“The peasant women were always more emancipated than the city women, my son. Our peasants have remained in a way much nearer to the original precepts of our religion and to the old traditions of the Turks than our city dwellers. We have deviated from our religion and racial traditions by the contact we were forced to enter into with the degenerate Levantine elements dwelling in the cities. Muslim laws placed women on equality with men long before western laws did so, and at the time of the Prophet women were allowed more freedom than they ever had before. The Koran is full of mentions of women who were participating in public life and the only restriction placed on women in the Holy Book--a restriction which was necessary to correct the customs of the Arabs living in warm climates--is that women should not appear in public unless they were covered from the breasts down to the ankles. This is a simple rule of decency and modesty. As for the original Turkish customs they used to be so liberal that women participated in public affairs among the nomad Turkish tribes roaming on the plateau of Pamir, centuries ago. Many a Turkish woman was then the recognized chieftain of her tribe. Many a Turkish Joan of Arc has fought on the battlefields shoulder to shoulder with her warriors. It is only after the Muslims and the Turks came in contact with the decadent Byzantine Empire, it is only after the Turks conquered the dissolute colonies of old Rome and ancient Greece in Asia Minor that the Turks--especially those who settled in the cities--adopted certain customs of the conquered races. Unfortunately these customs are identified to-day, in the eyes of the foreigners, with the Turks and the Muslims as if they had originated with them. But that is not the case. While polygamy was not strictly forbidden so as to prevent--as was then the case in Europe--the increase of bastards and illegitimate children, Harems in the original sense of the word did not exist in Muslim or Turkish countries until they assimilated byzantine customs. The seclusion of women in separate apartments where they were condemned to lead the life of recluses pampered and spoiled solely for the pleasure of their master, can be retraced to the “Gyneceum” of Byzance. So can the custom of veiling the women when they went out, as evidenced by the pictures on old Grecian vases. The barbarous institution of Eunuchs is exclusively Byzantine. All these were certainly not originally Turkish customs and they have nearly never been practised by the peasants and country people of Turkey, except the custom which made it obligatory for women to be entirely veiled in the presence of men. Otherwise the rural population never restricted its women in any way. They always participated in the every-day life of their men. You should have been with us when I went to Eski-Shehir, in Anatolia, with your uncle during the war.” Here my aunt drew such a picture of her arrival