Originally published in: Canadian Woman Studies/Les cahiers de la femme (CWS/cf) Special issue “Women Writing 4” Spring 2013, 30: 1/2 (35-39)
Wrestling with worn-out metaphors
used for women in literature is not the aim of this essay. But I am bound to
begin with this because of the photograph. I have been staring at this picture
which I took on January 26th 2013 in Nice (Cours Saleya) before venturing my first lines. It has been days. I
can now close my eyes and tell you all the colors, the order and the shapes of the
flowers that accompany her smile and red leather gloves. “Flowery” background
of an intellectual and activist feminist whose life journey took her temporarily
from Turkey to France, only to relieve her soul which has refused to belong to
one nation or culture. Moving is good for the restless.
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Men’s love for women can be like a “red
red rose” but some women are better off when they are likened to mimosas or
snowdrops since their achievements in society herald new eras, ideas and they
challenge the status quo. The life story I am going tell you is destined to be
incomplete. Still, it is worth taking the risk because Şirin Tekeli, the famous
and highly respected feminist scholar from Turkey, should be introduced also to
non-Turkish feminist community. Especially because she believes in the power of
global support and network among feminists regardless of the differences and
culture-specific issues we have to focus on from time to time. This may sound
quite second-wave and is fine with me. She is capable of being critical of her
own generation to the extent that she can sometimes be cruel to herself and
cannot enjoy the long-deserved prestige and the compliments she receives from
others. I witnessed it more than once.
After
meeting her at the International
Multidisciplinary Women’s Congress in Izmir in 2009 where she delivered
a speech as one of the plenary speakers, I secretly promised myself to write
her life story one day. Not in an obsessed way but only if she agrees to talk
to me about her life over the years, only if we can develop a relationship
based on mutual trust and understanding. After all, I could be her daughter.
She does not have children and I haven’t yet asked her whether this was an
intentional choice or not. I am almost 40 years old and have been ‘recruiting’ family
members who are not born out of blood-ties. That is intentional. If I were Cours Saleya in my next life, they would
all be my flowers except that they would not be for sale. I enjoy this international
spiritual family made up of multiple mothers, dozens of sisters, lovers, dead
or alive. Ms. Tekeli doesn’t know that I am dedicating this mini-biography to
her as one of my mothers. If she gets upset because I haven’t asked her
permission like a “good daughter” should, I know how to fix it. Because she
told me about her favorite flower as we were sharing stories of love and life
over grappa.
It is
only after and when it is too late for the subject matter (be it a milestone
figure in Turkish feminist history or not) that most of us begin to compose
works of praise or introductory texts for the person. I am also one of them: I
like archival work and excavating feminist ghosts from their buried and
forgotten spots. Now I have to lay my concerns aside about what Tekeli is going
to think or how inadequate and embarrassed I might feel after this life writing
is published. I have confidence in her that she will be supportive of me. Because
she has been. Each time I attempted to write something… anything… to express my
feelings as a woman and expose my research she told me to go for it. Let us
return to the photograph taken in the flower market.
Just
by looking at it, you cannot tell much about Şirin Tekeli except that she is
elegant and charismatic. And yet she doesn’t want to be in the center. Well, I
could have told you more about her if there was no code of honor. However, for
her generation in Turkey, she told me, it is not easy to talk about the personal
stuff regardless of how you are known or referred to. In other words, in contemporary
Turkish literature, we do not have Anais Nïns. The reasons for this can be speculated in another project.
My apologies for not decorating this introductory life writing with some gentle
or tingling stories of love or escapades. Blame it on our cultural background.
I do. The “honor” issue is so deeply engraved in our genes as women even when
we are fighting against it and claim that we should not care.
Şirin
Tekeli is one of the most powerful voices in Turkish feminism. If you type her
name in the Bogazici University Library catalogue, you will encounter 23 titles
of the books she wrote, (co)edited and (co)translated. If only you had met her
during her years of feminist activism in the 1980s, you’d wonder how on earth
it was possible to organize people, attend all those meetings, publish feminist
zines and other magazines before the Internet era and still have this strong
presence in print in the richest library of Turkey. Discipline combined with
intelligence and dedication to a cause (or causes) would be my guess. Yet, she
is humble and has chosen to act as if she hasn’t lived a culturally and
politically flourishing life. As she accepted and pronounced in an interview,
she began as a "mahcup" feminist, which means shy in Turkish. How could a woman
like her feel "mahcup" in the midst of seemingly very progressive left-wing
groups whose male members were educated at university halls of Turkey if not in
Europe or England? To answer this question, we need to take a quick look at the
political background of the times and at the personal (the family etc.). Here
in Turkey, as feminist activists and scholars, we also love to combine and
study these two terms together: the personal and the political.
