Rwanda is a country that has passed through a disastrous conflict and genocide with devastating effects. But the lessons learned in the aftermath of the genocide have changed the country forever.

Rwanda, a small country located in central Africa, has been home to nine million people from two tribes known as the Hutu and the Tutsi which have lived side by side in peace for centuries. There was no known ethnic conflict or major conflict between Hutus and Tutsis until the last fifty years. Rwanda was first colonized by Germany in 1899. Belgium took control of the country in 1919. In 1961, Rwanda’s monarchical government was removed by a referendum and the first parliamentary elections were held but at the expense of a number of massacres. In the following year, the country gained its independence.

Although the country became independent in 1962, the effects of colonialism lingered until recently. An example of this is the ethnic division between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. During the colonial period, the Belgian colonizers and the Church significantly favored the Tutsis over the Hutus. The colonizers had followed a divide and rule strategy and used the Tutsis in power instead of controlling the country directly; this widened ethnic differences. The colonizers had made membership of the Tutsi tribe a means of getting better education or obtaining a government or administrative position. Since both tribes speak the same language and have the same skin color, it was virtually impossible to tell them apart, so the colonizers had issued ethnic identity cards based on the measurement of people’s nose length. Until World War II, the Tutsis were masters of the country with a proven long record. However, the strategies of outsiders including the Church had changed in the mid-twentieth century so that Hutus gained more access to positions of power. In the 1950s, the Hutus took power and controlled the country. Considerable numbers of Tutsis were exiled to neighboring countries on many occasions. Until the 1990s, Hutu power was largely unchallenged in Rwanda. However, Tutsi exiles were organizing in neighboring countries and this was perceived as a grave threat to Hutu rule. Political conflict over the control of power and resources resulted in an exponential increase in ethnic violence. The Hutu government conceived Tutsi empowerment as a threat to their own interests and launched a media campaign calling for genocide. After a chain of events, including the death of the Rwandan president in a plane crash, a terrifying genocide commenced. For a while, Hutu people were strongly encouraged to kill their Tutsi neighbors, and those who did so were rewarded for their actions.

As a result, the genocide exploded quickly between April and June 1994. The world did not attempt to prevent the massacres. Men and women, children and the elderly, all were identified by their ethnicity and executed wherever they were found. Hatred was at its peak so that even relatives turned against each other. While a Hutu husband was among the survivors, his Tutsi wife was killed, and their children were kept alive as they were seen as sharing their father’s Hutu ethnicity. More than 800,000 people (Tutsis and moderate Hutus), according to official records, were massacred by the army and the extremists.

At last, without any international help, the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), a Tutsi-led rebel movement, overthrew the regime in June 1994 and the genocide was stopped. The country has been at peace ever since; however, Rwandans continue to struggle with the legacy of genocide.

After the Rwandan Genocide, one of the biggest challenges for the new RPF government was handling the detention and prosecution of more than 100,000 people who were accused of genocide-related crimes. Pointing to the seriousness of the situation one of the RPF government ministers said, “When we captured Kigali, we thought we would face criminals in the state; instead, we faced a criminal population.” The genocide orders were given by executives of the state but the crimes were carried out by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. The pink uniform of prisoners is well known in Rwanda today since the transfer of prisoners from one place in the country to another is common. By 2000, approximately 120,000 people accused of genocidal acts were being held in the prisons, which were populated far beyond their capacity. In ten years, the courts have only managed to prosecute about 10,000 suspects. In other words, it would require at least another 110 years to prosecute all prisoners accused of genocide-related crimes. Although almost half of the prisoners have been released to ease the system at various times, the courts still need to work faster.

