Актуальные вопросы тюркологических исследований

XXXIII–XXXIV Kononov Memorial Lectures 110 ress well before Tyrkova’s coming to Turkey. First a group of party members (S. D. Urusov, M. S. Margulies and D. I. Bebutov) belonging to free masons lodges visited Constantinople where they met Ahmet Riza, Naradungian, Carasso and Talaat in the winter of 1908-1909 [13: 284–286]. After this, in the spring of 1909, Miliukov himself paid a short visit to Constantinople and then came to Salonika where he became acquainted with Talaat Bey [10: 373–374; 11: 224–229]. As have been already mentioned, Tyrkova maintained friendly terms with Hüseyin Сahit, the then editor of the Union and Progress Party’s newspaper Tanin and a very important figure in the Ottoman political establishment. It was Hüseyin Сahit who introduced Tyrkova to Halidé Hanum on November 14/27, 1911 when he brought her to Halidé Edib’s place after having been elected as an MP for Istanbul. Considering the course of their conversation, the memory of the recent election was still fresh in his mind and he was very grateful to Halidé Edib for the support she had given to him during the elec- toral campaign [16: 111–113; 14: 163]. Soon Tyrkova started attending meetings of the Teali-i Nisvan Cemiyeti (The Elevation of Women Club), the first women’s club in Turkey [16: 113; 14: 161–162]. In November 15/28 and December 10/23, 1911 she accom- panied Halidé Hanum to the Kız mektebi — the girls’ college which was founded in the autumn of 1911 [1: 297–330] where the ‘Mother of the Turk’ gave lessons in history, sociology and ethics, then both women visited a girls’ high school ( rüştiye ), and finally paid a visit to a traditional college belonged to the Ministry of Wakfs. This experience enabled Tyrkova-Williams to com- pare the manners of teaching in all the above-mentioned educational estab- lishments [16: 113–114, 126; 14: 164–171]. Finally Tyrkova mentioned the reason why, in the spring of 1912, Halidé Hanum had to resign her position of teacher at the Dârülmuallimat (Women teachers’ training college) where she had taught for a few years. Interestingly enough, that it was Yusuf Akchurin who would be involved in this story. By that time he had already been living in Istanbul for about four years, teach- ing somewhere and editing the Türk Yurdu [Turkic Motherland] 1 — the pe- riodical which disseminated the ideas of Pan-Turanism [1: 321–322]. Ac- cording to Tyrkova, the incident took place in the teachers’ common room of the Dârülmuallimat where Halidé Hanum dared shake hands with Yusuf Akchurin instead of making a traditional bow [14: 141–142]. This incident 1 The periodical Türk Yurdu was founded in November, 1911 with a financial support of Mahmut Husayinov, a Tatar millionaire from the Russian city of Orenburg [12: 104].