https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7602-2108
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ABSTRACT
Adalet Ağaoğlu's Ölmeye Yatmak (Lying Down to Die, 1973) and Leylâ Erbil's Tuhaf Bir Kadın (A Strange Woman, 1971) are significant examples of Turkish literature that situate the female body within Turkish national history and discourse.Footnote1 Their protagonists lock themselves in hotel rooms where they get closer to their body and sexuality, and reveal critical insights related to their society, particularly laying bare the intriguing relationships between different ideologies such as Islam, modernization project and socialism. I argue that these novels dauntlessly show the flawed, conflictual and oppressive nature of these ideologies in their attitudes towards women and their bodies, which is emphasized through the protagonists' problematic and unstable relationships with these discourses and their bodies. As the protagonists begin to voice their repressed sexual desires and reclaim the female body as a source of pleasure and autonomy, a space to break away from imposed configurations of womanhood is created.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my PhD supervisor Margaret J.M. Sönmez for her helpful comments and valuable suggestions during my dissertation research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 This article is derived from my PhD dissertation entitled “Local Feminisms: A Comparative Analysis of Feminist Literary Theory and Practice in the 1970s in Britain, America and Turkey” (Middle East Technical University, Turkey). I prepared the manuscript for publication during my academic stay at the University of Warwick, UK.
2 Taşlıtarla is a shantytown area in İstanbul.
3 Kandiyoti, “Some Awkward Questions,” 282.
4 Kandiyoti, “Women and the Turkish State,” 143.
5 Especially, the following reforms are important for the discussion of women's emancipation in Turkey. Women were granted equal education rights through the Law on the Unification of Education in 1924, equal divorce and custody rights in 1926 through the Turkish Civil code, and the right to vote at local elections in 1930 and at national elections in 1934. Also, with the dress reforms of 1925, “the Islamic way of dressing was abandoned in favor of Western attire.” Müftüler-Baç, “Turkish Women's Predicament,” 307.
6 Arat N., Feminizmin ABC'si, 80.
7 White, “State Feminism,” 146.
8 Kandiyoti, “Identity and its Discontents,” paragraph 15.
9 Sirman, “Turkish Feminism”; Tekeli “Emergence of the New Feminist Movement,” 191; White, “State Feminism,” 154.
10 White, “State Feminism,” 154.
11 Arat Z. “Turkish Women,” 71.
12 Kandiyoti, “Women and the Turkish State,” 143.
13 Berktay, “Introduction,”25.
14 Kandiyoti, “Some Awkward Questions,” 282.
15 Ibid.
16 Şimşek, “New Social Movements in Turkey,” 112.
17 Balım-Harding, “Representations of Turkish Women,” 113.
18 Bora, Feminizm Kendi Arasında, 17.
19 Müftüler-Baç, “Turkish Women's Predicament,” 307.
20 Berktay, “Has Anything Changed in the Outlook of the Turkish Left on Women?” 52.
21 For more on a historical analysis of women's position within these ideologies, see, Merçil and Senemoğlu, “The Historical Grounds of the Turkish Women's Movement.”
22 Here, I want to emphasize that women's position within the context of modernization and socialism is already problematic. In this sense, this problem is not unique to Turkish context. However, an analysis of women's experience in Turkey through the intersections of these ideological frames along with the religious and cultural background of Turkey highlight very important local concerns.
23 Kandiyoti, “Emancipated but Unliberated,” 324.
24 Ibid., 325.
25 Erbil, Tuhaf Bir Kadın, 73–4. All translations from Turkish are mine.
26 Ağaoğlu, Ölmeye Yatmak, 329. All translations from Turkish are mine.
27 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic.
28 Erbil, Tuhaf Bir Kadın, 79.
29 Ibid., 63.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Irzık, “Allegorical Lives,” 556.
33 “A body-length outer garment, traditionally covering the head and hands, worn esp. by Arab Muslim women” (“Jilbab”).
34 Ağaoğlu, Ölmeye Yatmak, 12.
35 Ibid., 12.
36 Ibid., 146.
37 Ibid., 11.
38 Ottoman-Turkish for word “rough-cut shoe.”
39 Ağaoğlu, Ölmeye Yatmak, 14.
40 Irzık, “Allegorical Lives,” 559.
41 Ibid.
42 Since Aysel is from a small town where there is no high school, she moves to Ankara to live with her relatives so that she can pursue high school.
43 Erbil, Tuhaf Bir Kadın, 253.
44 Ağaoğlu, Ölmeye Yatmak, 46.
45 Erbil, Tuhaf Bir Kadın, 68.
46 Ağaoğlu, Ölmeye Yatmak, 44.
47 Erbil, Tuhaf Bir Kadın, 39.
48 Mumcu, “Yaratıcılık, Varoluş ve Leylâ Erbil,” 116.
49 Ağaoğlu, Ölmeye Yatmak, 102.
50 Ibid., 26.
51 Ibid., 43.
52 Ibid., 46.
53 Ibid., 65.
54 Ibid., 62.
55 Ibid., 269.
56 Ibid., 177.
57 Müftüler-Baç, “Turkish Women's Predicament,” 311.
58 Ağaoğlu, Ölmeye Yatmak, 44.
59 Ibid., 346.
60 Irzık, “Allegorical Lives,” 551.
61 Erbil, Tuhaf Bir Kadın, 251.
62 Ibid., 250.
63 Ibid., 250–1.
64 Ibid., 254.
65 Ibid., 254–5.
66 Ibid., 255.