Refet by Fatma Aliye: A Review
By Merve Pehlivan
When novelist Fatma Aliye’s face first appeared on the reverse of the new 50 TL banknotes, part of the Turkish population was not happy. On January 15, 2009, Hürriyet columnist Rahmi Turan slammed the decision as follows: “She’s not there because she was a novelist, but because she was a religionist and opposed Atatürk’s reforms!” A significant part of the population, meanwhile, didn’t know who this woman was, even though the depiction on the banknote alludes to a writerly occupation with a stack of books, papers, an inkwell and a feather pen inside.
Selective honoring of early Republican-era intellectuals is nothing unusual in Turkey. If you see a Necip Fazıl Cultural Center in Ümraniye, and a Nazım Hikmet Cultural Center in Kadıköy, you can safely guess which party wins local elections in these districts. However, it’s facile to define Fatma Aliye as an Islamist who was against Atatürk’s modernization objectives. She espoused gender-progressive ideas long before Atatürk came to power and was a vocal founder of the first-wave Ottoman women’s movement (hareket-i nisvan), her writing along with that of other female thinkers (Şair Nigâr, Emine Semiye) laying the intellectual groundwork for a “women’s cause” (kadınlık mefkûresi) in the final decades of the empire. She stood up for women’s independence as individuals, solidarity and unity among women, arguing that they should be empowered to have a say in every segment of the society and should not accept societal roles imposed on them (1).
It is not hard to fathom why Fatma Aliye, considered by many as the first female novelist in Turkish literature, did not earn a notable place in modern historiography. Firstly, she belonged to the late Ottoman period that was strictly shunned by the Kemalist nation-building apparatus. Secondly, both in the said era and in the first years of the Republic, women’s rights activists were systematically ignored by the Kemalist administration, with a motive to credit Atatürk and his Republican People’s Party (CHF) alone for women’s acquisition of civil rights (2). Most importantly, Fatma Aliye’s opinions did not clash with Islam, as she sought to advocate women’s rights from within a progressive interpretation of the religion, a clear contrast with secularist ideals for modern Turkey. Her second novel Refet gives a clear account of Aliye’s worldview and aspirations for women’s role in public space. It’s the story of a young woman’s dogged resolve in gaining her economic independence, unencumbered with the wearied religion versus secularism divide.
The novel, originally published in 1897, was republished by Is Bankasi Kültür Yayınları in 2018. The cover curiously declares that the book is “in today’s Turkish,” which implies editorial guesswork on what contemporary readers can or cannot understand from the original Ottoman Turkish text. Senem Timuroglu’s intra-lingual translation does indeed render Refet accessible, with footnotes defining not only outmoded words such as darülmuallimat (teacher training college for girls), but even words that have not yet lost currency in today’s Turkish like rahle (book stand) or yaşmak (a type of headscarf), and French words that the Ottoman aristocracy colloquially sprinkled in their conversations, institutrice or d’après nature to name a few.
Refet begins in an unnamed Anatolian town with the eponymous hero and her mother Binnaz, a concubine of Hayati Efendi, facing ill-treatment by Refet’s half-siblings. Unleashing their jealousy and hate after the death of their father, they physically assault little Refet. Abandoned with no means or prospects, they move to Dersaadet (3) to stay with the family of Refet’s cousin, expecting to find the benevolence they’d received back when Hayati Efendi was still alive. To their dismay, none of the little girl’s relatives show them compassion, which Binnaz finds cruel. She is also upset by how her malnourished child is constantly bullied by her peers.
The mother and daughter end up living in a single room in various dwellings over time, first at Mürüvvet Hanım’s house, then in Nezaket Hanım’s, where Binnaz helps with housework. When circumstances separate them from these generous women, they rent a room in a neighbor’s house close to Refet’s school. Binnaz is a washerwoman by day, does needlework by night to earn their keep. Refet is a smart, proud and ambitious child, her sights set on being the top of her class. The mother and daughter develop a symbiotic relationship, constantly depending on each other emotionally and financially within their destitution. On a bitingly cold night, when Refet cannot feel her foot in her shoe, her mother starts rubbing her daughter’s foot, by the end of which her own hands are warm enough to move and cut the shoe, free her daughter from pain.
