The loss of Nermin Abadan on December 11, 2025, one of the last representatives of the founding generation in the field of social sciences, compelled me to rethink the importance of other women academics who were her contemporaries. I penned this article to write about the influence of Abadan and other women academics during the founding period of the Turkish Republic on subsequent generations, taking into account the “spirit of the times.” What I will convey here will be based on my observations and readings regarding three women social scientists whom I had the opportunity to meet in the Ankara of the 1960s and who influenced me and the young women of my generation. Remembering and reminding others of Behice Boran, Mübeccel Kıray, and Nermin Abadan, who all influenced me and other women in choosing social sciences as a profession, is important for us to understand what an arduous endeavor the production of science is.Footnote ² While writing this article, I also realized how few women academics or thinkers who could influence other women are in the new conservative environment in which we live today. I wonder, are there no longer pioneer women, or have the areas from which women draw inspiration changed in this new order, or do women no longer need pioneer women?

I would first like to explain what I mean by the “spirit of the times.” For quite some time, I have been trying to emphasize that when using concepts accepted in the academic world, we, as social scientists in a country like Turkey where the production of original knowledge is rare, need to know in which place and time, and in which context they were produced. I believe this is even more important because we often try to transfer knowledge based on different approaches and schools or engage in “translated science,” as I put it, rather than produce original knowledge. For this reason, when associating concepts with the phenomena we observe, we should do it with special care. It is especially important to pay attention to this when looking at the past and trying to understand the impact of the past on the present. In this article, while remembering three women academics who left a mark on the social sciences in Turkey, I will also try to understand the environment in which they were raised, that is, the “spirit of the times” that formed them.

Reflecting on my own personal experience, in İstanbul, where I was born and raised, I had the opportunity to meet women teachers, painters, storytellers, ceramics artists, poets, and academics who rejected the conservatism of that period and who lived non-conformist lives and expressed non-conformist ideas that would be considered marginal even today. These women, whom I watched with admiration and astonishment, engaged in very different professions/occupations with great enthusiasm and, despite their non-conformism, were respected in society. These women made us young people realize that women could establish lives outside of traditional roles and could also exist in the spheres of art, literature, and science. In today’s gloomy atmosphere, we are much more curious about how the colorful, original, and relatively free women raised in the founding period managed to exist. The fact that women’s increasing efforts for liberation today are sought to be suppressed through violence and with state support makes this subject even more meaningful and interesting.

While remembering the pioneer/founding women academics whose last representative we recently lost, we also need to think about the environment in our current period that advises young women in social life to return to their traditional roles and the academic system that awards young academics for producing translated science. I wonder what conditions created the environment that brought forth the academic women of the founding period? Was the excitement of these women that even touched us merely the continuation of a flash in the pan? Was it that the founding project of the Republic had failed? Was the Republican project an initiative doomed to failure from the start, produced by the founding cadre’s emulation of the West? Or is the fact that these pioneer women are still remembered a sign that their influence will sprout again when suitable conditions arise? To answer these questions, it is useful to understand the spirit of the times and place.

Although the persona in the dreams of women who wanted a presence in the public sphere changed depending on their own perceptions, the founding women showed young women who were soul-searching that different alternatives were possible. In those times, it was possible to encounter different women like them even in ordinary public schools in many cities outside İstanbul. My personal curiosity directed my attention more toward pioneer women teachers and academics active in the social sciences, which offered the opportunity to question and observe society. Finally, during my university years, I met Behice Boran, Mübeccel Kıray, and Nermin Abadan in Ankara. I want to briefly explain how I met these women.

