LSU M BAYDAR GU zmir University of Economics Y

Room for a Newlywed Woman

Making Sense of Gender in the Architectural Discourse of Early Republican Turkey

Issues concerning sexuality and gender are rarely addressed in the discourse of modern Turkish architecture. Given the gendered associations of domesticity, the architecture of the house provides the most obvious context to explore these issues. In the early years of the Turkish Republic, images of the modern house and modern, secular women were actively promoted by the architects and intellectuals of the new nation-state. Representations of women, which abound in popular journals but end up dispersed between the lines in contemporaneous architectural texts, often escape critical scrutiny. In general, only the imaginary figure of an asexual ideal Turkish woman is allowed to have legitimate entry to the discourse on modern Turkish culture. Here, I focus on the figuration of woman in architectural discourse with particular emphasis on a domestic reference in a book by _ Ismail Hakk Baltaco glu, a leading intellectual of the period. I argue that by containing an inadvertent reference to the figure of woman, Baltaco glus text both introduces sexuality and exposes the lack of the feminine element in architectural discourse.
Introduction: A Wondrous Image
Several years ago, during my research on Turkish architecture in the early Republican period, I came across a 1931 book entitled Demokrasi ve Sanat (Democracy and Art) by _ Ismail Hakk Baltaco glu, an expert on pedagogy and a leading intellectual of the period.1 This is but one of his voluminous writings on various aspects of education as well as such diverse topics as ethics, religion, art, and architecture. The book is divided into six sections entitled Art and Society, Democracy, Architecture, Art, Decoration, and Nationhood. It is profusely illustrated, mostly with European examples of modernist buildings and paintings, none of which are referenced in the text. As I flipped through the pages, my eyes wandered from one illustration to the next, including a diverse range of examples from well know figures like Le Corbusier and Picasso, to modernist stage sets by Sognot, and anonymous interiors with captions indicating their function. Then I suddenly stopped on page fifty-eight as I got fixated on the caption of a rather ordinary domestic interior, which stated: Room for a newlywed woman (Figure 1). Le Corbusier and Picasso constitute appropriate citations in a text on modern society and art, but what does the figure of the newlywed woman have to do with _ Ismail Hakks discourse on modernism? At one level, room for a newlywed woman is just one of the eighty-four images generously scattered in the text, all of which serve to illustrate the superiority of modern art. Like the rest of the architectural examples in the book, it represents a modern interior, light, and simply furnished with minimal ornamentation. A sofa with several cushions, a comfortable armchair, and a piano are the most dominant pieces of furniture. It is clearly a domestic interior, a place to relax and indulge in hobbies. Squeezed between other illustrations of domestic interiors with explicitly masculine references such as fumoir, library, and study, however, this is the only image in the book that states the identity of its user (Figures 24): It is not just a room but a room for a woman, not any woman but a married woman, not any married woman but a newlywed woman. Why this insistent urge for seemingly unnecessary details in a book that addresses the relationship between democracy, art, and society in the context of nation building? In Demokrasi ve Sanat, _ Ismail Hakk contends that democracy (which for him provides the framework of the new nation-state) should be provided with a language not only to support the nations material being but also to mobilize its spiritual identity. This language is art. Hence, like all institutions of a democratic regime, the art institution too should be modernized and have international acclaim.2 _ Ismail Hakks emphasis on language is significant here. Indeed, as I will explicate below, the modernization process in Turkey can be viewed as the active making of a language. Demokrasi ve Sanat was clearly meant to provide the foundation for the establishment of

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Journal of Architectural Education, pp. 311 2007 ACSA

1. Room for a newlywed woman. (Source: Ismail Hakk, Demokrasi ve Sanat [Istanbul: Kanaat Ku tu phanesi, 1931], p. 58.)

2 4

such a language. From an architectural viewpoint, this calls for the construction of a new architectural discourse as much as modernist buildings. In what follows, I will analyze the kind of issues that are raised by _ Ismail Hakks use of the room for a newlywed woman concerning the role of gender and
2. Smoking room. (Source: _ Ismail Hakk, Demokrasi ve Sanat [_ Istanbul: Kanaat Ku tu phanesi, 1931], p. 59.) 3. Library. (Source: _ Ismail Hakk, Demokrasi ve Sanat [_ Istanbul: Kanaat Ku tu phanesi, 1931], p. 57.) 3 4. Study. (Source: _ Ismail Hakk, Demokrasi ve Sanat [_ Istanbul: Kanaat Ku tu phanesi, 1931], p. 56.)

sexuality in the making of an architectural discourse against the backdrop of nationalism and modernism. Given the gendered associations of domesticity, my main architectural focus will remain on the modern Turkish house of the early Republic. However, the discourse on the house cannot be isolated as a special case since it has broader implications for architectural discourse in general, where sexuality is seldom explicitly addressed.3 Let me return to the image now. Most notably, without the caption, the illustrated room hardly contains any element that one would associate with a newlywed woman. The piano (indicative of a hobby mostly adopted by the bourgeois women of the period) and the frilly curtains may be taken signs of femininity, but the marital status as cliche of the supposed occupant seems irrelevant indeed. The caption, room for a newlywed woman, would have made a certain degree of common sense in a different context, say in a bridal magazine. Here, both the gender and the marital status of the occupant seem to be excessive details. Hence, the discrepancy lies less in the relationship between the illustration and the caption than the illustration and its contextmore specifically between the newlywed woman and the architecture of the modern house. First of all, the social identification of the figure of a newlywed woman calls for clarification. Immediately located in the sphere of heterosexual matrimony, there is no question about her sociosexual status. A married woman represents womanhood within the sphere of societal norms, respectability, and propriety. A newlywed woman on the other hand is a woman who has just crossed the threshold from the house of the father where her sexuality is silenced to the house of the husband where her sexuality is bounded and legitimized. She is presumably young and desirable but not sexually available. A newlywed woman is a woman who has just penetrated into the masculine symbolic realm of sociability and order.4 She is fully qualified to bear children and have access to

