Aysen Müderrisoglu

An Intellectual Woman in Turkey in the 20th Century: Samiha Ayverdi: Analyzing a Woman Intellectual's Ideas on Modernism, Traditionalism, Islam, and Nationalism in Turkey Aysen Müderrisoglu

Turkey had experienced a process of regeneration along Western lines as early as the beginning of the 19th century. Despite the supporters of the process, there has been a considerable opposition to the westernization efforts on behalf of modernism in both the Ottoman and republican state. As an intellectual member of an elite and conservative circle, Samiha Ayverdi witnessed the period from the last years of the Ottoman Empire to the recent decades of the Turkish Republican state and produced productive analyzes and significant discourses in her fifty-five year writing life. This study examines the distinct approach of a specific Turkish thinker to the most frequently discussed issues like Islam, modernism and nationalism in Turkey. It basically addresses the following question: How does Ayverdi approach to the modernization progress in the Ottoman period and the secularizing policies in the new republican state?