My university life which started in 1963 at the Faculty of Political Sciences of Ankara University (Mülkiye) was woven between the campus, the canteen, and the dormitory. I owed my interest in sociology to my literature teacher at Fatih Girls’ High School in İstanbul, Fethiye Tanyol, who was married to the author and sociologist Cahit Tanyol. During my university years, I maintained this enthusiasm by reading the works of and listening to talks by İbrahim Yasa and Erdoğan Güçbilmez at Mülkiye, and Mübeccel Kıray, whom I learned was teaching at the Middle East Technical University (METU). During my years as a student at Mülkiye, I worked as a data collector in field studies conducted by Güçbilmez and Kıray and hence observed them at work. I was very impressed by Kıray and tried to attend her talks, which were always open to all students. My real acquaintance with Kıray coincides with the period after the 1971 military coup, when she left METU, and when my doctoral scholarship for study abroad, which had been awarded by Hacettepe University’s Institute of Population Studies, was rescinded. Afterwards, while I was working as a demographer at the Master Plan Bureau in İstanbul, Kıray was conducting the “Central Business District” research for this bureau. I worked on this research and later, when Kıray entered Marmara University, I started working with her when she conducted the second Ereğli Study.Footnote ³ I worked on that research as well, and subsequently Kıray became my doctoral thesis advisor. Unfortunately, her Central Business District and Second Ereğli Study were never published for different reasons. My relationship with her lasted until the end of her life.

My acquaintance with Behice Boran also began after 1963. At that time, as a young women and a student, I was following Behice Boran’s activities in the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP). Behice Boran was one of the most respected and trustworthy politicians for us young people. She belonged to a political cadre that encouraged young people to be distant from violence but close to politics in the climate ushered in by the 1968 movement. Boran, who was a very good orator and, moreover, a woman member of such a cadre was the model of an intellectual woman that we, as women, all wanted to be while participating in youth activities at TİP.

However, tumultuous events such as the imprisonment of many intellectuals like Boran after the 1971 coup and the dismissal of some of her friends from the university, the arrest of many politicians we respected after the closure of TİP, the arrest of some of our close friends, some of them seeking refuge abroad, and the killing of some of my friends who were leaders of the revolutionary youth movement, such as Mahir Çayan and Sinan Cemgil, unfortunately changed our lives. A consequence of these tumultuous events was that we could not think about academic life since we were overly engaged with what was happening around us. Consequently, I learned that Boran was a sociologist and about her friendship with Kıray much later.

Nermin Abadan was a very different persona whom I observed from a distance during my student years but knew well because she was a close friend of some elders in my family. Although I heard about her political views, the courses she gave at the Department of International Relations at Mülkiye, and the parties she threw at her home, I was not much interested. I understood much later that Abadan was teaching the rules of diplomacy to the young people who would be the future diplomats representing Turkey abroad. My rapport with Nermin Abadan was established through Mübeccel Kıray. While working on my dissertation on international migrationFootnote ⁴ under Kıray’s supervision in İstanbul, I made use of Abadan’s personal archive in Ankara and had the chance to observe the depth of her knowledge on migration and her generosity in sharing it. Perhaps only after this did I truly get to know her, and we remained friends until her death. Nermin Abadan became my mentor both as scholar and woman by offering practical tips during our conversations on how to strike a balance between private and academic life.

We were all aware that these three women, who made impacts in academia and public life, had very different fields of interest, perspectives, and political views. However, we were far from fully interpreting the meaning of this. As young people during the 1960s, we were attracted to the fact that these women whose works we read and whose talks we listened to were different from our mothers, our women relatives, and even the wives of male intellectuals we admired. While trying to understand how they managed their professions that were respected by society, we were also curious about their private lives.

As a young woman Behice Boran married the author and translator Nevzat Hatko. They had a son, Dursun Hatko, but Boran did not speak much about either of them. Mübeccel Belik was married to the İstanbul gentleman and medical doctor İbrahim Kıray. We all knew İbrahim Bey; he worked as a doctor at the State Railways and he was the doctor of all of us. They had a daughter named Emine who lived in the United States (USA) and whom we had met, too. Nermin Abadan’s first husband was the political philosopher Yavuz Abadan. They had a son, Mustafa Kemal. After Yavuz Abadan’s death, she married international relations professor İlhan Unat. Nermin Abadan, in her memoirs, tells of her struggle for women to be able to use dual surnames, recounting that İlhan Unat let her to use her first husband’s surname, Abadan, after their marriage. She would also advise us women academics to definitely use dual surnames after marriage so that our academic writings could be identified as ours. I do not know if it was a providential coincidence or a voluntary decision that all three women were buried in Zincirlikuyu Modern (Asri) Cemetery, which was opened in 1935 during the Republican era!

