Notes
Turkish is grammatically a non-gendered language without gendered pronouns, articles, or adjectives. Some nouns are intrinsically gendered, such as kadın/erkek (woman/man), kız/oğlan (girl/ boy), anne/baba (mother/ father). Aside from these clearly marked nouns, there is nothing on the level of syntax that is gendered. The only pronoun is the gender-neutral “she/ he” that appears on its own or modifies verbs and adjectives accordingly. Thus, it is through cultural codes and context that the language marks – or rather, hints at – gender.
All Turkish poets rely on cultural codes to mark the gender of their characters, should they desire to do so, because those are the means by which gender can linguistically be represented. Second, poems always have to be situated within their specific temporal and cultural contexts. Most of the time, regarding gender, the contexts reaffirm traditional relationships (read: monogamous and heterosexual) and stereotypical dichotomies (male/ dominant/ active and female/ submissive/ passive). Thus, even while Turkish may seem more inclusive in terms of gender representations; linguistically, due to the constant situatedness in conservative cultural contexts, it can be quite constricting.*
About the Author
Gülten Akın (January 23, 1933 – November 4, 2015) is among the important poets of Turkish Literature. She dealt with the concept of “I” in almost all her poems. Her understanding of poetry progresses from the individual to the social, without leaving the concept of self. Sometimes there is a happy, sometimes unhappy, loving, longing, bored, depressed, lonely young woman and the reader sees the emotional swings in her poems.
Akın won many awards for her poetry and some of her songs have been performed as songs.
I Cut My Black Hair (1960)
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Kestim Kara Saçlarımı
I Cut My Black Hair
Uzaktı dön yakındı dön çevreydi dön
Yasaktı yasaydı töreydi dön
İçinde dışında yanında değilim
İçim ayıp dışım geçim sol yanım sevgi
Bu nasıl yaşamaydı dön
Onlarsız olmazdı, taşımam gerekti, kullanmam gerekti
Tutsak ve kibirli -ne gülünç-
Gözleri gittikçe iri gittikçe çekilmez
İçimde gittikçe bunaltı gittikçe bunaltı
Gittim geldim kara saçlarımı öylece buldum
Kestim kara saçlarımı n’olacak şimdi
Bir şeycik olmadı – Deneyin lütfen –
Aydınlığım deliyim rüzgârlıyım
Günaydın kaysıyı sallayan yele
Kurtulan dirilen kişiye.
Şimdi şaşıyorum bir toplu iğneyi
Bir yaşantı ile karşılayanlara
Gittim geldim kara saçlarımdan kurtuldum
It was far, it was close, it was around, it was around
It was forbidden, it was a law, it was a tradition, come back
I’m not with you outside
My inside is shame, my outside is living, my left side is love
How was this life, come back
It wouldn’t be without them, I had to carry, I had to use
Captive and arrogant -how ridiculous-
Her eyes are getting bigger and unbearable
I’m getting more and more depressed
I went and came and just found my black hair
I cut my black hair what will happen now
Nothing happened – Try it please –
I’m bright, I’m crazy, I’m windy
Good morning mane waving apricot
To the resurrected person.
Now I’m amazed at a pin
For those who meet with a life
I went and came and got rid of my black hair
Analysis
Akın starts by cutting her hair to escape the depressed state she is in. If we give an example of this from daily life, we can say that women start a change with their hair first. It is a sign of change, of re-existence. In a way, this movement bears the traces of rebellion against the patriarchal mentality of the society.
In a sense, cutting hair is an opposition to existing in captivity and male domination. This change is a step towards freedom, because she is a woman of her age in the Middle East. Long hair has often been one of the most prominent symbols of femininity in Middle Eastern society. Akin knows that something has to change. That may be why she cuts her hair, perhaps as a sign of passive resistance, in her poetry. Will the poet be able to get rid of what she wants to get rid of when she cuts her black hair? Even though the pressures of tradition, spouse, family, and social norms had suffocated her so much, the only thing she got rid of was her hair… Nothing else has changed, and there is no path to salvation in her life. Beyond that, she waits, broken, and neglects herself.
Poetry of The Woman At Home (ca. 1970)
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Evdeki Kadının Şiiri
Poetry of The Woman At Home
Saklayıp başını bağasına
Ölü gibi dursun istendi
Öteki kadınlar bir yerlerden
Şakıyıp gelirlerdi
Bakışlar, bir erkek bir kadın
Yoğun elektrik havai sözler
O dışa düşendi
Mutfak oda yatak arasında
Yatakla beşik
Nice nice yol döşendi
Aptal dakikalar, içine sığmama
Gelgeç albeni
Uyandı… Bitti
Hide it with its head
He was asked to stay dead
Other women from somewhere
They used to sing
Glances, a man a woman
Intense electric overhead words
She was falling out
Kitchen room between bed
Crib with bed
Nice road paved
Stupid moments, don’t fit in
Tidal allure
Woke up… Done
Analysis
In the poem “ Poetry of The Woman At Home”, we see how narrow the boundaries of a woman’s life are, how she is trapped and how she shuttles between the kitchen, the room and the bed.
