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Show WOMEN IN TURKEY Mistake to Class Them as "Toys of the Harem.'' Under the Law They Have Absolute Control of Their Own Property, Which All Western Women Have Not "Some extremely modern young women, who mistake symptoms for the causes of woman's independence, should make a tour of Turkey," suggests sug-gests a bulletin from the Washington headquarters of the National Geographic Geo-graphic society. "There women smoke, have had property rights for centuries, and divorce is easy, but who In all respects wants to be a Turk? The 'toys of the Turkish harems' were to be pitied in many ways, it is true, but considerable pity for them has been misdirected. For example, the Turkish women who now are to be 'emancipated' have had absolute control con-trol of their own property for hundreds hun-dreds of years, whereas the German wives cried in vain for such 'emancipation' 'emanci-pation' under the kaiser." The bulletin quotes from a communication commun-ication by Mary Mills Patrick, which gives a vivid picture of the condition of Turkish women before the world war, as follows: "It is a well-known fact that Roman law regarded the rights of the individual indi-vidual a without consideration of sex; a man or a woman was alike a citizen of the Roman world. This met the requirements re-quirements of Mohammedan life, where no woman ever necessarily sustained sus-tained a lasting relation with any man. "Therefore, during all the centuries of Mohammedan history, women have legally controlled their own property. They have been free to buy, sell, or alienate it without consulting any male relative. This has given them independence in-dependence of thought jtnd an influence influ-ence in business affairs that seems wholly inconsistent with their life of comparative personal slavery. ' "Enter a harem and there yon see a Circassian beauty, who has been newly acquired by the tall, handsome pasha who has just passed you In the street The air is heavy with the odor of eastern perfume, and the black eunucb stand? by the door to watch all who come and go. The beauty herself Is thickly powdered, with an elaborate coiffure erected by her numerous maids. Jewels half cover her arms, and. she wears a beautifully. ' embroidered embroi-dered negligee. There Is a languorous expression in her black eyes, as she sits idly smoking a cigarette and sip-1 ping Turkish coffee. "Would you think, to look at her, that when she draws her money from the bank that she must sign ber own check 1 These two sides of life have been wholly at variance with each other; but as years have gone by, the thoughtful side has predominated among the more Intellectual Mohammedan Moham-medan women, nntll now . they are ready to enter Into the affairs of today with an ' understanding and vigor which the world has never accredited to them. .- "It has been on the social side that Mohammedan women have suffered most under the oppression of the past especially from the frequency of divorce. di-vorce. A man could legally divorce his wife at any minute, the only condition con-dition being the payment of the dowry which was settlrd upon her by the husband at the time of her marriage. "In the last attempt to keep the sex In the role assigned to them by the life of the harem, very strict laws have been made to prevent all possible progress prog-ress among them. Laws have been proclaimed over and over again forbidding for-bidding Mohammedan women to attend at-tend foreign schools. In this emergency emer-gency they engaged governesses. Most of these governesses were aliens, and many of them were Inefficient, and bad moral guides to so large a portion of the population beginning to think and question. The governess system obtained ob-tained so much Influence after a short time that laws were made forbidding women to have governesses. Yet they struggled on In an effort for mental Illumination, reading, writing, talking things over among themselves, and sometimes getting help from their hus-bnnds hus-bnnds and brothers. ' They have accomplished ac-complished much, with so heavy a hnn-dlcap, hnn-dlcap, in literature, science, commerce com-merce and politics." |