Back then, thanks to these three women and the “spirit of the times,” we thought Turkey and ourselves were “modern.” Moreover, we thought that a future similar to theirs might be possible for us too. Since they always stood upright and strong, we did not quite understand what troubles they suffered. Having learned through experience ourselves, we now realize that their lives were not smooth sailing at all.

In the hundredth year of the founding of the Republic, many books were published on state–society relations. A significant proportion of these publications were studies dealing with and criticizing the actions and discourses of the actors of the founding period. In this article, because it concerns academic women, I will mention one book, namely Sahada: Cumhuriyetin Harcında Bilim ve Kadınlar (In the Field: Science and Women in the Cement of the Republic) published by the Academy of Sciences in 2023 which tells the life stories and scientific contributions of twelve women born between 1902 and 1923 who were founding figures in different scientific fields such as geology, zoology, paleontology, botany, architecture, and archaeology and who most likely inspired enthusiastic young women in their own fields (Sabancıoğlu Reference Sabancıoğlu2023). This book made me realize that Boran, Kıray, and Abadan were in company of other pioneer women who were raised in the founding period and reflected the “spirit” of that period.

I would like to briefly go over their life stories to highlight in what ways they were similar and in what ways different. Behice Boran (1910–1987) was born in Bursa as the daughter of a Kazan Tatar immigrant family. She was educated in İstanbul and worked as a teacher in Manisa. After receiving her PhD degree in sociology at the University of Michigan in the USA on a scholarship, she worked as an associate professor of sociology at the Faculty of Languages, History and Geography (DTCF) of Ankara University between 1939 and 1948. In 1948, she was expelled from DTCF along with Pertev Naili Boratav, Niyazi Berkes, and Mediha Berkes on charges of being communists. She went into politics as the founder of the Turkish Peace Lovers Association established in 1950 and became a member of TİP in 1962. She became a Member of Parliament for Şanlıurfa in 1965 and the chairwoman of TİP in 1970. Turkey’s political life, full of coups, prevented Boran from returning to academic life. She was imprisoned twice and finally stripped of citizenship after the 1980 coup and died in exile in 1987.

Boran’s impact on both politics and the social sciences has persisted. Her influence in politics may be the subject of another article, but we can say that her influence in the field of sociology, especially her methodology, was silently transferred to subsequent generations. Her colleague Hayriye Erbaş says that the social structure analyses Boran developed based on the field research she conducted in the villages of Ankara and Manisa are studies that reveal the non-normative aspect of sociology as a science and still maintain their importance (Erbaş Reference Erbaş and Sabancıoğlu2023). She laments that Turkish academia lost one of its very important pioneers, saying that Boran was obstructed because she “did not conduct science according to [the wishes of] the government.” As a person who felt socially responsible, Boran’s academic works were not geared towards a professional career but rather were an effort for enlightening the public and in search of a better society (Erbaş Reference Erbaş and Sabancıoğlu2023).

Mübeccel Kıray (1923–2007) was born in İzmir as the daughter of an immigrant family from Crete. She spent her childhood and early youth in İzmir and İstanbul. She received her bachelor’s degree in philosophy and then her PhD in sociology under the supervision of Behice Boran at DTCF. In 1950, she was briefly imprisoned on charges of membership of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP). Later, she received her second PhD degree in social anthropology at the University of Chicago on a scholarship. She worked in various jobs until 1959 when she received the title of associate professor at a time when she did not have an academic employment. She then started to work at the newly established METU, founding the sociology department. When she was removed from the position of department chair after the 1971 coup, she retired in 1973 and settled in İstanbul. She gave lectures at İstanbul Technical University for a while and later got a full-time position at Marmara University’s Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences between 1982 and 1989.

