İNCİ (Yeni) magazine(1919-1923): the feminine actuality during the occupational period

Abstract

This thesis deals with questions related to Ottoman women’s movement, the role of the press in the dissemination of the intellectual’s ideas and ideals about newly transforming Ottoman society, and offers a perception of the conjecture through the light shedding by a women magazine, İnci (Yeni) published between the years of 1919-1923. By taking the content of magazine as the guide, messages and debates about the İnci magazine’s ideal woman is stated. This thesis interprets the well-debated women issue, its contradictions, continuity and departures through ideas reflected on the pages of a popular and well circulated woman magazine. İnci magazine is a monthly women magazine published during the occupational years in Istanbul. Although, the magazine is enumerated among the shallow Ottoman women magazines of the Armistice period by many bibliographical studies, İnci reflects the viewpoints of the its publication period’s Ottoman men and women intelligentsia about the women’s movement and identification process of “new woman”. In addition to that, articles and illustrations of art, literature, beauty and decoration in the magazine’s content of reflect the interests of the period’s women and their demands from a woman magazine. Further, the magazine is also enabled researcher to realize the effects of wars on the lives of the Istanbulite society’s distinct segments despite of the absence of any news about continuing battles in Anatolia. İnci also supplies clues about the iv Ottoman woman press which was struggling to survive among the power struggles of three different power centers reigned in Turkey during armistice period.