Room for a Newlywed Woman: Making Sense of Gender in the Architectural Discourse of Early Republican Turkey

the respectable status of motherhood. As a newlywed woman, she is freshly introduced to the routines of married life, i.e., the familial order of the domestic realm. In short, the term newlywed woman is deeply inscribed with gendered and sexualized identifications. But this is not the kind of story that one usually encounters in a 1930s book on art, architecture, nationalism, and democracy in Turkey. Family life, sexuality, and gender have only been recently introduced to such fields in critical ways.5 In that sense, the newlywed woman is an excessive figure in Demokrasi ve Sanat . Without her, the text would seemingly be sufficiently coherent. So, what does this illustration do to the text? How does it function and what can be made of its unexpected appearance? Apparently, a certain kind of common sense is meant to be produced by captioning a modernist interior as the room for a newlywed woman and relating it to the architecture of the modern house.6 What one may call _ Ismail Hakks discursive slip, which betrays common sense, is perhaps an inadvertant invitation to explore the complicated relationship between architectural discourse and social and discursive constructions of sexuality in the making of modern architecture in Turkey. By surfacing the silenced issue of sexuality in architectural discourse, the room for a newlywed woman invites the exploration of the construction of modern Turkish architecture as a sexualized historiographical category. My engagement with issues of gender and sexuality in modern Turkish architecture via _ Ismail Hakks discourse involves both historical and theoretical references. In order to make sense of the provocative image of the room for a newlywed woman, I inevitably engage with a historical and contextual analysis of relevant aspects of modernism in Turkey from a gendered perspective. However, this analysis is informed by the theoretical tools provided by psychoanalytically informed feminist perspectives and poststructuralist critiques of identity categories. While the former provide the

critical perspective to understand the mobilization of gendered identity categories and how sexuality functions in the patriarchal system in general, the latter suggest the liberating potential of the dissolution of fixed identity categories.7 I contend that _ Ismail Hakks discursive slip, which does not make sense at first sight, discloses the very structure of such categories as nationalism, modernism, and architecture in the understanding of modern architecture in Turkey. From a broader perspective, it is an invitation to explore how sense is produced in the field of architecture in relation to sexuality.

The New Woman of the New Republic

In early Republican Turkey, the image of the modern Turkish woman provided one of the most visible symbols, publicizing the image of the new nation-state as a radical break from its Islamic Ottoman past. Educated women in European outfits who appeared in professional life, at entertainment events, and sports activities foregrounded and displaced the image of the ignorant Muslim woman forbidden from the public sphere and concealed behind her veil. These new images emerged in the 1920s and 1930s alongside such modernizing Kemalist reforms as changing the alphabet from Arabic script to Latin, adopting the Swiss Civil Code, the recognition of womens suffrage, their acquisition of legal rights to property, and the abolition of polygamy.8 These developments marked significant breaks from the conservative Ottoman/ Islamic past as a result of which women gained increasing access to various levels of education and appeared in the public sphere as competent professionals. However, amidst the euphoric celebration of the new modern state and its nationalist agenda, different viewpoints emerged among intellectuals who interpreted the Kemalist reforms. While the majority followed a positivist-secularistic line, a group of intellectuals including _ Ismail Hakk, later named as traditionalist-conservatives by historians of the Turkish Republic, aimed at the reconciliation

of positive knowledge with tradition and faith. Still declaring themselves as Kemalists, the traditionalist-conservatives formulated the philosophical, aesthetic, and cultural components of the Kemalist reforms in the light of Bergsonian ideals of creativity and continuity.9 They emphasized the importance of articulating and transforming existing traditions with modernism and relegated religion to the personal sphere. Their emphasis was on national/cultural differences rather than universalized abstractions. _ Ismail Hakk, for example, was openly against abstract formulations of modernization and saw modern cultural formations as resulting from the articulation of particular historical contexts with new models and ideals. The past was to be neither glorified nor petrified, and the ideal of a utopian future was to be abandoned. Instead, one had to focus on the present, not as a state to be surpassed but as a living situation and process to be understood. For _ Ismail Hakk, the present always already embodied the past. Hence, being modern in the Turkish Republic could never exclude Turkish history and the countrys cultural traditions. The focus on the notion of a unifying cultural heritage is an unmistakable ingredient of nationalist discourse even in the midst of modernist ambitions. Yet, a retrospective look at the cultural heritage to diagnose the living traditions in the interest of modernism involves a selective process with serious social consequences. The latter are most strikingly manifested in issues concerning womens status. The discourse on the place of women in modern Turkey has involved contradictory elements from the beginning. Alongside modernizing reforms that emphasized the professional and political roles of women, many intellectuals voiced the priority of womens domestic duties. The popular press, which voiced the opinions of these intellectuals as well as journalists and foreign authors, was clearly split as women were idealized both in conventionally masculine roles, such as members of the parliament, professionals, and athletes, and in domestic