Kıray was clearly influenced by the intellectual environment created by her mentor Behice Boran and the social psychologist Muzaffer Şerif at DTCF, as well as other colleagues who were later all purged from the university. She herself made an impact on intellectuals and youth who were open to critical thinking in post-1960 Ankara with both her research and her eloquent talks and courses. I will not go into Kıray’s contributions to the academic world at length, but I will briefly touch upon the assessments of Kıray’s work by her students at METU gathered in the book Sahada. Bahattin Akşit says that Kıray’s theoretical contribution was the result of an interaction between structural functionalists in the USA and Marxist sociologists in continental Europe. According to Akşit, since Kıray prioritized theory–data interaction, she posited that theoretical knowledge would be renewed by testing it with data derived from field research. Sezgin Tüzün emphasizes that Kıray was one of the rare academics who could use both qualitative and quantitative data competently, having received graduate education both in sociology and anthropology. Akın Atauz, who participated in many of Kıray’s field studies, recalls with affection Kıray’s attention to detail and meticulousness during fieldwork and her respect for those being observed (Akşit et al. Reference Akşit, Atauz, Tüzün and Sabancıoğlu2023).

Nermin Abadan (1921–2025) was born in Vienna in 1921 as the daughter of an Austrian mother and a Bosnian father. She came to İstanbul with her mother in 1927 and lived there with her parents until she was ten years old. Upon her father’s death in 1931, she went to Budapest with her mother. In 1935, when she was fourteen years old, she travelled to İzmir by herself where her father’s family lived. She studied at İzmir Girls’ High School, where Mübeccel Kıray was also a student. Her close friendship with Kıray formed in high school lasted until the end of their lives. Abadan studied law at İstanbul University, and then worked as a journalist and lawyer. She completed her doctoral education at Ankara University’s Faculty of Law and received postgraduate education at the University of Minnesota in the USA on a scholarship. In 1954, she became the first woman academic to enter Ankara University’s Faculty of Political Sciences, which was then a closed male world and worked there until she retired in 1988. In 1978, she became a senator representing the Republican People’s Party (CHP) (Abadan-Unat Reference Abadan-Unat2021).

After her retirement, she taught at Boğaziçi University and gave talks at civil society organizations defending women’s rights. Nermin Abadan’s academic resumé spreads over a very active and wide spectrum, just like her life. In addition to teaching, research, writing, and delivering talks on human rights, women’s rights, and migrants’ rights based on her academic training in law, she also made scholarly contributions to the field of public opinion polling and communication, given that she had a background in journalism. Her impeccable command of German and English and her inexhaustible energy enabled her not only to follow new developments in international scholarship but also to rapidly share them with political, scientific, and media publics in Turkey. Abadan’s effort to disseminate knowledge produced in the academic world to broader publics using a clear style, in addition to the original research she conducted especially on international migration and women’s issues, render her contributions original and unique.

The most important factor in the success of these three women was their personal characteristics; they were strong and self-confident women. I came to realize in later years through our conversations that these three women, although not subscribing to the same political views, were very close friends, respected each other by accepting their differences, met each other frequently, shared their private problems, and acted in solidarity when necessary. Another common point among them was that they approached the work they did with devotion. Back then, we could surmise that since each of them worked in different fields and had different political preferences, they were not going to form a scholarly “school.” But, thinking about it today, one comes to realize that an important trait that they all shared was that they were in the field (sahada), that is, they produced empirical knowledge of the local that was non-normative in addition to their efforts to convey the importance of critical knowledge to their students, some of whom became policy makers within the bureaucracy or technocracy.

