Construction of Nationalism and Gender in Halidé Edib's Autobiographical Writings

This study examines the construction of nationalism and gender in Halidé Edib’s autobiographical writings, Memoirs of Halidé Edib (1926) and The Turkish Ordeal (1928), under consideration of her lecture series Inside India (1929) and Conflict of East and West in Turkey. The analysis focuses on the construction of the nationalist psyche and on levels of self-narration in her memoirs in relation to the Turkish nationalist movement and the Independence Struggle of Turkey. In Halidé Edib’s memoirs, the levels of self-construction (the private self, public/collective self and the writing self) interact with each other. Consequently, her autobiography represents a complex structure of self-narration. It is argued that by writing these autobiographical accounts, she re-/deconstructs nationalism and gender through self-narration and history. Hence, the objective of this work is to point out the levels of self-construction and narration parallel to the construction of the history of the early years of the Turkish Republic.