year-old Armenian genocide survivor at the orphanage in 1916. Panian's name was changed to the number 551. He witnessed children that resisted Turkification being punished with beatings and starvation:[15]
At every sunset in the presence of over 1,000 orphans, when the Turkish flag was lowered, 'Long Live General Pasha!' was recited. That was the first part of the ceremony. Then it was time for punishment for the wrongdoers of the day. They beat us with the falakha [a rod used to beat the soles of the feet], and the top-rank punishment was for speaking Armenian.
According to Panian, these punishments were carried out by the director Fevzi Bey, in Halide Edip's presence.[13]
Emile Joppin, the head priest at theSaint Joseph College in Antoura, wrote in a 1947 school magazine:[15]
The Armenian orphans were Islamicised, circumcised and given new Arab or Turkish names. Their new names always kept the initials of the names in which they were baptised. Thus Haroutioun Nadjarian was given the name Hamed Nazih, Boghos Merdanian became Bekir Mohamed, to Sarkis Safarian was given the name Safouad Sulieman.
In a 1918 report, American Red Cross officer Major Stephen Trowbridge, met with surviving orphans and reported:[15]
Every vestige, and as far as possible every memory, of the children's Armenian or Kurdish origin was to be done away with. Turkish names were assigned and the children were compelled to undergo the rites prescribed by Islamic law and tradition ... Not a word of Armenian or Kurdish was allowed. The teachers and overseers were carefully trained to impress Turkish ideas and customs upon the lives of the children and to catechize them regularly on ... the prestige of the Turkish race.
Professor of Human Rights StudiesKeith David Watenpaugh compared the treatment of non-Turkish orphans by Halide Edip and Djemal Pasha to theAmerican andCanadian schools for Native American children that were forcibly assimilated and often abused.[16] He wrote that Edip showed a strong hatred of Armenians in her writings, portraying them as "a mythical and existential enemy of the Ottomans" and even made claims ofblood libel andchild cannibalism similar to those inanti-Semitism. She also claimed a conspiracy to turn Turkish children into Armenians, "thus also turning the accusations leveled against her for her work at Antoura back toward the Armenians themselves".[17] Watenpaugh writes of her:[18]
Modernizing Turkey and defending its Muslim elite against Western criticism are key elements of Halide Edip's life's work, but her reluctance to protect Armenian children or even voice empathy for them as victims of genocide shows a basic lack of human compassion. For Halide Edip questions of social distinction and religion placed limits upon the asserted universal nature of humanity; for her, genocide had not been too high a price to pay for Turkish progress, modernity, and nationalism.
Despite her role in the orphanages in Antoura, Halide Edib expressed her sympathies with the Armenians regarding the bloodshed and drew the rage of theCommittee of Union and Progress members inciting them to call for her punishment.[19]Talat Pasha refused to administer any and said that "She serves her country in the way she believes. Let her speak her mind; she is sincere."[19] A U.S. High Commissioner refers to her as a "chauvinist" and someone who is "trying to rehabilitate Turkey."[20] On the other hand, German historianHilmar Kaiser says: "And even if you're aTurkish nationalist, that doesn't make you a killer. There were people who were famous Turkish nationalists like Halide Edip; she advocated assimilation of Armenians, but she very strongly opposed any kind of murder."[21] On 21 October 1918, Halide Edip then wrote an article in theVakit newspaper condemning the massacres: "We slaughtered the innocent Armenian population ... We tried to extinguish the Armenians through methods that belong to the medieval times".[22][23][24] In biographer Hülya Adak's view, Edip's position evolved over time: earlier she had been more sympathetic to Armenians, but in the 1920s she adopted the "defensive Republican narrative" and justified the Armenian genocide as "reciprocal killings".[13]
From 1919 to 1920 she was among the contributors ofBüyük Mecmua, a weekly established to support the Turkish independence war.[25]
After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Allied forcesoccupied Constantinople and various other regions of the empire.Mustafa Kemal Atatürk began organizing resistance to the occupation, and Edib gained a reputation in Istanbul as a "firebrand and a dangerous agitator."[26] She was one of the main figures of the empire to give speeches to thousands of people protesting theoccupation of Smyrna by Greek forces during theSultanahmet demonstrations.[citation needed]
Edib eventually left Constantinople and moved to Anatolia together with her husband to join theTurkish National Movement. On the road to Ankara she met withYunus Nadi Abalıoğlu, another journalist who had decided to join the Turkish National Movement. In a meeting at the train station in Geyve, on 31 March 1920, they agreed on the importance of informing the international public opinion about the developments regarding theTurkish War of Independence and decided to help the national struggle by establishing anews agency. They concurred on the name "Anadolu Ajansı".[27][28]
During theGreco-Turkish War she was granted the ranks of first corporal and then sergeant in the nationalist army. In her memoirs, she emphasized the active participation of women in combat during the war.[29] She traveled to the fronts, worked in the headquarters ofİsmet Pasha, Commander of the Western Front and wrote her impressions of thescorched earth policy of the invadingHellenic Army and the atrocities committed against Turkish civilians by theGreek Army inWestern Anatolia in her bookThe Turkish Ordeal.
As a result of her husband Adnan Adıvar's participation in the establishment of theProgressive Republican Party, the family moved away from the ruling elite. When theone-party period started in 1926 with the Progressive Republican Party's abolition and the approval of the Law of Reconciliation, she and her husband were accused of treason and escaped to Europe.[30] They lived inFrance and the United Kingdom from 1926 to 1939. Halide Edib traveled widely, teaching and lecturing repeatedly in the United States and inIndia. She collected her impressions ofIndia as a British colony in her bookInside India.[31] She returned to Turkey in 1939, becoming a professor inEnglish literature at the Faculty of Letters in Istanbul. In 1950, she was elected toParliament, resigning in 1954; this was the only formal political position she ever held.
Common themes in Halide Edib's novels were strong, independent female characters who succeeded in reaching their goals against strong opposition. She was also a fervent Turkish nationalist, and several stories highlight the role of women in Turkish independence. She also published a thriller novel,Yolpalas Cinayeti (Murder in Yolpalas), which was first serialized inYedigün magazine between 12 August and 21 October 1936.[32]
She was aPan-Turkist and promotedTuranism in several of her novels. Her book entitledYeni Turan (New Turan) calls for the unification of Turkic peoples in Central Asia and the Caucasus under an empire led by Turkey.[3]
A contemporary described her as "a slight, tiny little person, with masses of auburn hair and large, expressive Oriental eyes, she has opinions on most subjects, and discusses the problems of the day in a manner which charms one not so much on account of what she says, but because it is so different from what one expected".[33]
Halide Edib died on 9 January 1964 in Istanbul. She was laid to rest at theMerkezefendi Cemetery in Istanbul.[34]
Starting in the 1970s, theOttoman and Turkish Studies Association awarded students a Halide Edip Adıvar scholarship. After Adıvar's involvement in the Armenian genocide became widely known, the Association attempted to rename the scholarship; however, as of 2021 the name remains because the association's board had not yet obtained the consent of the donor who sponsors the Halide Edip Adıvar scholarships.[35]
Appointed as the general director of education in Cemal Pasha's Syria, she was personally involved in the project of Turkification and Islamization at Antoura, although she was later to deny it in her memoirs.
You have been as good to Armenians as it is possible to be in these hard days. Why do you allow Armenian children to be called by Moslem names? It looks like turning the Armenians into Moslems, and history some day will revenge it on the coming generation of Turks.