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roles such as child rearing, housekeeping, cooking, and sawing. Many articles in _ Ismail Hakks journal Yeni Adam (The New Man), for example, focused on the importance of the maternal-feminine role of women and insisted on the worn out duality of the superiority of reasoning capacities in men and emotional breadth in women to confine them to the domestic sphere. Maternal love is inherent to every great love affair, stated one article and continued, only frivolous women dont know of this, because they have never loved.10 Here, the realm of maternal love is clearly privileged as the basis of love relations, and the maternal-feminine is presented as the privileged form of femininity. Articles on womens trade schools where women were taught such courses as house management, childcare and sawing favored the figure of the sku capable wife. In an article on U dar Trade School, for example, the aim of the school is stated as saving women from being consumers and educating girls capable of offering comfort and peace to their home. The article continues to explain that even if a graduate cannot find the chance and the opportunity to stay at home, she may work in her own atelier or find appreciation in the most esteemed ateliers in town.11 However, there were other articles, which openly disapproved of womens roles as sole homemakers.12 Elaborating the dual role that was set out for the women of the new Republic, some authors explicitly questioned such issues as whether motherhood and politics would be compatible in accepting women as members of the parliament. Others voiced contradictory opinions. _ Ismail Hakks own discourse is exemplary in revealing the repetitive return to the figure of the woman as homemaker without entirely giving up on her public status. While in 1931, his reference to woman in modern architecture consisted of a modern room assigned to a newlywed woman in a domestic setting; in 1934, he adamantly supported womens recruitment to the army to fight with the men. Then again in 1943, he advised women to get

married and be homemakers and not to be so degenerate as to despise motherhood.13 Ahmet A gao glu, another traditionalist-conservative, found no incompatibility between womens roles in the public and private realms, pointing out that preOttoman Turkish women had power both in the family and state affairs. Yet, at the same time, he clearly voiced his opinions against the militancy of Western feminism.14 This is an excellent example to illustrate the selective process involved in instituting cultural unity and continuity. There seems to be an overwhelming anxiety over defining and determining the social boundaries of the modern Turkish woman: She should be an educated intellectual but not an active feminist and not only a capable professional but also a dedicated housewife. The question is who is defining these boundaries and in whose interests? The general conviction amongst both men and women who wrote on feminism and womens rights in the 1930s was that in Turkey, as opposed to Western countries, women were granted their public roles by the state apparatuses without having to ask for them. One member of Turkish Womens Federation explicitly thanked Turkish men who granted political rights to women.15 The limits of these rights became significantly obvious as early as 1927, when the Federation had nominated its own parliamentary candidates and was dissuaded from doing so by Atatu rk himself. In 1935, the Federation dissolved itself announcing that since women had been given all the rights that they had been organized to demand, there was no need for the organization to continue its activities.16 The subsumption of womens interests under nationalist agendas seems to have been strongly internalized even by the socially active modern women of the new Republic. Indeed, as contemporary Turkish scholars convincingly argue from a feminist perspective, womens rights in Turkey were defended in nationalist rather than universalist democratic interests.17 Womens role as public figures was

glorified only upon their successful accomplishment of motherhood and familial duties. The modern Turkish woman was embraced by the modernist agenda of the nation-state so long as she provided the legitimate symbols and nurturing base for the operation of dominantread phallocentricsocial codes. In one of his speeches, Kemal Atatu rk openly stated that the duty of the Turkish woman is to raise future generations with the necessary vigor to protect and defend the Turkish nation with intelligence, wisdom, strength and determination.18 Hence, it is not surprising that in Demokrasi ve Sanat , woman enters the discourse on modernity as a married figure located in a domestic setting. She can have her own room but within the confines of a conventional household. This room is a gift to her just like her new public status, which is granted to her by the social symbolic order of nationalism and modernity. Turkey is not a unique case concerning the controversial condition of womens status in a modernizing society. As contemporary scholars have observed, there is a temporal anomaly within nationalism, which is imbued with naturalized gender references.19 While on one hand, nationalism involves the erasure of the past in favor of the formation of new identities; on the other hand, it needs to emphasize authentic cultural values as the basis of the new national identity. In her study on race, gender, and sexuality in colonialism, Anne McClintock contends women are represented as the atavistic and authentic body of national tradition (inert, backward looking and natural), embodying nationalisms conservative principle of continuity. Men, by contrast, represent the progressive agent of national modernity (forwardthrusting, potent and historic), embodying nationalisms progressive, or revolutionary principle of discontinuity.20 The progressive aspect of national modernity that involves state power, notions of citizenship, nationalism, militarism, and revolution can indeed be considered a masculinist project, which involves

