Halide Edip Adıvar

Halide Edip Adıvar (Ottoman Turkish: خالده اديب, sometimes spelled Halidé Edib in English; 11 June 1884 – 9 January 1964) was a Turkish novelist, teacher, and a nationalist and feminist intellectual. She was best known for her novels criticizing the low social status of Turkish women and what she observed as a lack of interest of most women in changing their situation. She was a Pan-Turkist and several of her novels advocated for the Turanism movement.

During World War I, Halide Edib Adıvar served as the inspector of schools in Beirut, Damascus, and Aleppo. In this role, she oversaw for six months an orphanage in Antoura (in modern-day Lebanon) where children orphaned in the Armenian genocide were subjected to forced assimilation. In her memoirs, Adıvar indicates that she was responsible for administering the orphanage but did not believe that the practice of forced assimilation was ethical, and she states that her ultimate goal was to save the lives of the Armenian orphans. According to researcher Keith David Watenpaugh, regardless of the motives, what was done at the Antoura orphanage constitutes genocide, based on the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.

Early life

Halide Edib was born in Constantinople (Istanbul), Ottoman Empire to an upper-class family. Her father was a secretary of the Ottoman sultan, Abdul Hamid 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 (Şefkat Nişanı). 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 (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. Among the people with whom she associated during this period was the Armenian priest and composer Komitas, whose music she highly valued and regarded as Anatolian rather than Armenian.