To overcome the backlog in the legal system the Rwandan government introduced the Gacaca (pronounced “gachacha”) courts, a community justice system inspired by traditional procedures for cultural communal law enforcement. Gacaca means “justice on the grass” and the court is launched in an open grassy area or village green, near the main street. The main advantages of these courts are the ease of assembling the court in public, and the way they provide the opportunity for everyone to exercise their right to speak through an interactive court. Gacaca is the latest means used by the Rwandan government to realize truth, justice, and more importantly the reconciliation and healing of the community much sooner than would otherwise have been possible. Rwandans have welcomed the Gacaca. One man who lost his brother in his twenties and another who abandoned his wife since she belonged to the so-called hostile tribe have found the Gacaca court in their local area a valuable place to express their feelings and seek justice in the shadow of ineradicable memories. Yet other people, who participated in the genocide, have found the opportunity and encouragement to admit their wrong-doing and relieve the pain of their remorse.

Gacaca has its pros and cons, which I will not go into here; however, the genocide carries important lessons both for Rwanda and the world. It showed how lack of tolerance and understanding of negligible differences can indeed turn into cruelty and brutality, resulting in one of the biggest genocides in history. Rwandans, who were previously divided as Hutus and Tutsis, now do not even pronounce the words Hutu and Tutsi in public in their daily life. Rwanda today exemplifies a good example of living together with differences despite the fact that those differences were recently the cause of a tragic conflict.

Indeed the Rwandan people, who once killed each other without mercy, can tolerate with no discomfort a diversity that in other nations is a great source of potential conflict, an area of interaction that other countries have been struggling with for a long time. Rwandans welcome all religious traditions in their cultural richness. Saturdays and Sundays are like a festival time; Christians all dress in their best clothes and walk to church. (Many Christians observe and practice Saturday Sabbath in Rwanda.) Although Muslims are in a minority, the adhan (call to prayer) is recited from mosque loudspeakers; the shifting Islamic holidays are accepted as national holidays. If religious differences were a cause of fighting, then Rwanda would still be one of the most problematic countries in the world today. In contrast, Rwanda is a good example of how the establishment of accountability combined with tolerance and understanding can help to transform and strengthen a country even when it has fresh memories of one of the biggest genocides in history.

Mehmet Sen is an engineer in San Francisco Bay Area. He visited Rwanda many times for business purposes.

References

• Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, Princeton University Press, 2001.
• Reyntjens, Filip and Stef Vandeginste. 2005. “Rwanda: An Atypical Transition.” In Roads to Reconciliation, edited by Elin Skaar, et al. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
• Stover, Eric and Weinstein, Harvey (2004). My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Susanne Buckley-Zistel (2006): “The Truth Heals?” In Gacaca Jurisdictions and the Consolidation of Peace in Rwanda. Die Friedens-Warte Heft 1–2, pp. 113–130.

I began my research by reading all the Turkish material I could find on the subject. Most of the works I found were Turkish translations of European travelers’ reports about Ottoman life. Of course, it was necessary to separate fact from fiction, because many travelers, males in particular, described aspects of Ottoman life they had never personally seen-the inside of the harem, for example. But in spite of this, I was able to glean a fairly accurate description of Ottoman women and the harem from a number of different travelers (mostly women) who can be considered as eye witnesses to harem life. The portrait of Ottoman women that emerged reflected a very feminine appearance and demeanor, refined manners and decorum, and a pious and chaste character. Their domestic roles of wife and mother further reinforced this strongly feminine image.

The portrait of Ottoman women I found from my reading was a far cry from the Orientalists’ exotic stereotype. I learned that only approximately ten percent of the young slave girls in the imperial harem were actually royal concubines, and this number included concubines to the princes as well as to the sultan. The rest were groomed and trained for service to the royal family by means of the administrative hierarchy in the imperial harem. Even the belly dance, which is always associated with slave girls in the harem, apparently did not even exist in the imperial harem. That is what we are told by Leyla Saz Hanýmefendi who grew up in the palace from the age of four and who was closely associated with the royal family during the reign of six different sultans during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Armed with the information and knowledge I had gained from many travelers’ reports and secondary sources, I felt ready to challenge the sensationalist myth of the harem. Little did I know at the time, however, that an even greater discovery regarding Ottoman women awaited me in future research.