Room for a Newlywed Woman: Making Sense of Gender in the Architectural Discourse of Early Republican Turkey

institutions based on hierarchy and control, sociocultural processes based on progress and development, and activities based on leadership and dominance. Women in this context are expected to play supporting roles but with dual gender references. When they act as citizens, activists, and leaders, they reflect masculinist notions based on power. When they assume the role of virtuous housewives and selfless mothers, they fulfill masculinist notions of femininity.21 These two seemingly different roles are in fact two sides of the same coin. In either case, womens acceptable codes of behavior are defined by the parameters of patriarchal social systems that they are supposed to uphold and perpetuate. The situation that circumscribed modern Turkish women of the early Republican period exemplified contemporary feminist scholars insistence that women are acknowledged to the extent that they reflect the autonomy of masculine power and reinforce masculine subjectivity and paternal law.22 If women provide the secure basis for masculine identification, it is precisely the fear of the latters loss that explains the insistence of patriarchal discourses to identify women and to keep them in place. Such was the case with the cultural leaders of the new Republic, for whom woman was not a monolithic category. The ideal modern Turkish woman as the symbol of Republican values was explicitly distinguished from others. The figure of the dangerous femme fatale as the other of the wife/mother and the ultimate bearer of irrationality, sexuality, and desire is perhaps most explicitly addressed in the literary work of Peyami Safa. For him, her annihilation is imperative for the maintenance of social order.23 Romantic love too is condemned in many articles in Yeni Adam , as the expression of weakness, immaturity, and sickness.24 These advocate that marriage should be based on mutual understanding and social compatibility of the partners rather than romanticism. Sexuality is a popular theme, not only implied but also explicitly addressed in various articles in the journal. What is

obscene?, Sexual dangers for the youth, Fighting against lesbianism, gayness, and masturbation are some of the titles, which are not commonly featured by other contemporaneous popular journals. All such articles carry the common message that the single-family unit is the only acceptable realm of sexuality.25 Marriage and family life are clearly glorified and all sexual practices outside matrimony are openly condemned. The issue of class is not absent in articles on the new Turkish woman. In one case, condemning the bourgeois interests of the womens association in Turkey, the author Adnan Cemil calls for attention to the exploited women factory workers, peasants, and low-paid primary school teachers. Elsewhere, these figures are often presented as the heroines of modern Turkey, praised for their courage, selflessness, and hard work to earn their bread.26 Like the bourgeois women that the author criticizes, these women have a face in the patriarchal structure of the modernization project. To make sure, Adnan Cemil rightfully points to their dismal living conditions and presents them as victims of the economic structure rather than heroines of the Republican ideology. However, his aim is hardly to question and change the structuring principles of social categories, which clearly privilege the bourgeois women. There is a third category of women who are deprived of all social categories of recognition. These are women who are deemed faceless. Adnan Cemil contends when it comes to the whore and the beggar, talking about their rights is totally inappropriate, as these are the pariahs of modern society.27 He also states that sexual discrimination is only an issue for the bourgeoisie since no one is foolish enough to claim inequality between the meager servant and the maid. There is an unshakeable equality between the maid and the servant dictated by social order. The fact that this equality may exist only in the eye of the bourgeois employer is not deemed worthy of consideration by Cemil. Tending to isolate and devalue the relevance of feminist issues as insignificant concerns of upper

class women, the author naturalizes his own underlying class biases in embarrassingly obvious ways. The whore, the beggar, and the maid emerge as other women who are not worthy of consideration even in the context of gender discrimination. Class and sexuality intersect in this discourse since neither the whore nor the beggar is a figure that one easily associates with family and married life. Within this sociocultural framework, a newlywed woman emerges as a perfectly commonsensical figure of recognition in the cultural sphere. For the author of Demokrasi ve Sanat , room for a woman would be too general to include other women who are not qualified as the new women of the modern nation-state. Room for a married woman on the other hand would not embody the freshness and dynamism of the new Republic and its modern architecture. A newlywed woman, on the other hand, signifying newness, propriety, and productivity would be the model for the new woman of the new nation-state. However, this still does not fully answer why this figure was used in an architectural context. In search for further clues, I turn to the texts explicit references to nationalism, architecture, and sexuality.

New Architecture and the Proper Woman

The tight relationship between modern architecture and the new nation-state has been explored by a number of contemporary architectural historians.28 Modern architectures aesthetic vocabulary of simplicity, functionality, and rationality formed a desirable contrast to the heavily ornamented eclecticism of late Ottoman architecture. Not surprisingly, at a time when the leaders of the young nation-state sought for a radical break with the Ottoman/Islamic past and were eager to adopt the sociocultural institutions of Western Europe, many Turkish architects enthusiastically embraced the principles of modern architecture. However, the formal expression of these principles turned out to

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be another matter. The Janus-faced quality of the nationalistic project, which involved both discarding and embracing tradition and history, surfaced in architecture as well. Many Turkish architects sought for a comfortable reconciliation between the modernist vocabulary and the historical architectural repertoire, which consisted of both regionally varied stocks of vernacular buildings and Ottoman monuments. The common assertion that emerged in architectural discourse was that adopting a modernist visual vocabulary would not betray the countrys architectural heritage since the latter was already based on rational and functional principles.29 Hence, rationalism and functionalism were turned into ahistorical principles, which could acquire different expressions in different historical contexts. In Demokrasi ve Sanat , _ Ismail Hakk uses even the example of the mosque, the building type that would be least associated with modernism, to illustrate how Ottoman and modernist architectural principles would be complementary.The mosque for him is the shrine of the overwhelming and most glorious God and bears no relationship to human face, stature or posture. Its abstract and absolute form consists of unity, order and precision. It is the expression of the divine ideal of abstraction, purity and justice, which appeals more to the head than the heart.30 The unchanging truth of rationality is clearly the bedrock of the architectural discipline for _ Ismail Hakk, who is careful to distinguish between permanent principles and changing traditions. He reiterates throughout the book that national architecture cannot be based on the preservation of tradition since tradition is not static but ever changing. For the author of Demokrasi ve Sanat , modern art is based on the abolition of conventions, the domination of geometry, and the rejection of ornament.Therefore, Turkish architects should study the contemporaneous reality of cities and buildings and use historical knowledge for theoretical purposes of criticism rather than to provide models to be copied.