These women were able to sustain their presence in the male-dominated world of intellectuals and academia. In fact, I could gather from their cheerlessness that they felt tired, yet they continued to try and stand upright. We know that they received support from political circles in the founding period of the Republic; for example, they were able to go abroad for doctoral studies and research on state scholarships.

However, the support given to Boran and Kıray waned by the 1950s; they were removed from the university environment which they loved so much, and as if that was not enough, they were arrested and imprisoned because of their ideas and writings. Although they did not bring it up themselves, we learned much later, from people who cared about the contributions of these women, that their approach to producing original and critical knowledge in the social sciences took a blow through the decisions of administrators who had lost the excitement of the founding period. Abadan must have been aware of the situation and been concerned for her friends, although she did not suffer as much as them due both to the fact that her field of study was not deemed oppositional and that she had acquaintances in bureaucratic and diplomatic circles owing to her position in Mülkiye.

To understand the spirit of the times, we must remember that the three women were raised during the early years of the Republic, a period marked by great turmoil in the wake of the Balkan Wars and World War I. Although studies on the founding period of the Republic take account of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, they do not usually consider that the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires, which all were cosmopolitan in terms of ethnicity and faith, also went through similar processes. This turmoil had engulfed the entire geography.

To understand what happened in Europe after World War I, we need to scrutinize the change not only in politics but also in the social structure and the realm of thought. Europe was experiencing the pains of the dissolution of peasantry and the multifaceted transformations that were shaped by the transition to a market economy. Founding sociologists like Marx, Weber, and Durkheim were all grappling with this momentous change. The dissolution of empires in Europe gave way to capitalist nation-states, and the Russian Empire left its place to the socialist Soviet Union. The Ottoman Empire transformed from a “multi-national” premodern cosmopolitan society into various nation-states including the Republic of Turkey, a “mono-national” successor to the premodern Muslim agrarian society. Put differently, empires which were complex in terms of ethnic and faith groups, and therefore culturally cosmopolitan, were transformed into culturally homogeneous nation-states in which citizens were supposed to be equal before the law and assumed to have a common language and faith.

One of the most important consequences of this tumultuous process was that those who were ethnically, religiously, or linguistically different were forced to migrate. The military and civilian bureaucracy in Turkey also sought to manage forced migrations and sustain production with the premodern authoritarian tools they inherited from the Ottomans. The institution of settlement (iskan) was the most important traditional and authoritarian apparatus regulating these forced population movements (Erder Reference Erder2018).

In the tense environment of the founding period in Turkey, the “friends” were “Muslims” of all stripes, and the foes were “Christians” of all stripes labeled as “infidels” (gavur); Jews were an important faith group accepted as “friends.” “Laicism,” on the other hand, was a “modern” understanding which the administration assumed would keep people of all stripes together (Erder Reference Erder, Aslan, Şakar, Şahinler, Şahin and Akay2024). Therefore, it was not important whether the native language of arriving forced migrants at that time was Turkish.

We must always remember that the founding cadres of the Republic were essentially a soldier/bureaucrat elite who had also served in the Ottoman period and possessed a cosmopolitan Ottoman culture. Likewise, we must keep in mind that not all of those leaving, or those arriving in the country, were “warrior” men. Among them there were women, children, and the elderly, as well as community leaders, fanatics, the brave, cowards, intellectuals, and the ignorant. The perceptions of each group of both the past and the future must have been different.

In this framework, does the fact that Behice Boran had a Kazan Tatar immigrant family, Mübeccel Kıray had a Cretan immigrant family, and Nermin Abadan had an Austrian mother and a Bosnian father tell us anything about what they thought about war, loss, and a new hope? Can their backgrounds in culturally cosmopolitan environments of collapsed empires explain their refusal to entertain ideas about religious and ethnic unity as well as ethnic and religious discrimination? Does the fact that they came from educated families who encouraged their daughters to also get an education mean that they were influenced by the progressive humanist currents of thought of the period?