By a quirk of fate, I found myself spending a year with my daughter who was studying for a master’s degree in Islamic studies at a leading North American university. One of the courses she took was related to the Muslim qadi or judge and Ottoman court records. Much to my amazement I learned that throughout the duration of the Ottoman state (six centuries) women had many significant legal rights, more perhaps during that time than any other women in the world. This was a point that had been somehow overlooked in the many sensationalist books on the harem! Investigating this point further, I learned that Ottoman women had legal agency or, in other words, they could sue and be sued in court independent of their husbands. They could enter into legal contracts like marriage contracts with their husbands, or into business contracts with others. They had the right to own property and to inherit it. They had the right to initiate divorce. They had full control over their own income and property and could do with it as they wished. Ottoman women also had the right to be guardian of their children in case of the death of or divorce from their husband. European women, on the other hand, gained these rights much later, and today in some parts of the world women are still struggling to obtain them. British women, for example, did not have these rights until 1882. Previous to that time they had to turn over any property, inheritance or income to their husband upon marriage. Women did not have legal agency nor were they able to make legal contracts independently. Also they were unable to defend themselves in divorce cases and they could not get legal guardianship of their own children.

Furthermore, I learned that not only did Ottoman women have these legal rights, but that they actively pursued their rights as well. There are thousands of court records that attest to this. By no means were legal rights enjoyed just by a privileged few. They were accorded to Ottoman women of all social and economic strata. For example, one of my favorite cases was taken from early seventeenth-century Kayseri court records. It involves a woman named Teslime who was working on her land when her neighbor’s donkey strayed onto her property. When she seized the animal, her neighbor, who was a man, cursed her. Teslime immediately filed a complaint with the local qadi. Two witnesses were found to support her complaint and she won her case. While reading her case, I could not help but wonder how many women today would take a man to court for cursing them; and if they did so, how many would be taken seriously? There are countless recorded cases of Ottoman women who turned to the courts to get redress for injustices perpetrated against them. Upon review of such cases a different image of the Ottoman woman in the legal arena emerged: a strong and courageous woman who put Haqq (Truth and Justice) above everything else.

It was the discovery of this side of Ottoman women that really clenched my respect and admiration for them, because it enlightened me in regard to how Muslim women should be. They were not only very feminine and refined, but they were also strong defenders of Haqq. Their feminine and masculine natures were amazingly well balanced. As a Muslim convert, I have found the female model I was looking for. Whenever I get into trouble, I first ask myself, “What would an Ottoman woman do?”

Furthermore, I discovered that the spiritual nature of women was honored in Ottoman society.

Ottoman women were honored in the harem, not imprisoned there. Unfortunately, this way of perceiving women has all but been lost today. Much of the time women are perceived mainly as physical beings and, in its lowest form, as sex objects. They are often valued to the degree that they can rival the accomplishments of men. Ottoman women, however, were honored and valued as women.

I wanted to share these discoveries with others. I began lecturing on the subject of Ottoman women in Turkey, and these lectures eventually led to a small book in Turkish entitled, “Osmanlý Toplumunda Kadýn ve Aile (Women and Family in Ottoman Society).” Later on I began thinking about writing a book on Ottoman women in English-not an academic work, but a book giving a general overview that would appeal to any Western reader interested in the subject of women. Again, I rolled up my sleeves and set to work. As the book took form, so did my concept of how the book should be illustrated. I wanted it to reflect the spirit of the Ottoman woman-the beauty and harmony and refinement of her life. Once Tughra Books (formerly The Light, Inc.) agreed to publish the book and the design concept was agreed upon, members of their graphics design department did an extraordinary job that eventually led to the book being a finalist for the 2008 PMA Benjamin Franklin Award in the category of cover design/large format.

My book was published under the title “Ottoman Women: Myth and Reality” at the end of 2007. In the spring of 2008 I went on a book promotion tour in some major US cities: Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Pittsburg, Rochester and Newark. The people I met and spoke to-men and women, young and old, American and Turkish, Muslim and non-Muslim-all responded positively to the book. Many were surprised to learn about the high social status of Ottoman women, particularly about their legal rights. Some, young Turks in particular, were thankful that the myth of the harem was finally being challenged. Almost all commented on the beautiful design of the book. The highlight of the tour occurred on the evening of the annual PMA publishing awards dinner in Los Angeles. That night my long journey of discovery in regard to Ottoman women was crowned when my book won the PMA Benjamin Franklin publishing award in the category of history/politics.

