Emine Semiye Önasya
Born(1864-03-28)28 March 1864
Istanbul, Ottoman Empire
Died1944 (aged 79–80)
Istanbul, Turkey
Pen nameEmine Vahide
OccupationNovelist, columnist, essayist
NationalityTurkish
SubjectWomen's rights
Literary movementFeminism
Relatives

Emine Semiye Önasya (28 March 1864 – 1944), mostly known as Emine Semiye and Emine Vahide, was a Turkish writer, teacher, activist, and early feminist. She thought that education plays an important role in the emancipation of women.[1]

Early life and education

Emine Semiye was born in Istanbul on 28 March 1866.[2] She was the second daughter of Ahmed Cevdet Pasha and sister of Fatma Aliye.[3][4] Her mother was Adviye Rabia Hanım.[5] Emine Semiye studied psychology and sociology in France and Switzerland for seven years.[2][4] She was one of the first Ottoman Muslim women educated in Europe.[4]

Career and activities

From 1882 Emine Semiye worked as a Turkish and literature teacher in Istanbul and in other provinces.[4] She served as an inspector at girls’ schools and an assistant nurse at Şişli Etfal Hospital.[2] Her writings on politics and education were published in various publications, including Mütalaa (in Thessalonica), Mehâsin (Ottoman Turkish: Virtues)[6] and Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete (Ottoman Turkish: Newspaper for Women) after the declaration of the constitutional monarchy in 1908.[2] She also wrote a math textbook entitled Hulasa-i Ilm-i Hesap in 1893.[7] In Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete she used first several pseudonyms, but later used her name and published various stories and travel writings.[8] Her most-known novels are Sefalet (1908) (Ottoman Turkish: Poverty) and Gayya Kuyusu (Ottoman Turkish: The Pit of Hell).[2]

Emine Semiye established several charity organizations to help women.[3] One of them was Şefkât-i Nisvân (Ottoman Turkish: Women’s Compassion) which was established in Thessalonica in 1898.[8] Another charity founded by her was Hizmet-i Nisvân Cemiyeti (Ottoman Turkish: Service of Women Association).[8]

In late 1890s Emine Semiye was the head of the Union and Progress Women’s Revolution Committee in Thessalonica.[8] She became a member of the progressive Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and later, of the Ottoman Democratic Party.[2] At the beginning of the revolution of 1908 she initiated a demonstration in Freedom Square in Thessalonica holding a flag.[9] Soon after many people both men and women joined her.[9] In 1920, she was named a member of the governing board of the Turkish Journalists' Association which had been called the Ottoman Press Association until that year.[10] She went into exile in Paris to avoid arrest by the Ottoman authorities due to her CUP membership.[11] Later she returned to Turkey and worked as a teacher.[11]

Views

Emine Semiye, together with her older sister Fatma Aliye, was a significant figure for the Ottoman women movement.[12] Emine Semiye was much more progressive and less orthodox than her sister.[8] She supported an image of women, educated mothers and wives, imposed by the official discourse during the rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.[13] During the same period she argued in an article published in Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete that the reason for her writing career was to contribute to social development, not for women's development.[13]

Although Emine Semiye actively involved in the activities of the CUP, her affiliation with the group weakened when she realized that the CUP was not very enthusiastic in improving women's rights.[13]

Personal life and death

Emine Semiye married twice.[4] Her first husband was Mustafa Bey who was a military judge.[11] The second was Reşid Pasha.[11] They divorced later.[4] She had two sons; one from each husband. Their names were Hasan Riza, son of Mustafa Bey and Cevdet Lagaş, son to Reşid Pasha.[4] She died in Istanbul in 1944.[4][11]

References

  1. ↑ Nükhet Sirman (1989). "Feminism in Turkey: A Short History". New Perspectives on Turkey. 3: 5. doi:10.15184/S0896634600000704.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Emine Semiye". Ministry of Culture. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
  3. 1 2 "Emine Semiye". Kitap Yurdu (in Turkish). Retrieved 28 August 2012.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Şahika Karaca (2011). "Modernleşme Döneminde Bir Kadın Yazarın Portresi: Emine Semiye Hanım (A portrait of a woman author in modernisation period: Emine Semiye)". Bilig (in Turkish). 57: 115–134.
  5. ↑ Serpil Çakır (2006). "Aliye, Fatma (1862–1936)". In Francisca DeHaan; Anna Loutfi; Krassimira Daskalova (eds.). Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms: Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries. Budapest; New York: Central European University Press. ISBN 978-963-7326-39-4.
  6. ↑ Özgün Uçar (June 2022). "Mehâsin: Resimli-renkli ve 'kadınlara mahsus' ilk dergi". Tarih Dergi (in Turkish). Retrieved 27 April 2023.
  7. ↑ Irina Livezeanu; June Pachuta Farris, eds. (2007). "Ottoman Turkey". Women and gender in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia (Volume 1). New York: AWSS. p. 226. ISBN 9780765624444.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Ayşe Zeren Enis (2012). Everyday Lives of Ottoman Muslim Women: Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete (Newspaper for Ladies) (1895-1908) (MA thesis). Boğaziçi University. pp. 56–59, 144–148. Archived from the original on 19 February 2022.
  9. 1 2 Serpil Atamaz Hazar (2010). The Hands that Rock the Cradle will Rise: Women, Gender, and Revolution in Ottoman Turkey, 1908-1918 (PhD thesis). University of Arizona. p. 11. hdl:10150/196048.
  10. ↑ Nur Bilge Criss (1999). Istanbul under Allied Occupation, 1918-1923. Boston, MA: Brill. p. 24. ISBN 978-90-04-11259-9.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 "İttihat Terakki'nin 'yeminsiz' kadınları". Posta (in Turkish). 8 April 2012. Retrieved 26 April 2023.
  12. ↑ Elif Bilgin (October 2004). An analysis of Turkish modernity through discourses of masculinities (PhD thesis). Middle East Technical University. hdl:11511/15000.
  13. 1 2 3 Barış Büyükokutan; Hale Şaşmaz (December 2018). "More than Subversion: Four Strategies for the Dominated". Qualitative Sociology. 41 (2): 602, 607. doi:10.1007/s11133-018-9396-9.
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