All the Presidents' Women By Fazile Zahir

Since the election of Turkish President Abdullah Gul this month, the national and international media have devoted as many column-centimeters and as much air time to his wife as they have to him. Hayrunisa Gul is allegedly the first Turkish first lady to wear a headscarf in the presidential Cankaya Palace, and much speculation has surrounded how she will comport herself both within and without the palace walls.

Turkish first ladies have grown in importance over the years since Latife Ussaki married Kemal Ataturk in 1925, and today they are considered significant representatives of their husbands, both on the domestic and global stage. Popular first ladies have been role models for Turkish woman in general, and unpopular ones have been despised for their potential influence on the president. Previously politically active Hayrunisa Gul will now be watched with great interest and some degree of ambivalence by news commentators, the public and the army.

Despite the fact that statistically a presidential candidate's wife plays little or no part in influencing voters, once they are in place they are seen as politically significant. Whether she will be a "ceremonial" and demure, behind-the-scenes wife or an "activist" hostess undertaking public political or charity work remains to be seen. But there is no doubt that she will be an important unofficial force in the presidential palace.

She will probably have to tread warily and avoid being openly associated with controversial policymaking if she does not want to become the target of scathing criticism. Each of the 10 women who went before her have come to be seen as symbols for their time, and whatever bescarved Hayrunisa chooses to do, she will no doubt be viewed the same way.

The other first ladies

1. Latife Usakizade: At age 13, a gypsy fortune-teller reportedly told her that the man who would break her heart would have blue eyes and blond hair. Sure enough, at 22, after a period of university study in Paris and London, she married Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. At first she kept to the traditional clothing she had grown up with but was among the first women in the country to reveal her hair and adopt Western dress.

Renowned as a firebrand teetotaller, Usakizade was not beyond upbraiding the great Pasha for his excessive drinking and expressing her jealousy of the amount of time he spent with army colleagues. The daughter of a high-society family, Usakizade had the task of transforming what was in effect a giant barracks into a government mansion. She laid down a proper protocol for receiving guests and introduced "ladies days" at the presidential palace. After the breakdown of their three-year marriage, during which Ataturk had moved his cousin and mistress Fikriye into the palace, she became something of a recluse, never remarrying, and dying with a badge of Ataturk pinned to her breast.

2. Mevhibe Inonu: Born into an Ottoman family, she discarded her headscarf on her visit to Europe in the 1920s and quickly established herself as a leader in modern Euro-Turkish manners. Despite praying regularly and observing Ramadan fasts and the Festival of Sacrifice, outwardly she showed a secular face. Devoted to her husband, Ismet Inonu, Mevhibe endured his long absences stoically and remained his steadfast companion. The youngest and most stylish of the presidential palace wives, she adopted Western dress but had all her outfits tailored by the Turkish Girls' Institute. Her only overt political action was to plead for the lives of some of her friends who had been sentenced to death, but her husband gave her short shrift. When her husband retired from politics, she retreated to the place she loved best, her kitchen.

3. Reside Bayar: She was already a grandmother when she came to Cankaya Palace in May 1950 as the wife of Mamut Celal Bayar. Known for her religiosity, she never traveled without a Koran and read from it on a daily basis. One of the reforms she struggled with was uncovering her hair, and she had to be asked to do so by Ataturk himself. She dressed very simply, more for comfort than for show, and avoided formal events whenever possible. Her simple tastes extended themselves to hand-sewing her own clothes and making clothes for poor families. Avoiding any expression on political matters, she told palace staff that she cared nothing for their political beliefs, they were all her children. However, she was not without her own views, and when there was a thaw in relations between Turkey and Greece and her husband was invited on an official visit, she refused to accompany him, saying, "Only yesterday they were our enemies, how can they be our friends today?"

4. Melahat Gursel: Known as Magnolia Melahat for her beauty in her youth, she was married to a fiercely jealous and protective husband, Cemal Gursel, who didn't even like her to attend dinners with Ataturk. Known as "Mother" by all the palace staff, she largely concerned herself with domestic matters and stayed out of the spotlight as much as possible. Meetings with other political wives would send her into a flap and lead to her telephoning her friends for help. Never one to get ideas above her station, she didn't even have ideas for her actual station, famously saying: "I've never been the partner of a general or a president - I've always been in the kitchen." She also refused to accompany her husband on official trips abroad, claiming the state did not have enough money to support such extravagances.

5. Atifet Sunay: The wife of Cevdet Sunay, Atifet came to Cankaya Palace in 1966 and was the first first lady with airs and graces. Condemned for moving in her things when Reside Bayar was still packing her bags to leave, Sunay then endured censure for what was seen as her spendthrift ways. She entirely redecorated the palace using the best fabrics and expensive 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. ) (Courtesy: Asia Times Online)

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