As a final comment, I would like to mention the great contribution to the book of my now deceased son, Sahin Sancar. He was with me every step of the way, from the signing of the contract with my publisher to the final touches in the design. He was a beautiful person and he contributed greatly to the beauty of the book. May he live eternally in beauty and light.

Asli Sancar has two more books and numerous articles, mainly dealing with women and family.

This book by the author, entitled “Ottoman Women: Myth and Reality,” combines both splendid design and objective narration, and could be referred to as a proof of the real status of women at that time giving full information on every aspect of their lives.

World of women-not as seen on TV

In our time when the rights of women are not well protected but are at least widely spoken about, it is very important to have research on the position of Ottoman women based not on common imagination (sometimes very colourful), but on the historical truth.

Unfortunately the further the topic moves to the East the more deviated the data becomes. Remarks untrue from the very beginning are more and more likely to be decorated with what-somebody-thinks-(s)he-could-have-seen. So for decades, when it came to the issue of a woman living in Muslim society there were only two options: whether a sultan’s harem full of silk, coffee, gold, hatred and intrigues or a harem in a mud house managed by a cruel and uneducated husband.

The truth had always been a card – laid at the table, played and beaten. Real facts were mixed with fruits of imagination; objective data was presented only when it could have been useful for the narrator.

In her book the author successfully presents the real state of affairs proving her point of view by documents from Ottoman records and remarks by Western travelers. Ottoman society was a highly organized and sophisticated system, so the position of a woman – should the issue concern her life in a household harem, childbirth and custody, charity and social activities – was regulated by religion and law. Even the foreigners disliking Muslim society and bearing hostility towards the Ottoman Empire, in particular, could not help but admit that Ottoman women enjoyed much more freedom and were way more respected and loved than their Christian sisters.

Ottoman woman: social position, rights, life in the harem

This research consists of six main chapters describing all the main aspects of Ottoman women’s lives. The chapters are dedicated to description of Ottoman women by Western travelers, life in the household harem, the status of slaves in the harem, the imperial harem, Ottoman women in court records and the metaphysical meaning of being a woman in the Ottoman Empire. The first chapter presents observations through Westerners eyes. Placing this part at the beginning is quite logical in respect to putting things in order and separating proven documentary facts from the fairy tale. Special attention was paid to the remarks of several female travelers and persons who had stayed in the Ottoman Empire for a long time and thus witnessed Ottoman life.

Even travelers’ comments needed to be studied with great care. Their accuracy had to be taken into consideration. The Ottomans would never have tolerated any interfering in their private life, so even female travelers with well-established diplomatic connections were accepted into the Ottoman harems with great restrictions.

Arabian nights vs. Ottoman daylight: outbeating the harem myth

When a woman needs to struggle with an enemy, she does it in a very delicate, feminine way. Here we see the author beating the harmful myth of harem life in a very confident and logical manner. “Women are not prisoners in any sense of the word, nor are they pining behind the latticed windows as we are sometimes led to believe…,” Elizabeth Cooper wrote in 1916.

Starting the second chapter of the book dedicated to life in the household harem by breaking with a popular myth presenting Ottoman and thus Oriental women as prisoners of their homes, is both bold and logical. It can be clearly seen that Ottoman women were never captives of their part of the house. But the fantasies of the Arabian nights made her image a hostage to common opinion in Western eyes. French translation of Arabian tales published in Europe at the beginning of XVIII century served the Ottoman women badly, turning them into sensual, infidel, vile creatures inventing one intrigue after another while spending their days in the sweet laziness of the harem.

Contradiction between exotic tales and reality should be solved fairly – this is what the author wants, and what women would have desired. They were secluded because they were loved and cared about, not imprisoned. The harem had never been a prison, but a sacred space where all the family enjoyed everyday life, celebrated holidays and was engaged in various social activities. Richer women were busy with distributing charity and caring for orphans and the disabled. They hardly had time for gossip, and their strong faith in God and the education they had would never have let them act improperly.

