Heather Rossiter

Ataturk's Daughters ...And His Granddaughters, Too

by Heather Rossiter

In Istanbul, Heather Rossiter went looking for women scientists

When the corrupt, moribund and defeated Ottoman Empire was overthrown in 1923, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk became the first President of the Republic of Turkey. Among his many reforms none was more significant than his recognition of the rights and abilities of Turkish women. Throw off your headscarves, come out of your seclusion, he told them, and participate on equal terms with men in building a new secular society and a new nation. Edicts decreed that a woman's head should be uncovered in classroom, university and government office. Scholarships were made available for women to undertake further study at European universities. Women became full citizens and much was expected of them. The change in their status and expectations was revolutionary. They did not disappoint; their achievements were incredible.

Three generations on and progress has been neither smooth nor uninterrupted. Determined attempts have been made to reverse women's liberation and to overturn other aspects of Ataturk's contribution to the foundations of modern Turkey. Even now, fundamentalists threaten women's rights and freedoms. The women I met in Istanbul will have none of it.

They take as given the right to a full education and equal participation in a nondiscriminatory environment. They are educated, accomplished and confident. The disparity between these sophisticated, cultured, high-achieving women and those in the backward agricultural areas of Anatolia is striking, yet, potentially, girls from the country areas can access education and the status and possibilities that education brings. Only cultural attitudes hold them back and limit their expectations.

Born in 1934, Bayhan Çubukçu could be considered a daughter of that first wave of women sent abroad to access a western education and, like them, she studied in Europe. She was a pre-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Pharmacognosy at Paris University 1959-62. In 1962 she returned to the University of Istanbul as an Assistant, until 1976 when she was appointed Professor, Department of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy. Although her absences from Istanbul were many, essentially she remained with that department until her retirement from the position of Director last year.

Her research into the medicinal properties of native plants earned her many fellowships and awards. In 1965 a NATO Fellowship took her to the UK for three months, in 1969 a Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey Fellowship sent her back to Paris for 5 months, in 1971 and again in 1972 she was at the Free Berlin University as a Research Fellow. In 1977 a 4-month Fellowship took her to the University of London with a fifth month in Paris. She returned to London in 1988 on a British Council Fellowship. She has chaired many bodies, such as the Aegean University's Department of Pharmacognosy, and has been an invited speaker at Congresses from Copenhagen to Beijing. She has participated at conferences organised by UNESCO and IFUW and been an adviser to the Ministry of Health in Ankara. She has twice been President of the Turkish Association of University Women and has represented them at international conferences. She has several good friends in the Sydney Australian Federation of University Women.

I spoke to Professor Dr Bayhan Çubukçu in the staff dining room at the Beyazit campus of the University of Istanbul, formerly the senior officers' mess of the Ottoman Ministry of War. (I was pleased this baby had not been ditched with the bathwater; it is a magnificent room, HR).

HR:
What is the biggest problem for women scientists in Turkey?
BÇ:
The biggest problem is the same for women and men - financial. The Turkish economy is not strong, inflation is 85%, funding for research is very hard to get.
HR:
Would you accept the appellation of 'a daughter of Ataturk'?
BÇ:
With pride.
HR:
After your father* died in Bursa when you were 14, your mother brought you to Istanbul. I have been told you and your cohort at High School bonded very closely and that many of the women have had careers of great distinction. What fields did they enter, those young women of the late forties?
BÇ:
Everything. Medicine, law, pharmacy, chemical engineering, electrical engineering. And we are still friends.
HR:
In establishing a career, were there problems associated with being a woman?
BÇ:
There were many changes, many reforms for men and women. Attitudes lingered, they did not change overnight.
HR:
Is the political dynamism of the present a problem for Turkish women scientists?
BÇ:
There is a threat. We are aware.
HR:
What proportion of scientists in Turkey are women?
BÇ:
More than 50%.
HR:
Is this figure a constant? Has it changed in recent years and is it the same at all levels?
BÇ:
It has grown. There is a university crèche now, but there are still barriers, tradition, to senior appointments.
HR:
I see this long list of achievements and distinctions in your CV. Which of these makes you most proud?
BÇ:
In 1983 I founded the Scientific and Technical Research Centre of Traditional Medicine of Istanbul University. I thought it was important that we find out which of our plants had been used medicinally in the past and how they had been used. We don't want this ancient lore to disappear. Our native plants are very important as potential sources of new drugs. I became the Centre's first Director. I still work there.
HR:
Even though you've retired?
BÇ:
And I am very busy with the move. I am sorting files, packing.

