Özet:

Halide Nusret Zorlutuna is one of the prominent figures of the Republican period with her written works in the genres of novels, poems, letters and memoirs and with her stance as an idealist school teacher. As Halide Nusret’s perception of the ideal Turkish woman is shaped within the socio-political milieu of the period, she welcomes the rights and liberties brought to women by the Republic. The Republican modernizing project of the making of a Westernized nation encourages women to take a more prominent part in social life and in work life provided that the domestic requirements for women are fully met. In this regard, Halide Nusret glorifies women with the qualities of the spouse and mother, and supports women in having a job or profession, only if this is good for the nation and motherland. Focusing on Halide Nusret’s views on women’s issues, this study aims at a text-based reading of her poems, as a woman who played an active role in the women’s associations of the period. As one of the most frequent writers of women’s magazines, she was known as ümmü'l-muharrirât, i.e., “the mother of female writers”. All poems of the poet, including the unpublished ones, are included in this study. The study aims to determine the female types and the contents of the female identity that Nusret creates and espouses within these texts. The ideal image of the woman created by the poet is shown to be defined in the nationalist conservative atmosphere of the period, mainly inspired by Ziya Gökalp as the main ideologue of the Republic.

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