With “a superior sense of awareness and a capacity to understand”, Refet starts a teacher training college for girls, where the best students are mostly the poor ones working assiduously to become teachers and to make a living, while rich women’s motivation is to “decorate themselves with knowledge.” One can picture the glint of determination in Refet’s eyes, driven mainly by a survival urge in the backdrop of childhood abuse and lovelessness. She has an enduring perception that she is ugly, which is corroborated by other people’s similar opinion, and therefore considers herself ineligible for marriage. It is partly this poor sense of self-image that motivates her to work hard at school, get a job and ensure a comfortable life for her and her mother. Binnaz, meanwhile, catches cold while washing clothes in open air, cannot recover and eventually dies. Devastated after her mother’s death, Refet momentarily thinks of dropping out of college and giving up everything but changes her mind. She graduates at the top of her class and selects a teaching post in an unnamed Anatolian town.
Although it’s ultimately class limitations that define the struggle of the two main characters in Refet, solidarity and companionship among women cut across social hierarchies. In the novel, it’s always women helping out Binnaz and Refet who in turn help Refet’s orphaned friend Sule. Male characters appear only cursorily. They either die to start the story, show up in letters or passingly in conversation. Only Mucip, another cousin of Refet, has a few pages of dialogue dedicated to him. Thinking she would make a great accountant overlooking his commercial business, Mucip wants to marry Refet but she adamantly rejects his proposal and that’s the end of Mucip in the novel. In one memorable scene, four girl friends, Refet, Sule, Sahap and Cazibe take a stroll in a park in Fener. Although Sahap and Cazibe come from “elite families”, they are all clad in plain-looking clothes because they’re not interested in impressing others with their outward appearances, but in starting intellectually engaging conversations on the delightful, picturesque views of nature that surround them. These upper-class women deride pretend-poets and writers in the park who “recline on trees or rocks, with a pen tucked behind their ear and a notebook in their hands, eyes traveling elsewhere.”
The book offers a refreshing perspective in which religious elements are not a hindrance to women’s progress. As was the norm in the last decades of the empire, women wore headscarves in public. After merrily eating candies and kandil simidi with her mother and Nezaket Hanım’s family, a rare privilege for the household, Refet reads the Quran in what seems to be an expression of gratitude. Refet’s diligence at the teacher training college is underpinned with her faith: “Allah has bestowed intelligence to humans and ordered them to use it for beneficial, virtuous deeds.” Though one wonders if Refet would be as ambitious for education and professional pursuit if the author had not portrayed her as an unattractive woman who cannot expect a man to love and take care of her.
It would be difficult to describe Refet as a novel far ahead of its time, but it is a meticulously written didactic novel that shows what at the time was considered the avant-garde ideals of an important female author. Though the very end of the book slips out a curious little contradiction in Fatma Aliye’s argument to reconcile Islamic faith and women’s progress: Ahead of her teaching post in a town close to where her brothers live, Refet decides to confront them and demand her fair share of her father’s inheritance. “I will show them how laws by Prophet Muhammad protect women and the vulnerable.” This, in theory, may be true, but Refet is too smart and world-savvy to rely on the laws that give daughters half the share of what sons get. She’s very proud of how she managed to finish her studies with such modest means and finally became a teacher, standing on her own two feet.
Yaprak Zihnioğlu, Kadınsız İnkılap (Istanbul: Metis, 2019), 50.
ibid., p.23.
“gate of happiness” in Ottoman Turkish, referring to Istanbul.
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Merve is a writer, translator and interpreter based in Istanbul. She is also the host and founder of Spoken Word Istanbul.
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