The founding ideology of the Republic is debated by historians, political scientists, and international relations experts in every period using new concepts. Documents, memoirs, novels, reports, and legal texts examined by historians, whether biased or not, are very valuable because they clarify many issues.

The information obtained thanks to these sources and newly found documents has led to different evaluations regarding who the founders of the new social order were and from which influences they were nourished. Autobiographies and biographies are extremely valuable for understanding the women who made original contributions in literature and science.

In these evaluations, the founding cadre, especially Mustafa Kemal’s actions and discourses, are constantly reconceptualized and reinterpreted. Intellectuals’ evaluations take on a quality that sometimes glorifies and sometimes criticizes the founding cadres depending on the gains and losses in the distribution of social power. Some politicians and army members have justified their political and military interventions in the political sphere, especially after 1950, on the founding ideology of the Republic. This perspective has met with reaction from pro-democracy circles and has led to different perceptions of the founding period. Hence, the content of debates on Kemalism changes meaning by being constantly reviewed according to the conditions and values of the period. This became all the more apparent when in recent decades discussions on “Post-Kemalism” and “Post-Post Kemalism” were added to these debates.

In light of these discussions, we can surmise that all three women were Republicans and admired Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as a leader. But we can also understand from the suppression they suffered that they were not “Kemalists” in the sense that successive authoritarian administrations tried to forcibly construct. How can we interpret that Behice Boran engaged in politics within TİP, a democratic socialist party established in the 1960s, and Nermin Abadan in CHP thinking that it would continue to toe the line of the founding party? Could they too have been influenced by events shaking the intellectual climate in Europe after World War I? Could they have realized that society would change not only through science but also through politics, having witnessed the predicaments of the intellectuals they followed during World War II? Might they have read Hannah Arendt, given that they were avid followers of intellectual debates outside Turkey?

The fact that there was a higher proportion of women working in highly skilled professions compared to European countries attracted academic attention in the 1970s in tandem with the rise of women’s studies. Ayşe Öncü, a student of Kıray, attributed this high proportion to the demographic and class conditions in the early Republican period in an article published in a book edited by Abadan (Öncü Reference Öncü and Abadan-Unat1979). According to her, the available numbers of highly educated women could not meet the demand for new cadres, and upper middle-class educated women were encouraged to work in these professions. An important advantage of upper middle-class women in this rapidly changing society was their ability to purchase the labor power of low-income urban women for domestic work (Öncü Reference Öncü and Abadan-Unat1979). As Öncü also observed, the loss of the young male population in the war during the founding period of the Republic was a very important problem for the sustainability of social life.

The male population declined not only because of war but also because of forced migrations. The loss of Greek and Armenian populations resulted in a decline of adult skilled men. A common problem for newly established states at that time was the resettlement of departing and arriving populations. It should be borne in mind that at a time when the country was struggling to transform from the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional system of the Ottomans to a homogeneous nation-state, decision makers were also exhausted from war and forced movements. When I reconsider Öncü’s article in this light, I realize that it is important to underline that some of the women who started working in highly skilled jobs had been raised in immigrant families who were themselves educated by war-weary women.

Thus, Boran, Kıray, and Abadan belonged to immigrant families who had fled wars, and belonged to urban (kent soylu), educated middle classes. It is significant that in a male-dominant environment they chose a profession that sought to understand and explain social processes rather than professions such as teaching, nursing, law, or medicine which were deemed suitable for women. This choice might have stemmed from their family and social environments where such issues were discussed in addition to instilling in them self-confidence.