* Bayhan's father was a doctor with the Turkish Military Forces at Gallipoli in 1915

Professor Dr Aysel Gursoy, Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry joined us for lunch. Her field is the synthesis of heterocycline compounds, her current major problem is organising the move from the Faculty's building into temporary accommodation while the damage done by the 1999 earthquake is repaired. 'This could take years,' she said. 'It is very expensive.' Professor Gursoy and Dr. Çubukçu had arranged an after-lunch appointment for me with a Vice-Rector of the University. Although the Rector (equivalent to our Vice-Chancellor) is elected, the three Vice-Rectors are appointed by the Rector. The way to Professor Dr Nur Serter's office was strewn with Hellenic sculpture. Like Professors Gursoy and Çubukçu, one of Dr Serter's problems is temporary relocation while structural damage to her suite, caused by the earthquake, is repaired. Her new quarters are sunny and full of pot plants.

Dr Serter is an economist; perhaps for this specialty she was chosen in a time of financial stringency for the university. Her statistics came easily and presented a very positive picture of female representation in all faculties. She saw no barriers to female achievement. Turkish women have never had it better, in her view. There must be at least 26,000 of them at the several campuses of the University of Istanbul, if her proportions are correct. Who could doubt them? This Vice-Rector is very well regarded by women members of staff. 'She is very quick,' they say. 'Dr Serter analyses the problem and gets things moving at once.'

Dr Refika Ersu-Hamutcu lives in Asia and works in Europe. Every morning and every evening, she drives between the two continents, via the Bogaziçi Bridge. It was in a third continent, North America, that this brilliant Turkish daughter made her professional reputation.

I caught Refika in Istanbul on my last night there and on her first day back from presenting a paper at a conference in Texas. On the way home she had dropped in on former colleagues in Los Angeles.

Born in 1968 in western Turkey, Refika attended Izmir High School, where in 1985 she won an American Field Service scholarship to Hampton High School, Pittsburgh, USA. Returning to Turkey in 1986, she enrolled in medical school in Istanbul and on graduation in 1992 took up a Pediatrics Residency at the Marmara University Medical School. In 1997 Refika was in the USA again, on a Rotating Fellowship - Nashville, Tennessee, to study Pediatric Endocrinology, University of Arizona for Pediatric Intensive Care and, later, Pediatric Pulmonology. In 1998, with European Respiratory Society research fund support, Dr Ersu-Hamutcu accepted a Research Fellowship in London and very soon afterwards was awarded a Research Fellowship in Pediatric Pulmonology at the Children's Hospital, Los Angeles, USA.

Her three years in Los Angeles were most productive. Paper after paper appeared; she was an invited speaker at four significant conferences; 12 Poster Presentations at conferences were subsequently published in prestigious journals; she won 4 Research Awards. It must have been difficult to resist the pressure to stay in the USA, but, to Turkey's gain, her decision was to return to Istanbul. Now an Assistant Professor at Marmara University, she will become an Associate Professor within the year.

Research is now more difficult. Funding in Turkey is almost non-existent, the program depends on unfunded work by herself and her students. Bench research has become clinical research, equipment is a problem, but there are positive elements. She is hopeful of getting a children's sleep laboratory this year and the low level of technical support encourages more patient cooperation. Obviously Refika will not be stopped, not even slowed by these difficulties. Her reply to my perennial enquiry: To what extent has your career been helped or hindered by being a woman? was interesting. She turned the question on its head. The actual problem for her had been not gender, but foreigners' perception of Turks and Muslims. Their attitude was sceptical, even condescending. They doubted the calibre of her education, questioned her abilities. Being quietly self-confident, she adopted a patient approach and saw their attitudes change. Perhaps being a woman had helped, she said, as it gave her a personality that could be patient rather than aggressive. Refika must indeed have been an education for many ignorant, perhaps bigoted, people.

I wondered if the predominance of women in medicine and pharmacy in Turkey has caused a downgrade in status in those professions, as it has in, say, Russia.

'Not at all,' was her reply, 'They are still highly regarded.' In her pre-graduation year, which she had to spend in a country town, as all Turkish medical undergraduates do, she was often moved by the gratitude and respect of the population. Statues of Ataturk stand in every town, city and village in Turkey. His legacy is often debated, but there is no doubt that what he did for Turkish women is only matched by what they do for Turkey.

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