The chapter dedicated to the imperial harem is marvelous. Whoever thinks of “dolce far niente” practiced by the harem women day after day should study it carefully. A reader will see that not a single creature in the imperial harem possibly could be accused of doing nothing. If one takes a walk in modern Istanbul, no matter what the route is, he/she will surely see a mosque, a public bath, a hospital, a market complex, a water-spring, or a school ordered to be built by a queen mother, or by a mother of a prince, or by any other high-ranked lady from the harem. For God’s sake when did they manage to do all these? Between gossiping and intriguing? Oh that’s a shame! There should be some Turkish coffee break in between…

Winning her rights back: court records

Imagine an Ottoman woman coming to the court to protect her rights.

An Ottoman woman appealing to an Ottoman court. Winning the case, having been restored in her rights. It is not simply “possible.” This was a real documented process clearly showing that a woman living in the Ottoman Empire should never be thought of as something between a nice pet and a piece of the home decor. For centuries she was free in her half of the house which was considered sacred.

Here I can give a lot of examples of what an Ottoman woman did in her life. And the reader acquainted with Oriental life and traditions only by means of pocket novels written in a month, read in a couple of days and forgotten forever, could think that this book is just another fantasy product attributing more freedom to the prisoners of the harem in order to gain more attention by female readers.

The truth is even more shocking. A creature considered indolent, depraved and exotic will sooner or later come to the court of civilization and appeal to get back her dignity and good name. Indeed she has all the evidence of what she really was – the author presents citing from the Ottoman court records as well as the opinion of Lucy M. Garnett who in 1909 wrote: “With regard to their legal status, Turkish women – already possess the legal, personal, and proprietary rights necessary to give them a social position equal, if not superior to that of European women generally.”

Design of the book

“The interior is as exciting and rich as the exterior. Images are beautifully reproduced be they photographs, drawings or old paintings.” (PMA review of the design of the book)

“Her beauty is of color rather than of line”, says Z. Duckett Ferriman. Design of this book is both of color and line. It is of luxury worthy of the Topkapý Palace. Graphical concept is deeply connected with the spirit of the book. Richness of colors and illustrations, selected with major taste and care, seem to reflect the position and respect an Ottoman woman enjoyed. The very notion of East has always been associated with luxury, mystery and wonderful colors that could hardly be seen in the West. This time this is not just a stereotype. That is why there are so many attractive definitions like “Oriental green,” “Turquoise,” “Glow of the Desert” used especially for goods closely related to style and fashion. The cover could be called royal green with semi-sweet coffee foam beige and wedding bracelet gold on it. Gentlemen in charge of art and graphic design did everything possible to turn this book into a real pearl of the harem – with textile details and paintings by Osman Hamdi, every page takes us to the world of women – beautiful, pure and splendidly decorated.

The book was highly appreciated by PMA for its perfect design. Everyone who will read it will be deeply impressed by the luxury of every single page, clarity of paintings, photographs and any other illustrations – each of them in its place, in total harmony with the message of the “Ottoman Women.”

Ottoman woman: year 2008

Finishing this review, I would like to express my sincere gratitude and admiration to the author, Asli Sancar Hanimefendi, for marvellously starring in two roles at the same time: one of them is that of an American-born lady writing fairly on Ottoman women (almost three hundred years after Lady Montague, one hundred and seventy after Miss Julia Pardoe and nearly a hundred years after Z. Duckett Ferriman), and the other is the role of a Turkish woman, member of the new society feeling respect and devotion to history and the truth. There is also a third one behind every line and in every color of this book.

An Ottoman woman in the court.

Presenting her book.

Calling for justice.

Valeria Kolos is a Ukrainian Turkish-English-Russian translator. Having graduated from the Oriental Studies Department of the Kyiv Shevchenko National University in 1999, she has been living in Istanbul for 6 years. V.Kolos has some publications (poems in Turkish) in several literature magazines.