In European countries where similar problems were experienced, large segments of the founding cadres and those seeking to build new societies had also experienced the devastation of the war. Intellectuals who experienced the dissolution of empires after World War I produced important and original works in the fields of politics, law, philosophy, science, and the arts. New theoretical perspectives and scientific methodologies were built, and the dynamics of social change were sought to be understood in that period as well. Universities were reimagined as institutions where original knowledge would be generated and disseminated, and the traditional understanding of law was sought to be replaced with a modern understanding that included human rights. Thus, this period was one in which both evil and good flourished. Unfortunately, during and after World War II, these pioneering thinkers suffered defeat, died, committed suicide, or went into exile. Reading the biographies of authors such as Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, or scientists like Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, and Zygmunt Bauman, we can get an understanding of what kinds of ideas were advanced in that period and what kinds of ideas were sought to be destroyed. It was also in this period that some intellectuals in Turkey had a chance to meet in person with heimatlos (stateless) intellectuals who had fled Germany, Austria–Hungary, or Poland due to fears of persecution because of their religious or ethnic identities or political views.Footnote ⁵ The names of Carl Ebert, Gerhard Kessler, and Bruno Taut, academics who contributed to the 1933 university reform in Turkey among other scientific accomplishments, are still remembered by their colleagues (e.g. Kazancıgil Reference Kazancıgil2000; Şen Reference Şen1981). Today, we learn about the experiences and ideas of intellectuals who fled the violence of World War II only by reading their works, and we continue to conduct research and seek a more democratic society based on their ideas.

Boran, Kıray, and Abadan were also among the up-and-coming scholars exposed to the ideas of emigré scholars. I would like to draw special attention to Boran’s and Kıray’s empirical studies in rural areas examining, testing, or questioning Marxist and structural functionalist approaches on social change; their struggle to avoid “translated science”; not only being aware of the theoretical paradigms dominant in the USA, Europe, and even in the Soviet Union but criticizing them with self-confidence; and their command of the dominant research methodologies of that period. Thus, Boran and Kıray deserved to be called “sociologists of change” and they demonstrated for future generations of scholars that doing social science is possible by taking intertwining universal and local dynamics. Abadan, for her part, followed new scholarly debates until the end of her life. She conducted the first studies on political behavior, public opinion polls, migration, and women’s studies. Abadan also showed a relentless effort to disseminate the knowledge produced in the university to lay publics with the help of the media.

Here, I want to return to the book Sahada. Deniz Kandiyoti, who wrote an afterword for this book on enthusiastic women academics, says that the impulse pushing these young women to academic life was their consciousness of being the “founding generation.” She emphasizes that the then prevailing understanding of government also had an impact upon these young women’s choice of academic careers instead of staying within traditional gender roles or selecting occupations deemed suitable for women (Kandiyoti Reference Kandiyoti and Sabancıoğlu2023). Based on that observation, we can say that the spirit of the times, that is, their internalization of belonging to the founding generation and the rulers’ encouragement of their enthusiasm, must have played a role in this small group of urbanite educated women’s decision to become scholars.

Here I want to dwell briefly on the emphasis on being in the field (sahada), which may explain the civilian aspect of the founding generation’s worldview. The rulers’ expectation from both scientists and artists to go to the field or to the countryside may be one of the most important qualities of this civilian project. This would enable us to notice the “populist” or “humanist” face of the policies of the founding generation of the Republic as much as its frequently criticized “militarist” face. For example, in literature, the type of intellectual Reşat Nuri Güntekin (Reference Güntekin2024) imagined in his novel Çalıkuşu, first published in 1923, represented the early Republican intellectuals who sought to reach “contemporary civilization” but carried the ideal of doing this together with the people.

The expression “contemporary civilization,” frequently uttered during the founding period, certainly pointed to the West, but it could contain different points of reference depending on the spirit of the times in “the West.” This complex relationship had emerged long before the founding of the Republic. The Ottoman Empire, anxious for having lagged behind Europe, sought to understand what was happening in the West in order to return to its glorious past. The result of this was the emergence of an intellectual group who were trying to understand the processes of modernization flourishing in the West. Ottoman intellectuals continued to try to understand, sometimes criticize, and sometimes support the processes during the transition to the Republic. For that reason, it can be said that the cultural policies of the founding period were a continuation of ideas developed by Ottoman intellectuals; however, they were no longer “elitist” but nourished by the principle of “populism.”

