Page 2 of 2 KEBABBLE All the presidents'
women By Fazile Zahir
carpets and introduced restored
antique Turkish pieces. However condemned she was
for this spending, it was entirely necessary, and
she was the first presidential wife to grasp the
true role of Cankaya Palace and the first to have
it redecorated since Ataturk's wife. The others,
with their obsession for being ordinary and
humble, had let the palace fall into internal ruin
to the point that it was not fit for receiving
other heads of state.
Her visitors
included Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
and
Shah Reza Pahlevi of Iran, who were made welcome
in style. As devoted to her personal appearance as
to her interior designs, she had her dresses
hand-made by the Faize Sevim fashion house and had
so many that some were never worn. She was never
able to shake off her reputation for greed,
though, and an urban legend says that when offered
the chance by the shah to choose a gemstone from
his collection, she helped herself to three.
6. Emel Koruturk: The wife
of Fahri Koruturk, Emel famously converted a
building previously used for torture into a museum
and was a suitably left-wing, art-loving member of
the politically well-informed Istanbul
intelligentsia during Turkey's socialist 1970s.
The first of the first ladies to speak a foreign
language, she was educated in Switzerland, and the
Turkish diplomatic corps considered her a great
asset at official functions. She was considered a
highbrow snob by the public, but privately she
pushed for reforms to improve the status of women
and entertained some of the leading feminists of
the time.
7. Sekine Evren:
The product of a life of hardship and
disappointment, Sekine Evren was forced to leave
school at 14. She spent her life traipsing after
her husband from one military posting to another
and lost her first baby in childbirth. A lifelong
supporter of Turkey's center-left People's
Republican Party, she had heated arguments with
her right-wing husband, Kenan Evern, which often
resulted in days of tense silence between them.
She developed diabetes very early and in May 1980
(aged 58) she had a severe stroke. When her
husband headed a military coup and overthrew the
government, she refused to move into the
presidential palace, as they had not won the right
to live there democratically. This could be
interpreted as strong political conviction or
perhaps the actions of a tired and ill woman
unwilling to move house yet again. Regardless of
why, her husband did not move to Cankaya until she
died in 1982.
8. Semra Ozal:
Along with her husband Turgut Ozal, Semra was a
resident of Cankaya Palace from 1989 to 1993. She
was the first televisual first lady and the first
to be actively involved in politics. She had been
the regional head of ANAP (Anavatan Partisi, or
Motherland Party) in Istanbul and actively took
part in the elections for a new leader of ANAP
during her husband's reign. In a period when
Turkey was experiencing an economic restructuring
and boom, as well as expanding its contacts with
the outside world, she was a modern and dynamic
presidential wife.
Semra Ozal represented
a more European and wealthy type of Turkish woman
and lived a high-profile champagne-and-caviar
lifestyle, went on regular vacations, socialized
in trendy bars, and banned bean stew from Cankaya.
She was the head of a group of women known as the
Papatyas (Daisies) who are still socially and
politically active today. Under the umbrella
Turkish Women's Empowerment and Recognition
Society, the Papatyas have undertaken numerous
good works aimed at increasing the role of Turkish
women in politics. She is famous for the phrase;
"I want to put 50 women into Parliament at one
go." The diaries that she kept from her husband's
years in power are much coveted by the press but
she refused even to consider publishing the
contents, claiming 70% of them are state secrets
and the remaining 30% are scandalous gossip.
Despite her secular tendencies, she read the Koran
regularly.
9. Nazmiye
Demirel: Has supported her husband, Suley
Demirel, throughout his 50-year political career
and is considered his backbone. After an offhand
remark in an interview in 1969 about how she and
her then-prime-minister husband shared all their
goods with their families created an uproar,
Nazmiye has not spoken to the press about anything
other than domestic matters for nearly 40 years.
She is often heard making asides, though, when her
husband is giving interviews, and if he is being
especially boastful she often punctures his
balloon with a barbed comment.
She was the
first presidential spouse to follow her husband
from village to village on the campaign trail.
Nazmiye stuck by him through three military coups,
two of which ousted him from power, and through it
all she has remained faithful to the ideal of
Turkish democracy. Famously, she locked her
legendary political-heavyweight husband out of the
house one night for coming home too late, telling
him, "Go back to wherever you came from."
10. Semra Sezer: The wife of
Ahmet Necdet Sezer, Semra was known as the
"invisible first lady" and was the first to have
had her own career as a schoolteacher. She was
best known for her National Education Support
campaign, the dinners she threw in honor of
foreign guests, her absolute refusal to allow
anyone into Cankaya wearing a headscarf, and the
lack of interviews she gave.
Fazile
Zahir is of Turkish descent, born and brought
up in London. She moved to Turkey in 2005 and has
been writing full-time since then.
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