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Abstract:

The article analyzes the formation of women’s creativity that contributed to shaping the Tatar and Turkish literature. Although the socio-political conditions in which Tatar and Turkish women lived in the two empires differed, the patriarchal systems in both Muslim societies for a long time prevented women from engaging in artistic creativity. Even those Turkish writers from aristocratic families, who received a European education and could read Western novels in the original, such as Fatma Aliye, Fitnan Khanum, Shukufe Nihal, Khalide Edip, due to pressure from fathers or husbands and material dependence on them could not freely write and publish their works. The situation of the Tatar writers, such as Gaziza Samitova, Makhrui Muzaffaria, Zakhida Burnasheva, Galima Rakhmatullina, among others, who mostly lived in rural areas and studied only with an abystai (a mulla’s wive), was even worse. In the struggle for the right to creativity and emancipation in general, the first Tatar and Turkish writers were helped by such outstanding progressive thinkers as Namyk Kemal, Ahmed Midhat, Riza Fakhreddin and Ismail Gasprinsky. As a result, by the beginning of the 20th century, female writers had their own creative platforms, such as women’s magazines and separate columns in newspapers.