Born
in 1944, Tekeli’s childhood witnessed the struggles between westernization of
the Turkish Republic and the traditions of Islam and Ottoman heritage. Her
father was an intellectual educator and administrator, who got engaged in
politics through CHP (the center-left party in the Turkish politics founded in
1923). He was soon to be discarded as he suffered from the slanders of “being a
communist” and was exiled to a small town in Anatolia as a consequence. The
separation from her father, Tekeli says, was highly traumatic for her as a
single child and actually she rebelled against God after his death when she was
only 12 years old. Her mother (a philosophy teacher) and grandmother whose
preferences about how to raise her reflected more than a generational gap were
influential in her formative years. The grandmother saw nothing wrong in
listening to regional folk songs with Şirin whereas the assigned (!) daily
music by the mother had a completely different repertoire ranging from Mozart
to Bach. This small anecdote at the time (1950s) is indeed symptomatic of the
struggle between westernization and old customs and also reflects the paradoxes of Turkish nationalism and the
construction of an identity for the citizens of a new nation. Tekeli’s parents
were adopting a positivistic stance in life which affected how they raised
their only child, and most probably they had become intolerant towards the
religio-mystical traditions, distancing themselves from religious elements in
the culture (unlike the grandmother). Thousands of children then who are now
almost in their 70s today will tell you similar stories. It was also the father who
offered Şirin to taste her first wine! An open-minded father with progressive
ideas about education and a good library can shape his daughter’s identity even
in a very short time. Tekeli became an avid reader of literature during her
high school years, novels of André
Gide in particular. Gide’s fiction (Nourritures terrestres holding a special
place),Tekeli says probably laid the foundation for her being against all kinds
of dogmatic thinking and strengthened her continuous efforts to achieve
intellectual honesty.
When
she was 16 years old, the young Turkish Republic was hit by its first military
coup (1960), which inspired Tekeli to study political science. There was a
competitive exam held by the government for talented students with the highest
grades, giving them the opportunity to study abroad. Although the quota was
very limited especially after the coup, Tekeli succeeded in it. Thanks to her
mother’s support and permission, she left for Paris, to a brave new world… Not
knowing a single word of French was not an issue for this bright woman who
learned the language in two years at an advanced level so that she could follow
university lectures in the Law School with hundreds of other young and restless
students. When I say “young and restless”, I mean it. Despite the fact that she
fell in love with Paris, Tekeli was soon to realize that the violent
demonstrations especially after witnessing the Charonne Metro Station Massacre in February 1962 were too much for her,
and it would be better to continue her studies in a more peaceful place. She chose
to enroll in University of Lausanne. After the tense political atmospheres of
both Turkey and France, Switzerland seemed like a paradise for her. The
university was founded in 1537 and was boasting of a new and liberal faculty of
Social and Political Sciences at the time of her arrival. Her eyes still shine when
she refers to those years and names all her professors (Bridel, Zwahlen,
Perrin, Rieben, Schaller, Aguet, Oulès) and their area of expertise one by one.
After she had graduated with this amazing intellectual baggage and languages,
she returned back to Istanbul University where she began to teach and work as a
research assistant. She remembers rather sadly that in the Faculty of Political
Science, she was treated as if she was an “absolutely ignorant person” only
because the rest of the faculty was in great admiration of American system and its
educational methods. Inevitably, when it came to choose a topic for her
dissertation, it had to be on America. She wrote it on the systems theory of
David Easton.
You might still be wondering when the episode of feminism
comes to the view. It is the year 1978. Tekeli wrote the first thesis (for her
promotion to the associate professor rank) on women in her discipline and
department in Turkey through a feminist perspective. Because of her research
topic, there were some behind-the-back comments. She became even more aware of
the discriminations against women that had been covered insidiously behind the
discourses of Marxism or ‘the democracy’ constructed by the founders of the
Turkish Republic. Although since she began to read French, Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe was one of her
most-referenced books; it was not until the UN meeting in 1975 that women’s
issues were highlighted in her own agenda. Not having the conceptual tools was
not a major problem when she decided to prioritize women in her research. She
used what she refers to as an “eclectic methodology” in her studies.