This point is perhaps most clearly illustrated in _ Ismail Hakks reference to traditional Turkish houses. The latter, he contends, with their large rooms and sofas are the products of a historical lifestyle where women spent long days and nights at home.31 Multipurpose rooms were adorned with cupboards and fireplaces to accommodate the residents needs in wintertime. Abundant cupboard space enabled the storage of bedspreads during daytime to create more space for daily activities. Small windows close to the ceiling mediated the relationship with the outside. Hence, traditional houses were functional buildings that responded to past needs but no more suitable in modern times. Like all other building types, _ Ismail Hakk states houses are containers of social life and a house is the envelope of private life i.e., family life.32 Hence, when the social institution of the family transforms, its envelope also needs to transform. The life of a modern family is obviously not the same as that of the historical family where women were confined solely to the domestic realm and religious practices played a dominant role. As exemplified by numerous illustrations in Demokrasi ve Sanat , the ideal contemporary domestic interior for _ Ismail Hakk consisted of isolated rooms with specific functions adorned with modernist furniture (Figures 14). Arguably, the only traditionalist reference can be found in the room for a newlywed woman, which one may view as the modern equivalent of brides room, that is found in vernacular houses of diverse regions in Turkey. Brides room is a temporary name given to one of the multipurpose rooms that is allocated to a newly married couple in the extended family house of the groom until the arrival of the following bride to the family.33 It is profusely decorated with the brides belongings, which consist mostly of household items that are prepared by her family or given as gifts by the grooms. The brides room is a room that is prepared as part of the marriage ceremony to celebrate the arrival of the bride. It is the room where the marriage is consummated,

where deliveries may take place and where the new family establishes its place. It evokes a space of corporeality, i.e., sexuality, labor, and housework. Both the brides room and the room for a newlywed woman have temporary functions (how long can a bride remain a bride and how long can a woman remain newlywed?) and both are related to matrimony. However, the room for a newlywed woman is located in a single-family household and reserved for her privacy. There, one can imagine her not delivering babies, doing housework, and performing wifely duties but perhaps entertaining her woman friends, reading, and playing the piano to inculcate her modern identity. Significantly, for the modern newlywed woman, the place of selfdevelopment and socialization is located inside the house. The house is the space of domestication of her modernity. In _ Ismail Hakks terms, it envelops, clothes and contains her body in a properly modern setting. There is one more instance in Demokrasi ve Sanat where the figure of the woman appears, this time with explicit reference to clothing. It is inserted at a strategic point on the reconciliation of nationalism and modernism. After stating that Turkish architects should creatively respond to the needs of modern cities and buildings rather than clinging to tradition, _ Ismail Hakk explains: Just as our women do not lose their national characteristics in clothing by accepting European dress codes, our cities will not compromise their Turkishness by adopting the characteristics of Cubism.34 Here, the figure of the Turkish woman in European style clothing symbolizes the virtuous core beneath appearances and forms the basis to justify the use of modern architecture. Using the body of the woman as a metaphor, _ Ismail Hakk argues that national characteristics will not be lost by the adoption of modernism. In his argument, the

Room for a Newlywed Woman: Making Sense of Gender in the Architectural Discourse of Early Republican Turkey

figure of the woman in European style outfit stands to resolve the paradox of nationalism by pointing to a naturalized and a historical core, which guarantees the noncontradiction between modern art/ architecture and national values. It is important to mark here that the body of the modern Turkish woman not only serves as a basis for the operation of a nationalistic discourse but is also produced (as simple, pure, and modest) by the latter. As contemporary feminist scholars like Sue Best have argued, the female body is produced as the site of inscription of social significances.35 The statement in Demokrasi ve Sanat is a notable instance to illustrate this point, whereby both nationalist values are secured in reference to the female body and the female body is produced by the nationalist agenda. Indeed, as Turkish scholar Deniz Kandiyoti puts in a different way in her study on women and nationalism, women both actively participate in and also become hostages to nationalist projects.36 Where then, does mans body enter the picture? In a different text, reflecting on the modernist emphasis on structure and construction rather than ornament, _ Ismail Hakk states that new architecture is the architecture of flesh and bones, rather than ornament.37 Keeping his gendered references in Art and Democracy in mind, one cannot help but ask the question, whose flesh and whose bones? The response comes down the line as he explains that being industrialized and functional, new architecture caters to comfort and is a shelter for modern life: it is the art of the new man.38 Here, modern art is clearly relegated to the masculine realm where the feminine figure remains placeless. Yet, the art of the new man invokes the body of woman in the construction of its modernist-nationalist language. This can only happen by the figure of the ideal woman created in his image and in his own terms. Significantly, the female body is always explicitly covered/enveloped in _ Ismail Hakks discourse, either by the modern house or by modern clothes. It is the ideal modern Turkish woman,

clearly distinguished from her others, who mobilizes his text. Both her image and her social status are secured simultaneous to her figuration in the modernist architectural discourse. Many times in Demokrasi ve Sanat , _ Ismail Hakk asserts that art is neither dependant upon the creative genius of an individual nor does it belong to a transcendental realm beyond material reach, but it is a social institution tied to language. It is precisely this institutional and discursive framework that formats the figure of the woman, which in turn mobilizes his discourse on art and architecture.

