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Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18618, 14 July 1930, Page 4

Turkish Women of To-day: The feminine movement in Turkey is the most sudden as well as the most sweeping development which has been achieved by the women of any nation, at any time of the world’s history, writes a correspondent in an overseas j journal. | Within the last five or six years, ! Turkish women have adopted wholesale the customs, manners and costume of their European sisters, and have discarded altogether the habits of the harem. This is the more surprising when one remembers their long, long years of submission to Mohammedan traditions and training. For some generations, of course, the poorer classes of Turkish women have not been absolutely secluded, but the harem system has ruled the highly-born and wealthy for as long as any Turk can remember. The closer the husband watched and guarded his women, the more they believed themselves loved and treasured.

But now, in place of the languorous useless beauty who dwelt in scented seclusion, there appears the brisk, busi-ness-like, and much healthier wife and mother, who wears Western clothes, attends to her own household duties, amuses herself at tennis clubs, and enjoys almost as much liberty as the women of Britain. There is little doubt that the spread of education has brought about this pleasant state of affairs. When French and English governesses began to be introduced into Turkish families, the harem was doomed. The girls were eager to learn, and with knowledge came the leaning toward emancipation. Then the gramophone arrived, bringing Western music, and, above all, Western dancing. The old style of Oriental dancing no longer interested young feminine Turkey, These new dances called for partners, and the educated girls began to ask for the freedom of which they had heard and read. The Turkish husband and father has also been forced into a wider outlook on life, and, assuming more and more the habits and customs of Europe, he has become sympathetic to the demands of his womenfolk. For he realises that the less restricted Western ways are better for the women, as well as for the men of his race and time. So the young Turkish women are now free to go into the world, to attend dances, to work in shops and offices, to indulge in games and sports—even to dine at restaurants in the company of men. Every day they are taking their part more definitely in the public life of the nation.

Turkey is now a land of open homes and unveiled faces. Children in the Government schools are given courses of Swedish drill, the girls wearing the short gym costumes that are familiar all over Europe.