Fear and Loathing in the Republic: The Mystery Around Latife Hanim’s Archives

Latife Uşşaki was born into a wealthy and well-connected family in Izmir in 1898. After an impressive education in Turkey, she studied law at the Sorbonne in Paris, and learned English in London. Soon after her return to Turkey, she met Atatürk. The couple married in 1923 and Uşşaki became the first first lady of Turkey. As an upper-class, well-educated feminist with a keen interest in politics, she aided her husband in multiple ways ranging from the standard diplomatic duties of a first lady to working as his secretary and translator. The marriage, however, did not last long; finding Uşşaki too rebellious, Atatürk divorced her in 1925. Uşşaki spent the rest of her life confined to her apartment, with her door guarded by soldiers. Sometimes she could leave her apartment only in disguise with the aid of a black veil. After a life in which she said all her “aspirations, needs, and even human and citizenship rights were scattered to the ground like autumn leaves,” she died in 1975.¹

Today, Uşşaki’s archives are undisclosed. In 1976, officials from the Turkish History Institution—a public organization founded in 1930 under the patronage of Atatürk—entered her apartment and took her archives, including her diaries and letters, into the institute’s possession. In 1980, the archives were marked confidential for twenty-five years. In 2002, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer demanded Uşşaki’s archives for the Atatürk Museum that was established by the presidency of Turkey, but he failed to get them.² Then in January 2005, Yusuf Halaçoğlu, president of the Turkish History Institution, declared that the archives would be disclosed the following month, though he quickly backtracked, claiming Uşşaki’s relatives requested that the archives be kept in the institution undisclosed as long as possible.³ Although it is not possible to see the archives, it is still possible to learn from them. The debates around Latife Hanım and her archives tell us a lot about not only Turkey’s policies concerning historical documents, but also gender and modern mythmaking in the country. A brief look at the case of the first comprehensive biography of Uşşaki may provide valuable insights into the case.

In 2006, Latife Hanım, a biography of Uşşaki, was published by the reknowned journalist İpek Çalışlar.⁴ Although the book deviated little from the official narrative of Turkish history, its depictions of Uşşaki and Atatürk were controversial. In fact, Çalışlar was tried on charges of “insulting Atatürk”; her account of his escape from an assination attempt disguised as a woman in a black veil, while not at odds with the official history, was, construed as especially insulting to the image and memory of Atatürk as a manly hero and a brave savior, a powerful semi-god even. He had accordingly never been an ordinary person, replete with failures and weaknesses, and he would never be one. Therefore, even the slightest implication that Atatürk was a human being had to be punished severely. Though eventually acquitted, Çalışlar was charged and faced three years imprisonment for recounting an incident that did not insult Atatürk’s memory, but posed a threat to his mythical image. Yet the threat identified in Çalışlar’s book is also present in Atatürk’s own archive; when years after his death Atatürk’s foster daughter Afet İnan published a diary of his, which included details about his private life in Karlsbad during World War I, she censored excerpts that contained details about his nightlife and affairs.⁵ Atatürk’s other diaries are kept undisclosed in the Turkish General Staff and Presidential Archives, and in Anıtkabir— Atatürk’s mausoleum in Ankara.

In the official discourse, the biography of the father of the nation has been constructed in a particular way.⁶ Certain details about his private life as a youth, such as arguments between his parents about the...