Halide Edib Adıvar


Halide Edib Adıvar was a Turkish novelist, nationalist, and political leader for women's rights. She was best known for her novels criticizing the low social status of Turkish women and what she saw as the lack of interest of most women in changing their situation.
During World War I, Halide Edib ran an orphanage at the former Saint Joseph College in Antoura for Armenian orphans.
She was a Pan-Turkist and several of her novels promoted Turanism.

Early life

Halide Edib was born in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire to an upper-class family. Her father was a secretary of the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II. Halide Edib was educated at home by private tutors from whom she learned European and Ottoman literature, religion, philosophy, sociology, piano playing, English, French, and Arabic. She learned Greek from her neighbors and from briefly attending a Greek school in Constantinople. She attended the American College for Girls briefly in 1893. In 1897, she translated Mother by Jacob Abbott, for which the sultan awarded her the Order of Charity. 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.
After graduating, she married the mathematician and astronomer Salih 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 for Tevfik Fikret's newspaper Tanin and the women's journal Demet. 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 with Nakiye Hanım on curriculum and pedagogy changes and also taught pedagogy, ethics, and history in various schools. She resigned over a disagreement with the ministry concerning mosque schools.
She received a divorce from Salih Zeki in 1910. Her house became an intellectual salon, especially for those interested in new concepts of Turkishness. She became involved with the Turkish Hearths in 1911 and became the first female member in 1912. She was also a founder of the Elevation of Women organization.
She became a friend of Armenian priest, musician and later Armenian Genocide victim Komitas between 1913 and 1914. Komitas had been invited to sing at her house several times. While Halide Edib was friendly towards him in person, in her writings she described Komitas and his music as "Anatolian" instead of Armenian. She claimed that his music had been stolen from Turks and that he "simply turned the words into Armenian". In addition, she believed that his parents were "probably of Turkish descent" and that "he was an Armenian nationalist whether his origin was Turkish or Armenian, but in temperament and heart he was a real Anatolian Turk if unconsciously."

During World War I and the Armenian Genocide

She married again in 1917 to Dr. Adnan and the next year took a job as a lecturer in literature at Istanbul University's Faculty of Letters. It was during this time that she became increasingly active in Turkey's nationalist movement, influenced by the ideas of Ziya Gökalp.
In 1916–1917, she acted as Ottoman inspector for schools in Damascus, Beirut and the Collège Saint Joseph in Mount Lebanon. The students at these schools included hundreds of Armenian, Arab, Kurdish, and Turkish orphans. In the course of the Armenian Genocide and under the direction of Halide Edib Adıvar and Djemal Pasha, one of the Three Pashas who organized the Armenian Genocide, about 1,000 Armenian and 200 Kurdish children were Turkified at the Collège Saint Joseph in Aintoura.
Halide Edip's account of her inspectorship emphasizes her humanitarian efforts and her struggles to come to terms with the violence of the situation. However an American witness for The New York Times, describing her as "this little woman who so often boasts of her American ideals of womanhood and of which her Western friends make so much", accused Halide Edip of "calmly planning with forms of human tortures for Armenian mothers and young women" and taking on "the task of making Turks of their orphaned children." 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".
Karnig Panian, author of Goodbye, 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:
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 , and the top-rank punishment was for speaking Armenian.

Emile Joppin, the head priest at the Saint Joseph College in Antoura, wrote in a 1947 school magazine:
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:
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 Studies Keith David Watenpaugh compared the treatment of non-Turkish orphans by Halide Edip and Djemal Pasha to the American and Canadian schools for Native American children that were forcibly assimilated and often abused. 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 of blood libel and child cannibalism similar to those in anti-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". Watenpaugh writes of her:
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 the Committee of Union and Progress members inciting them to call for her punishment. 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." A U.S. High Commissioner refers to her as a "chauvinist" and someone who is "trying to rehabilitate Turkey." On the other hand, German historian Hilmar Kaiser says: "And even if you're a Turkish 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."
On 21 October 1918, Halide Edip then wrote an article in the Vakit newspaper condemning the massacres: "We slaughtered the innocent Armenian population ... We tried to extinguish the Armenians through methods that belong to the medieval times".

During the War of Independence

After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, British troops occupied Constantinople and allies occupied various parts of the empire. Mustafa Kemal began organizing resistance to the occupation. Halide Edib gained a reputation in Istanbul as a "firebrand and a dangerous agitator." She was one of the main figures of Empire to give speech to thousands of people protesting the Occupation of Izmir by Greece during the Sultanahmet demonstrations. The British tried to exile her and several other leaders to Malta in March 1920.
Halide Edib escaped to Anatolia together with her husband to join the Turkish National Resistance. On the road to Ankara she met with Yunus Nadi, another journalist who had decided to join the Nationalists. 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 the Turkish War of Liberation and decided to help the national struggle by establishing a news agency. They concurred on the name "Anadolu Ajansı".
During the Greco-Turkish War she was granted the ranks of first corporal and then sergeant in the nationalist army. She traveled to the fronts, worked in the headquarters of İsmet Pasha, Commander of the Western Front and wrote her impressions of the scorched earth policy of the invading Greek army and the Greek atrocities in Western Anatolia in her book "The Turkish Ordeal".

After the War

In 1926, Halide Edib and many associates were accused of treason. She and her husband escaped to Europe. They lived in France and the United Kingdom from 1926 to 1939. Halide Edib traveled widely, teaching and lecturing repeatedly in the United States and in India. She collected her impressions of India as a British colony in her book "Inside India". She returned to Turkey in 1939, becoming a professor in English literature at the Faculty of Letters in Istanbul. In 1950, she was elected to Parliament, resigning in 1954; this was the only formal political position she ever held.

Literature

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 was a Pan-Turkist and promoted Turanism in several of her novels. Her book Yeni Turan calls for the unification of Turkic peoples in Central Asia and the Caucasus under an empire led by Turkey.

Description

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".

Death

Halide Edib died on January 9, 1964 in Istanbul. She was laid to rest at the Merkezefendi Cemetery in Istanbul.

Major works