still up in the air - will Hayrunisa Gul wear the headscarf in the Palace?

[donsu]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II19Ak01.html


All the presidents' women


Since the election of Turkish President Abdullah Gul this month, the national and international media have devoted as many column-centimeters and as much air time to his wife as they have to him. Hayrunisa Gul is allegedly the first Turkish first lady to wear a headscarf in the presidential Cankaya Palace, and much speculation has surrounded how she will comport herself both within and without the palace walls.

(wearing headscarf in the Palace is against a law)

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The other first ladies
1. Latife Usakizade: At age 13, a gypsy fortune-teller reportedly told her that the man who would break her heart would have blue eyes and blond hair. Sure enough, at 22, after a period of university study in Paris and London, she married Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. At first she kept to the traditional clothing she had grown up with but was among the first women in the country to reveal her hair and adopt Western dress.

-snip-

2. Mevhibe Inonu: Born into an Ottoman family, she discarded her headscarf on her visit to Europe in the 1920s and quickly established herself as a leader in modern Euro-Turkish manners. Despite praying regularly and observing Ramadan fasts and the Festival of Sacrifice, outwardly she showed a secular face. Devoted to her husband, Ismet Inonu, Mevhibe endured his long absences stoically and remained his steadfast companion. The youngest and most stylish of the presidential palace wives, she adopted Western dress but had all her outfits tailored by the Turkish Girls' Institute. Her only overt political action was to plead for the lives of some of her friends who had been sentenced to death, but her husband gave her short shrift. When her husband retired from politics, she retreated to the place she loved best, her kitchen.

-snip-

there are 10 wives to read about. very, very interesting to see how women struggle to survive in other countries.

it is interesting to note how women's hair play so big a part in various religions.

why do men have such a hangup over women's hair? It's just HAIR!