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CHAPTER 4 – HALIDE EDIP AND YAKUP KADRI 
107 
my contemporaries” writes Halide Edip. Halide Edip herself is quite critical about 
them as well
18
:
To my mind neither Edebiyati-Djedide nor the young writers of whom I 
shall speak more fully later have recreated, in their writings, the Turkish 
life of the times and its inner psychology, so well as some of the oldest 
Turkish chroniclers had done of their own time. Naima shows in one 
single revolutionary scene a singular power of representing the setting 
as well as the thoughts and feelings of his time, with an understanding 
which would sound true and real in any age, although the Turkish prose 
of the period in its loose and primitive form of the day was hardly a fit 
instrument to express real life. Both Edebiyati-Djedide and my own 
contemporaries lacked that supreme genius which creates life from 
within without binding itself to schools, styles, or tendencies in fashion. 
 
The line of the journal was more or less following Namık Kemal’s patriotic ideas 
and, as she put it herself, was transfusing Western culture into Turkish ideas as best 
it could. Halide Edip admits that as she was at the beginning of her career and 
unknown, she was at the time flattered to be among the famous writers of the day
19
.
She wrote columns on women’s emancipation and the right to education but, being a 
woman, she never visited the premises of the paper
20
. Even her first articles were 
signed as Halide Salih. Her articles were fiercely criticised by conservative 
opponents of the Unionists
21
. When the 31 March 1909 counter revolution took place 
she learnt that her name was on a black list and fled to Egypt and from there to 
England where she stayed until the counter revolution was suppressed, returning to 
18
Adıvar 2005, 261-262 
19
Adıvar 2005, 262 
20
Adıvar 2005, vii 
21
Adıvar 2005, 267 

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