Participation of women in politics was the topic for her promotion thesis and
after completing it, Tekeli says, she was no longer “the shy feminist”, she proudly
came out. However, soon after she quit her position at the university in order to
protest 1980 military coup, which introduced a monitoring institution called
Y.Ö.K. (the acronym for Council of Higher Education
in Turkish) and restricted freedom of speech and research in many areas
at the universities. Because offering courses on women and from a feminist
perspective was frowned upon, she doesn’t think that it would be possible for
her to give the courses she really wanted regardless of the coup and its
crippling outcomes. Her scholarly freedom, productivity, and feminism got
strengthened (ironically, I guess!) after quitting her position in academia.
Tekeli had to make a living and understandably tried to remain
in the social security system until her retirement. Thus, she began translating
important feminist authors into Turkish such as Elisabeth Badinter (L’un est l’autre- Des Relations entre Hommes
et Femmes), Diana Scully (Understanding Sexual Violence: A Study of
Convicted Rapists) and Germaine Tillion (Le harem et les cousins)
among many others whose names are not listed here due to my limited space.
However, one of her most important works is actually a collection of articles
that she edited, 1980’ler Türkiye’sinde Kadın Bakış Açısından
Kadınlar. This collection was published in German and English as
well, entitled Frauen in der Türkei der 80er Jahre and Women in Modern Turkish Society: A Reader respectively. This book is
considered groundbreaking in women’s studies in Turkey, bringing twenty Turkish
researchers and academics from different disciplines together with feminist
viewpoints. It is still widely used as a reference book in gender and women’s
studies courses, and social sciences in general.
Beginning
with mid-eighties, Tekeli’s involvement with NGOs increased. She is among the
founding members of Human Rights Association in Turkey, The Women’s Library and
Information Center, Istanbul Purple Roof Women’s Shelter, Helsinki Citizens’
Assembly, KA.DER (Association for the Support of Women Candidates) and Anakültür,
which are still active and effective NGOs with the exception of the last one. It
is breathtaking, I know, and makes you wonder what kind of multivitamins she
used! In a recent project application, I had to make a few phone conversations
with the women I haven’t met before for bureaucratic reasons and some paper
work. When I mentioned Tekeli’s name as one of my referees, the tone on the
other end of the receiver suddenly became friendly and helpful. I could not
help but to respect once again to the positive impressions that she must have
left on the people she cooperated and administered in the NGOs listed above. Some
of the demonstrations she got involved and organized were stuck in the public
memory such as the “purple needle campaign” against sexual harassment,
especially in crowded buses run by the municipality or on the streets.
At
the beginning of this essay, I wrote that moving is good for the
restless. Well, Şirin Tekeli moved more than once. After she got
tired of the political turmoil and the direction that that the Turkish
governments were heading towards, she decided that it was time to leave the
fight (the hard-core activism) to the younger generation in the big cities, and
move to a more peaceful location in Turkey. In Bodrum, she could focus more on
her translations and articles she has been writing for journals and newspapers.
She is much closer to the nature and the milder climate of the Aegean is a
better option for her health problems, which got more serious as the years go
by. Thanks to the Internet, she can stay in touch with the rest of the world,
although she refuses most of the invitations to conferences and other events,
related to NGOs or universities. She constantly reads, translates, follows certain
programs in French TV channels, and keeps her languages and knowledge always fresh.
Her small studio in Nice is a retreat for her body and soul, in which she
welcomes several friends and acquaintances around the world. She also corresponds
by email or phone calls with many young women who take her as a role model.
Her
mimosa-like qualities will be memorable for the ones who meet her in person. Similar
to feminists spread around our lonely planet who have to adapt themselves into
the local realities of the daily lives, mimosas also differ in color and size
depending on geographies they grow. In the Mediterranean, be it Istanbul or
Nice, they bloom in bright yellow and herald the coming of spring. Sometimes they
blossom even in the middle of the winter as we witnessed in Nice. The very last
image of my trip to Nice was a stranger in her sixties pulling a carry-on in
one hand and a big bouquet of mimosas in the other at the Nice Airport.
Traveling mimosas, I thought, travelling feminists, crossing borders while
pollinating ideas and emotions around the globe. How brightly they reflected
their sunshine color in that enclosed space, challenging all the artificial lights
of the airport. How empowered I have felt only after spending a few days with
the woman with a mimosa-soul. How she convinced me that it is not about the
differences but the similarities that we need to focus on in our struggles as
women. “Nation-states are collapsing,” were her final words before she wished
me a good flight, “but feminism is becoming stronger.” I looked her in the eye.
“You belong to a borderless nation,” she continued, “that is, of the womanhood.”
I smiled at her and nodded after she said: “Become a world citizen in your
heart and don’t be a shy feminist!”
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