Pioneer women on stage in Istanbul
Thursday, February 14, 2008
SEVİM SONGÜN
ISTANBUL – Turkish Daily News
A report about women on stage in the post Tanzimat (reform) period which started in 1839 and attempted to grant civil rights to non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire has been published by the Women's Library and Information Center Foundation in both English and Turkish. The first palace theater was in the Dolmabahçe Palace, built by Sultan Abdülmecid and opened in 1859. The second still exists in Yıldız Palace and was built by Sultan Abdülhamit. Greeks, Jews and especially Armenians made significant contributions to the development of modern theater in Istanbul during that period. Güllü Agop, an Armenian who rented the Gedikpaşa Theate for 10 years, was an influential man in charge of the most fashionable theater of the period and trained many Muslims and non-Muslims.
Women spent their lives indoors at that time and the ones brave enough to appear on stage came mainly from minority groups. They performed on stage in different roles, both Muslim and non-Muslim characters. They sang cantos in a vernacular language accompanied by clarinets, trombones, violins, trumpets, tambourines and cymbals. These women later became an indispensable part of the Ramadan performances. When the number of local theatrical performances increased, women began to take part in all kinds of comedies, dramas and newly fashionable operettas. "The number of these brave women encouraging each other rose with the numbers of new theatre companies and houses and Istanbul took its first steps towards becoming one of the world's leading cities in culture," said Esra Ermert in her article in the report.
Women performed canto
The first women on stage were mostly dancing and singing energetic and entertaining cantos while performing in the tuluat, a play where performers improvise their lines. Adile and Selim Naşit siblings, who acted in hundreds of Turkish movies that became classics, were children of a canto performer and theatre actor: Amelya Hanım and Naşit Özcan. They were Armenian like most of the performers on stage. "Those women were mostly non-Muslim, but there were more Armenian than Greek or Jewish women because Armenian men were also leading on stage," said Tülin Tankut, general assembly member of the foundation.
Denizkızı Eftelya (Mermaid Eftelya) is a Greek woman who was the only non-Muslim to make an album in the Darülelhan (music) school. She got the name mermaid by singing with her impressive voice on a Bosporus boat all night long. Eftelya's name first appeared on an album that was produced by Columbia in 1930. Aleko Bacanos composed and dedicated a song to her that later became a big success.
Melek Kobra, who performed in plays and movies directed by Muhsin Ertuğrul in the 1930s, suffered from tuberculosis and died in 1939 at the age of 25. These "naïve" women were insulted, abandoned, contemptuously treated, deserted by their families and children or even lost their lives while still very young, said Ermert.
Although most of the women performers were non-Muslim in the 19th century, a couple of Muslim women did make their appearance. Seniye Hanım was the first Muslim woman to appear on stage. After her father's death she started to perform "canto" using an Armenian nickname, Amelya Hanım. She visited many places in Anatolia with a group performing tuluat plays. During her performance in Ankara, the governor's wife and childhood friend recognized her and informed her husband. The governor offered a job to Hanım's husband and she quit acting soon thereafter.
Reforms in cultural policies
After the Turkish Republic was proclaimed on Oct. 29, 1923, theater became institutionalized through reforms in cultural and artistic policies. Dârülbedayi (theater) and Darülelhan (music) schools were founded to train new actors and musicians and all the barriers against women performing were eliminated.
Foreign record companies started to enter the Turkish music industry after the proclamation of the Republic and reforms. Those companies produced records not only with established singers whose voices would otherwise have vanished and would continue to live only in people's memories, but also with young and promising talents. "While canto, operetta and classical Turkish music artists continued to produce records, Latin tango music brought a modern touch to the music market, first with original songs and then with the works of local songwriters," said Ermert. Tango music was differentiated from canto and operetta by its sophisticated lyrics and romantic tunes. Tango enabled couples to dance under the tunes of newly established western style bands in Istanbul's nightclubs. "Women, making records and performing in front of "decent" audiences, overcame their previous limitations and got coverage from newspapers and magazines," she said.
The Women's Library and Information Center
Foundation was founded in 1990 by women academics, authors, economists and journalists who worked there voluntarily. It publishes an annual report on a different subject since 1991. The general assembly of the library is composed of 30 women (all of them working as volunteers). The foundation is financed through sponsors, donations of the library's friends and the municipality's help.
The library operates in a remarkable historic building located next to the Bulgarian church in Fener, which was renovated by architect Cengiz Bektaş. The foundation aims to discover the unknown history of women, supply information on women's history for researchers and carry the present day's events to the future. The foundation asks everyone to donate any visual, audio or written document about women from their family or relevant research they have done to the foundation instead of throwing them away.
The Finnish Embassy in Ankara and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) sponsored this year's report.
© 2005 Dogan Daily News Inc. www.turkishdailynews.com.tr
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