Imagining Gender+ Justice amid the Pandemic: The Year in Turkey

Abstract

Imagining Gender+ Justice amid the PandemicThe Year in Turkey Hülya Adak (bio) From mid-2019 to six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, publications on life writing by women and (sexual) minorities proliferated in Turkey. The anti-gender propensities of the right-populist Justice and Development Party (AKP) became starkly evident during the early phases of the pandemic amid skyrocketing cases of violence against women and sexual minorities. Three months into the pandemic, there were heated debates among feminist civil society organizations and in academia about preventing the government from pulling Turkey out of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combatting Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, commonly referred to as the Istanbul Convention.1 Many nongovernmental organizations, civil society initiatives, foundations, authors, and activists responded by publishing works that promoted the ideals of a liberal, democratic, secular, and tolerant society. Since 2016, rising authoritarianism in Turkey has manifested itself in curbing academic freedoms and persecuting academics for speaking against state violence. It is no surprise that two of the most powerful families in Turkey published life histories detailing their arduous efforts to establish private universities that would guarantee academic autonomy. The two wealthy families—essentially conglomerates—the Koç and Sabancı Families, were represented through the memoirs of women on both sides. After a decade of struggling against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the Koç family's most prominent philanthropist Suna Kıraç (1941–2020) passed away a couple of months into the pandemic. Her memoir, Ömrümden Uzun İdeallerim Var, which was originally published in 2006, became a bestseller again in 2020. Kıraç's memoir offers her poignant personal story followed by reflections and documents of her successful career as a businesswoman. The initial section of the memoir deals with Kıraç's experience as a woman heir to a family of outstanding affluence, the personal aspects of being a woman in the business world starting in the 1960s, forming a marital alliance outside of the family's spheres of [End Page 155] influence, and adopting a child—hence unsettling the expectations of many prosperous families as well as her own in the 1970s that could only associate biological kin with the benefits of material inheritance. Alongside her leading role in the corporate world, Kıraç's memoir underscores her contributions to K-12 and higher education in Turkey. She was a significant actor in the founding of Koç elementary and high school (Koç Özel İlköğretim Okulu ve Lisesi) and the internationally renowned university established by her family (Koç University). Another prominent woman, Güler Sabancı, who has had a stunning career as the chairperson of Sabancı Holding, the second largest conglomerate in Turkey, wrote a powerful memoir in 2020. In Bir üniversite var ederken … , Sabancı reflects on her founding of Sabancı University in the late 1990s, depicting the foundational milestones necessary to establish an institution paying respect to academic freedom, internationalization, and interdisciplinarity, while embracing ideals of liberal arts education, scientific rigor, and research. This memoir is a response to rising restrictions on the academic freedom of university professors in Turkey, and it narrates the struggles of Sabancı University on the road to autonomy in research and teaching. With an amazing array of anecdotes and excerpts from Mevlana Jelaleddin Rumi, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Maya Angelou, and other writers and political figures, Güler Sabancı explores the possibilities of constructing a university ecosystem that operates on the law of antidiscrimination and climate justice. As difficult as the feat may be, Güler Sabancı explains, quoting Rumi, that "the thorns in our feet lead us to the roses that we seek" (75). In the past few years, memoirs and fiction by women have played a key role in the various collections of Ottoman and post-Ottoman Armenian works published by the Istanbul-based publishing house Aras. In 2020, as many experimented with cooking during months of lockdowns, culinary works from Aras became quite popular. Such culinary histories bring together traditions of cooking handed down by grandmothers, and are accompanied by oral histories recounting family gatherings and ceremonies. Takuhi Tovmasyan's Sofranız Şen olsun: Ninelerimin Mutfağından Damağımda, Aklımda Kalanlar shares the trials...