THE MASCULİNE NARRATİVE OF FEMİNİSM İN THE TANZİMAT PERİOD AHMET MİTHAT AND BEND-İ MAHSUS FEMİNİZM

The process, which started with the proclamation of the Tanzimat Edict in the Ottoman Empire, means the beginning of modernization especially for women as a result of the change in political, social and economic fields. Various concerns that arise in the minds of intellectuals who are concerned even from this beginning, push them to write fiction and non-fiction texts in areas that are not lost while being modernized. Women and families are among the most important of these areas. In this context, in the Ottoman modernization, the range of values that determine the East and the West is questioned about the boundaries of women and the limitations of women. The boundaries and limitations of women naturally bring about their literature. In this sense, our language is not familiar with the word Feminism meets the word. In the texts about the questioning style of women, the word Feminism is located after the Tanzimat II. It is increasing in post-constitutional texts. Ahmet Mithat, who questions the identity of new and modern women and is one of the most mindful about this subject, also writes articles that we can say first in the field besides the fictional texts of Feminism by fulfilling the requirements of the title of encyclopedist. His article titled Feminism, published in the column of Bend-i Mahsus in 1899, 9 years before the announcement of the Tanzimat II. in Tercüman-ı Hakikat, is a very comprehensive article introducing the Turkish society to the word feminism. The encyclopedist with a male-dominated mentality of a male-dominated society has an appearance of an encyclopaedia article created by the contributions of the Turkish / Ottoman mind on the information obtained from European sources by the Ottoman intellectual.