Conclusion: Making Sense

As architectural theorists have recently argued, the architectural canon, which is based on the autonomy of the built object and the creativity of the architect as the master subject marks a phallocentric form of knowledge.39 It sets up hierarchies, which emphasize the dominant position of the male architect, the architect-designed building, and the Western world. Permanence, structure, and order remain the founding premises of the discipline. As such, even when architectural knowledge expands its domain to nonurban and non-Western geographies and includes women subjects as architects, users, and patrons, it often does so by means of assimilation and incorporation.40 In other words, women as subjects are allowed entry into architecture, but the basic premises of the discipline remain intact. Therefore, if architecture entails masculine attributes of planning, control, hierarchy, and order, the fluidity of the feminine realm hardly has any place in the making of the architectural discipline. In countries like Turkey and much of the (post)colonial world, modern architectural discourse and institutions such as schools and associations were based on Western European examples. Hence, the terms and premises of architectural discourse were similar, and the gendered status of the discipline holds ground in these geographies as much in as the so-called centers of modern architectural knowledge.41

Demokrasi ve Sanat is such an example, which clearly subscribes to the masculinist premises of the architectural discipline. The books focus is on the primacy of rationality as the permanent truth of the discipline. _ Ismail Hakk repeatedly associates new architecture and urbanism with revolution, progress, functionalism, and advanced technology. For the author of Demokrasi ve Sanat , as the new age is the age of science and rationality, ornament and decoration are to be condemned as elements that conceal structural purity. There is hardly any room for multiplicity and the fluidity of corporeality in this rationalist discourse. With all these attributes, the book hardly stands out as a critical intervention into the historiography of modern Turkish architectural culture. However, _ Ismail Hakks discursive slip via his introduction of the room for a newlywed woman, despite his awareness of the significance of language in the making of modern culture, points to a different direction, i.e., toward the critical consideration of sexuality in the making of architectural discourse. Paradoxically, the room for a newlywed woman, with all its sexualized connotations, functions as an inadvertent reminder of the absence of the feminine element in the new cultural discourse on modernism in Turkey. Having chosen not to remain totally silent about womans presence, _ Ismail Hakk is at pains to make sure of her propriety. In doing so, he inevitably engages with her sexuality and corporealitythose aspects of her that need to be kept under control to perpetuate his masculinist discourse. In Demokrasi ve Sanat , woman appears as the figure that has no room if unwed and no place in the city if undressed. She needs to be symbolized by the acceptable norms of the modernist-nationalist context of the newly founded Turkish Republic in order to find a place in the modern house and the modern city. In short, if the modern and modest Turkish woman finds a place in _ Ismail Hakks architectural account, woman as the marker of the feminine (as opposed to the wife and the daughter) is the

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paradoxical element that remains homeless. She lurks behind the newlywed and appropriately dressed woman as a paradoxan occupant without a place. The feminine realm is excessive of _ Ismail Hakks account but at the same time points to a lack in the making of modern Turkish architecture.42 For Gilles Deleuze, the paradoxical element is associated with art, poetry, mythic, and aesthetic invention and is the key to the way out of boundaries and fixed identifications. Deleuze states that the moment the paradoxical agent enters the picture, the entire configuration of the structure alters since it is that which destroys common sense as the assignation of fixed identities.43 Following him, Jean-Jacques Lecercle eloquently explains that In the genesis of every proposition, there is a moment of creation, of potential nonsense, but also of fluidity: the moment of sense, before a (self-) conscious subject takes over, before the world is designated, before langue with its fixed units and general rules imposes its structure on language. This moment of sense is obliterated when good sense wins.44 I contend that _ Ismail Hakks use of the figure of the newlywed woman provides a glimpse to that precarious moment of sense before a phallocentric discourse on modern Turkish architecture is consolidated. The newlywed woman draws attention to another (imaginary) realm that exists prior to the symbolic boundaries of architecture. That realm involves taking into account of fluidity, corporeality, and sexuality as equally significant ingredients of architecture as permanence, rationality, order, and fixity. The architectural discourse on domesticity that emerges from such concerns may do away with such unifying and idealized labels as nationalism and modernism and focus on the immediacy of lived spaces, which may belong to the newlywed bourgeois woman as much as to the beggar, the maid, the prostitute, the femme fatale , and other