Doorkeeper Women (1998)
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Kapıcı Kadınlar
Doorkeeper Women
Kısarak seslerini, sözlerini eksilterek
Eğerek başlarını
Yeraltından usulca çıkıyorlar
Mor yemenileri ve turuncu hırkalarıyla
Kapıcı kadınlar, kocalar, çocuklar
Çorak kentlerimizi bahçeye dönüştürüp
Solgun daha solgun daha solgun
Uçuyor yüzleri geceye kadar
By squeezing the women’s voices, reducing their words
Bowing their heads
They’re coming out of the underground
With purple denims and orange cardigans
Concierge women, husbands, children
Turning our barren cities into gardens
Paler more paler more paler
Their faces fly into the night
*This poem is in a free verse style and has two stanzas.
Analysis
Doorkeeper/ doormen: a worker who has been put in a position that is in the lower class of social status, oppressed, despised, and rushes to everything. Underground: indicates both the infrastructure class and the basement.
As is widely known in Turkiye, apartment workers usually live in the basement. Basement apartments are flat, small. Generally, men do this job. Due to the location of the windows, they do not receive much sunlight. Ventilation is not good, sometimes it is damp. These people, who were pushed underground, were intended to be kept out of sight. Since they do not have the same status as other apartment residents, they do not live in the same conditions as them. There is also an intercom in the concierge’s apartment. Thanks to this intercom, the residents of the flats connect with the concierge. The people living in the apartment order from where they sit and call the doormen to their feet. The doormen come out of the underworld softly, lowering their voices, lowering their words, bowing their heads. The upper class, that is, the residents of the apartment, give orders to the doormen day and night. The doorman, with his head forward, lowers the tone of his voice, says, “Okay, sir.” They are always embarrassed. They always feel the underclass treatment clinging to them.
In the second part of the poem, we see that those who come out of the underground softly, lowering their voices, lowering their words, and bowing their heads, are the doormen in purple kerchiefs and orange cardigans. As soon as we read the words purple Yemeni (muslin) and orange cardigan, the poet offers us a photograph. The cardigan and the Yemeni are the main symbols of the clothing style of young and old people, that are more common in villages. It is not possible to see those types of cardigans in most middle-aged and younger women in cities. At the same time, this style of clothing is an indicator of the life condition of women. The family, who migrated from the village to the city and have problems with housing and work, continue their old lifestyle in the place where they now live, and sometimes they falter.
In this regard, the identification of the woman in the poem as a mother is pointed out through the mention of a husband and child. The mother serves as a caretaker, providing domestic service, taking care of the children and helping her husband. Domestic labor forms the basis of the gender-based division of labor in Turkiye.
Jobs that require physical labor such as preparing meals, cleaning, washing clothes and ironing for the people living in the household are mostly undertaken by women as a natural result of the gender-based patriarchal division of labor.
Hiding Women (ca. 1970)
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Saklayan Kadınlar
Hiding Women
O telefona çıkma, o kapıyı açma
Ona dokunma
Sarnıcı besleyen suyu sonsuza
Sakla, sende sürsün aşk 6
Don’t get on that phone, don’t open that door
Don’t touch it
The cistern that feeds the water forever
Hide, let love last too
*This poem is in a free verse style and has one stanza.
Analysis
According to Gülten Akın, women live trapped inside the house. The relationship between house and woman is frequently mentioned in Gülten Akın’s poems. One of the most important issues of women is that they are surrounded by the inside of the house in the patriarchal system and cannot establish a life and a world of their own. On the contrary, they are more confined to the house with a child. Akın builds her lines on women’s liberation, being an individual, positioning themselves only through marriage, or not rejecting the status that comes with a taught and predicted marriage.
Sources
*This poem was curated by Gülşen Şencan, a member of NML’s Language Leadership Council representing Turkiye.
Akın, G., 2016, Kestim Kara Saçlarımı, Yapı Kredi Yayınları, İstanbul. pg.100.
Büyükbay, T. Zeynep, XII. Uluslararası Türk Sanatı, Tarihi ve Folkloru Kongresi Sanat Etkinlikleri, p.5.
Louie, E., 2019, A Woman’s Voice: Methods and Obstacles of Feminist Translation in Persian, Spanish and Turkish Poetry, A Thesis, pg. 82.
Yılmaz, E., 2016, Yalnızlık ve Kadın Bağlamında Gülten Akın’ın şiirleri, Mecmua Uluslar arası Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, pg. 35-36.
(online) https://siirtutkusu.com/kapici-kadinlar-siiri/, Access date: 14.08.2022.
(online) https://www.siir.gen.tr/siir/g/gulten_akin/kestim_kara_saclarimi.htm, Access Date:14.08.2022.