Nakiye Elgun
Nakiye Elgün (born 1882 in Rumeli Feneri near Istanbul , Ottoman Empire ; died March 23, 1954 in Istanbul) was a Turkish politician and teacher.
Elgün was one of the champions for women's education . She was the first woman in the city administration of Istanbul and in 1935 one of the first women parliamentarians in Turkey.
Life
Elgün was born near Istanbul in 1882. Her father came from Sivas in Central Anatolia . She chose the profession of teacher for girls' schools and graduated in 1901. Elgün was only hired after the Young Turkish Revolution , which initiated the Second Ottoman constitutional period. In 1911 she was appointed to the İstanbul İnas Women's School . After suggestions for improvement and projects to improve the level of education, which the Ministry of Education had asked her, were not implemented, she resigned in 1914. Elgün then worked until 1917 for the school inspectorate of Evkaf Nazırlığı (Ministry of Religious Foundations). She was involved in improving the school system of the foundation schools in the Sultan Ahmet district.
In 1916 Elgün and Halide Edib Adıvar visited the important educational institutions in the Syrian part of the Ottoman Empire on behalf of Cemal Pascha , the governor of Syria. There she set up schools for teacher training that trained educators for schools for girls. She gave Turkish lessons there in Damascus , Jerusalem and Beirut .
After the Ministry of Education took control of all foundation schools, Elgün stopped working at Evkaf Nazırlığı. But she accepted the offer to reorganize an old, higher school. She re-founded it in 1917 under the name Fevziye Lisesi ( Lyceum ; today Işık Lisesi). Elgün worked at this school until 1928. The following year she was appointed director of the girls' high school (later İstanbul Kız Lisesi ).
Commitment and volunteering
Elgün also took an active part in social and community life. She worked for Teʿālī-yi Nisvān Cemʿiyyeti /تعالي نسوان جمعيتى, one of the first Ottoman women's organizations. During the First World War , she volunteered for the Red Crescent .
After the outbreak of the War of Independence (1919–1923) she founded aid organizations to support refugee families, orphans or relatives of the fallen. War material needed for the fight in Anatolia was also hidden in the school.
After the war Elgün participated in the establishment of the Istanbul branches of the Turkish Aviation Association Türk Hava Kurumu (THK) - there she was chairwoman - and the business and savings company. She later worked for the Halkevleri branch of the Volkshaus movement .
On March 24, 1935 Elgün became president of the Society for the Protection of Women, on May 25, 1935 a member of the executive committee of Türk Hava Kurumu, and on June 13, 1936, she assumed a leading role in the child protection organization. In 1938 she took over the role of chairman of the Topkapı Fukaraperver Society, she was from 1938 until her death.
politics
After the First World War, Elgün spoke at various rallies in Istanbul in 1919 , for example to protest against the Greek occupation of Izmir on behalf of the teachers' association . On May 23, 1919, she was a speaker at the large demonstration in Sultanahmet Square . Your biographers are of the opinion that Elgün developed into a political personality during this time. The events were also the first in which women appeared in public in the crumbling Ottoman Empire.
After the founding of the Republic of Turkey in October 1923, women were also able to demand more rights. In 1924 Elgün read the Declaration of Children's Rights, which had been adopted by the League of Nations, in Turkish on Taksim Square. When women were granted the right to vote for local and provincial councils in 1930, Elgün resigned her position as director and joined the Istanbul General Assembly as a member of Beyoğlu . She was the first woman to be elected to serve on the Assembly's Permanent Council. In the 1934 elections she was confirmed as a member of the council.
On December 5, 1934 women received the active and passive voting rights on the state level. Elgün took an active part and after the elections on February 8, 1935, he became a member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey . She was one of 18 women there - 17 at the beginning. Parliament had the highest percentage of women in Europe at that time. The Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi was the only party represented at the time. Even if the number of women elected steadily declined in the next elections, Elgün was able to hold her seat until June 1946. She represented the Eastern Anatolian Erzurum in the fifth , sixth and seventh electoral terms .
Nakiye Elgün died on March 23, 1954 in Istanbul. An avenue in Osmanbey in the Şişli district of Istanbul was named in her honor.
literature
Nuray Özdemir: Osmanlıdan Cumhuriyete Bir Cemiyet Kadını. (Biography, Turkish, 288 pages) Phoenix, 2014. ISBN 978-60-54-65769-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Today in Istanbul Province .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Elgun, Nakiye |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Turkish teacher, women's rights activist and politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1882 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Rumeli Feneri, Istanbul , Ottoman Empire |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 23, 1954 |
| Place of death | Istanbul |