improper figures hitherto excluded from the space of architecture. What is most important is the willingness to hear them, rather than covering over their voices with the masculinist premises of architectural discourse. Only then can one hope for the alteration of the entire configuration of the structure of the discipline and take _ Ismail Hakks call for democracy in the realm of culture and architecture seriously.
Notes 1. _ Ismail Hakk, Demokrasi ve Sanat (_ Istanbul: Kanaat Ku tu phanesi, 1931). 2. Ibid., p. 12. 3. The relationship between architectural discourse and sexuality in classical Western treatises is analyzed in Diana Agrest, Architecture From Without: Body, Logic and Sex, in Diana Agrest, Architecture From Without (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 17396; for an inspiring study of the sexualized discourse on space, see Sue Best, Sexualizing Space, in Elizabeth Grosz and Elspeth Probyn, eds., Sexy Bodies: The Strange Carnalities of Feminism (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 18194. 4. I use the term symbolic realm in the Lacanian sense of human law and language. Feminist philosophers of psychoanalysis, particularly Luce Irigaray, have emphasized the attributes of a masculine imaginary including the principles of noncontradiction, binarism, and identity as the founding principles of the symbolic order. For a more thorough explanation, see Margaret Whitford, Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 5762. 5. The introduction of such topics to academic scholarship owes much to the work of feminists.To situate feminist scholarship in Turkish studies, see Nu khet Sirman, Feminism in Turkey: A Short History, New Perspectives on Turkey 3, no. 1 (Fall 1989): 134; Yes xim Arat, The Project of Modernity and Women in Turkey, in Sibel Bozdo gan and Res xat Kasaba, eds., Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), pp. 95112; and Deniz Kandiyoti, Gendering the Modern: On Missing Dimensions in the Study of Turkish Modernity, ibid., pp. 11332. 6. In what follows my use of the terms sense and common sense are informed by Gilles Deleuzes work. In The Logic of Sense , trans. Mark Lester (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). Deleuze introduces an inspiring distinction between sense and good/common sense. Sense for him is located in the gap between propositions (words, language) and states of affairs (things). It is always produced between the signifier and the signified. Good sense and common sense, on the other hand, are related to the sphere of language and emerge from a realm of (non)sense that precedes language. 7. To respond to an anonymous referees concerns about using western theories in the analysis of the Turkish context, I would like to emphasize that first of all, rather than the wholesale application of any particular theory, I mobilize particular concepts in poststructuralist and feminist theories, which prove useful in my analysis. Second, I fully subscribe to

Edward Saids proposition that no system or theory exhausts the situation out of which it emerges or to which it is transported. In his renowned essay Travelling Theory, Said asserts that cultural and intellectual life are nourished by the traveling of theories from one place to another and that this is an enabling condition of intellectual activity. See Edward Said, Travelling Theory, in Edward Said, The World the Text and the Critic (London: Vintage, 1991), pp. 22647. 8. The term Kemalist refers to Kemal Atatu rk, the founder of the Turkish Republic in 1923. For an extensive account of the reforms concerning womens status, see Arat, The Project of Modernity and Women in Turkey. 9. For an extensive discussion of this group and their relation to radical modernism, see C. Nazm _ Irem, Kemalist Modernizm ve Tu rk Gelenekc xi-Muhafazakarl gnn Ko kleri [Kemalist Modernism and the Roots of Turkish Traditionalist-Conservatism], Toplum ve Bilim , no. 74 lken are (Fall 1997) 5299; Peyami Safa, Ahmet A gao glu, and Hilmi Ziya U other renowned figures among the traditionalist-conservatives. 10. Andre Maurois, Kadn ve Erkek [Woman and Man], Yeni Adam 69 (1935): 11. sku 11. U dar Kz Sanat Mektebi, Yeni Adam 69 (1935): 6. 12. In one case, Soviet women were praised as having equal social status as men, in another case, contemporaneous Italian and German women who have been solely relegated to the realm of domesticity were cited as negative examples of conservative fascist regimes. Bugu nku Kadn [Todays Woman], Yeni Adam 78 (1935): 1011; Almanyada Feminizmin lu O mu [The Death of Feminism in Germany], Yeni Adam , (March 19, 1934): 9. 13. Quoted in Ays xen Doyran, Kadnlar Milletvekili Sec xilirken . . ., [As women are elected as members of the parliament . . .], Toplumsal Tarih 39 (1997): 3233. 14. For the elaboration of A gao glus position and a detailed account of early women members of the parliament, see ibid., pp. 2734. 15. Ibid., p. 30. 16. Sirman, Feminism in Turkey: A Short History, p. 13. 17. See, for example, the work of Yes xim Arat, Deniz Kandiyoti, and Ays xen Doyran. 18. Speech given on October 14, 1925, at Womens School of Education in _ Izmir. M. Rauf _ Inan, Atatu rk ve Tu rk Kadn [Atatu rk and the Turkish Woman] (_ Istanbul: Arkn Kitabevi, 1991), p. 52. 19. Deniz Kandiyoti explains this with reference to scholars of nationalism such as Benedict Anderson and Homi Bhabha, Identity and its Discontents: Women and the Nation, in Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, and Margaret Iversen, eds., Colonial Discourse, Postcolonial Theory (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1994), p. 378. 20. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 359. 21. For further theorization of this theme, see Joane Nagel, Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations, Ethnic and Racial Studies 2 (1998): 24269. I have addressed the architectural implications of this issue in Tenuous Boundaries: Women, Domesticity and Nationhood in 1930s Turkey, Journal of Architecture 4 (2002): 22944. 22. Here, one cannot help but remember Luce Irigarays theorization of the maternal-feminine, which she states exists necessarily as the cause of