The continuity from the Ottoman to the Republican cultural policies can be traced in studies on the history of the arts. Talented young people were sent to Europe on state scholarships in the Ottoman period as well. For example, Bengü Aydın Dikmen demonstrates that modernization efforts in fine arts starting with the Imperial School of Fine Arts (Sanayii Nefise Mektebi) in the late Ottoman period continued in the Republican period as well. Her study documents how the early Republican state sent artists, in particular painters, to Anatolia to both learn from the people and teach them. This policy can be viewed as a continuation of the practice of being “in the field” (Aydın Dikmen Reference Aydın Dikmen2023, Reference Aydın Dikmen2024).

The dissemination of knowledge and arts through education in tuition-free boarding schools, adult education in “People’s Houses” (Halkevleri), and the opening of “Village Institutes” (Köy Enstitüleri) were all important founding policies. It can be said that Western-educated intellectuals in the late Ottoman Empire were influenced by the Bauhaus school’s impact on education. The recently revived Bauhaus school (1919–1933) criticized the separation of education as a result of industrialization after World War I and proposed artistic, technical, and productive unity in education (Wick Reference Wick2000). Thus, in the late Ottoman and early Republican periods, being “in the field” was considered as a total mobilization and the intellectuals of that period joined this mobilization as well as the military.

Finally, I want to draw attention to a book, Grigory Petrov’s Finland: the Country of White Lilies, which is said to have influenced the founding cadres’, especially Mustafa Kemal’s, policies in the arts and sciences. During my student years I had heard about this book, first translated into Turkish from its Bulgarian translation in 1928 as Beyaz Zambaklar Ülkesinde, as an easy-to-read “parable” about Finland, and that it was much admired by soldiers. Yet I do not remember that the intellectuals and scholars by whom I was influenced mentioning this book at all. As a person against military coups, I kept a distance from the institution of the army, and I honestly was not curious about a book that was widely read by soldiers. When the book was republished recently (Petrov Reference Petrov2021), I decided to read it. Grigory Petrov was a Russian clergyman born in the late nineteenth century who was excommunicated both from the church and the Tsarist Palace where he was a teacher because of his criticisms of the church. His books written as a journalist, orator, and folk writer were subsequently banned and he had to emigrate from Russia. After the October Revolution, Petrov came first to İstanbul, then went to the Balkans, and from the Balkans to Finland. Fascinated by Finland’s fight for survival under the pressure of two different powers, Sweden and Russia, Petrov wrote the book in Russian in 1925 and dedicated it to Bulgarian intellectuals. Petrov’s main message in the book was that intellectuals should spread the knowledge that makes them privileged to the masses with humility. The book is said to have been “recommended by Atatürk” to the founding cadres; over decades it has been published in Turkish many times, the last in 2021 by multiple publishers, which have already made more than forty reprints. I do not know who the readers of the book – which delivers easy-to-read, anti-violence, secular, romantic, nationalist, and humanist views – are, and what they think of this still popular book. Honestly, I never heard Boran, Kıray, and Abadan mention this book.

Although these three women were tired, sad, and cheerless at the time that I met them, I know that they considered it very important to be and to work “in the field” and also enthusiastically recommended doing so to us. They generously shared with others the knowledge they produced with self-confidence and humility in a plain, jargon-free language. Perhaps another thing we can learn from them is how humanism can be practiced without becoming populist. The excitement of their youth had perhaps been replaced with the excitement of the hope they could give to the young generation and the search to accomplish that hope through rational means. I think Kıray and Abadan’s public silence at a time when Boran was no longer remembered as a sociologist following her exile was a consequence of the political pressures of those years. When I look back today, what was unique in Kıray and Abadan’s relationship with each other, especially in the moments I personally witnessed, was the absence of competition between them and their respect and tolerance for each other’s work and private lives. I now understand, albeit late, that their relationship was one of solidarity between women, something that we so much yearn for today. I remember each of them with love and respect.