Room for a Newlywed Woman: 10 Making Sense of Gender in the Architectural Discourse of Early Republican Turkey

the self-cause of man. But not for herself. She has to exist but as an a priori condition (as Kant might say) for the space-time of the masculine subject. A cause that is never unveiled for fear that its identity might split apart and plummet down. See Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference , trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 8485. 23. For an analysis of Peyami Safas novels from a gender perspective, see Fatmagu x, Eski Cinsel Dualizm: Peyami l Berktay, Yeni Kimlik Arays Safann Romanlarnda Toplumsal Cinsiyet [New identity searches, old sexual dualisms: Gender in Peyami Safas novels] in Zeynep Rona, ed., Bilanc xo 19231998, Proceedings of the International Conference, History of the Turkish Republic: A Reassessment, December 1012 , 1998 (Ankara, Turkey: Middle East Technical University, 1998), pp. 26775. 24. Duygu Ko ksal, Yeni Adam ve Yeni Kadn: 1930lar ve 40larda Kadn, Cinsiyet ve Ulus [The New Man and the New Woman: Woman, Sexuality and Nation in the 1930s and 40s], Toplumsal Tarih 51 (1998): 3233. 25. As the title of the last article suggests, heterosexuality is explicitly presented as the only legitimate form of sexuality. For the close associations between social order and heterosexual matrimony in the Western tradition, see Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, Volume 3 , trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), pp. 15064; Judith Butler explicates how sex is a regulatory ideal from a psychoanalytic viewpoint in Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 2756. 26. See, for example, Mekki Sait, Zarzavatc x Fatma Hanm [Fruit-seller Ms. Fatma], Yedigu n 3, no. 44 (January 10, 1934): 11. 27. Adnan Cemil, Kadnl gn Haklar [Rights of Womanhood], Yeni Adam 30 (Temmuz 1934): 8. 28. For a comprehensive account, see Sibel Bozdo gan, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001).

29. Based on these premises, most practicing architects embraced regionalist details as expressions of an authentic Turkish style but deliberately avoided any reference to the Ottoman stylistic vocabulary due to its associations with Islam. On the theoretical side, however, Ottoman architecture seemed to be less threatening. Particularly such traditionalist-conservatives as _ Ismail Hakk, eagerly claimed that Ottoman architecture embodied rationalist principles of abstraction and purity. For further elaboration of these topics, see Sibel Bozdo gan, Reframing the Ottoman Heritage: Historiography and Ideology in Early Republican Turkey, Lecture Delivered at Harvard University, April 17, 2003; Gu glu, Between Civilization and Culture: lsu m Baydar Nalbanto Appropriation of Traditional Dwelling Forms in Early Republican Turkey, Journal of Architectural Education 55, no. 2 (November 1993): 6674. 30. _ Ismail Hakk, Demokrasi ve Sanat , p. 36. 31. Ibid., p. 76. 32. Ibid., p. 77. 33. http://www.elaziz.net/gelenek/dugun5.htm (accessed 12 June 2005). _ Ismail Hakk makes no reference to the brides room and to my knowledge his reference to a room for a newlywed woman remains unique. 34. _ Ismail Hakk, Demokrasi ve Sanat , p. 140. Cubism is the generic name used for Modern Art in the early decades of the Republic. Such terms as cubic architecture or cubic furniture are commonplace in contemporaneous discourse. 35. For example, in her investigation of the relationship between sexuality and space, Sue Best states that in order to think the enfolding of the female body in concepts and concepts in the female body we can no longer assume the existence of a beginning point with two discrete termsa natural body and pure thought. (. . .) We can only start with an imbrication. Sue Best, Sexualizing Space, in Elizabeth Grosz and Elspeth Probyn, eds., Sexy Bodies: The Strange Carnalities of Feminism (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 18990.

36. Deniz Kandiyoti, Identity and its Discontents: Women and the Nation, in Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, and Margaret Iversen, eds., Colonial Discourse, Postcolonial Theory (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1994), p. 378. 37. _ Ismail Hakk, Yeni Adam ic xin Yeni Mimarlk [New Architecture for the New Man], Yeni Adam (April 9, 1934): 7. 38. Ibid. In the Turkish language, the word man (adam ) does not stand for human (insan ).Therefore, the quoted statement is explicitly gendered. 39. Mirjana Lozanovska, Excess: A Thesis on [Sexual] Difference and Architecture , Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Deakin University, 1994; Elizabeth Grosz, Architectures of Excess, in Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture From the Outside (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001), pp. 15166; and for an analysis of similar issues in the urban context, see Elizabeth Wilson, The Sphinx in the City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 40. For a further elaboration of this point, see Gu lsu m Baydar, The Cultural Burden of Architecture, Journal of Architectural Education 57, no. 4 (May 2004): pp. 1927. 41. For the implications of this situation, see the articles in Gu lsu m Baydar Nalbanto glu and Wong Chong Thai, eds., Postcolonial Space(s) (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997). 42. I use Deleuzes explanation of the paradoxical element in the structure of language here, which defines this element simultaneously as excess in the signifier series and lack in the signified. It is also related to his notion of becoming, which he most prominently associates with woman. Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), p. 51; for discussions of the feminine element as an excessive indicator of fluidity and corporeality in relationship to architecture, see Mirjana Lozanovska, Excess ; and Elizabeth Grosz, Architectures of Excess. 43. Deleuze, The Logic of Sense , p. 3. 44. Jean-Jacques Lecercle, The Violence of Language (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 178.

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