a whole life
-remembering a woman-
beginning:
december 2025
What a beautiful photo (above), taken on Kordonboyu, the promenade of İzmir (Smyrna) in 1943. My mother is on the right side; Zuhal, her closest friend for many years, is in the middle. I no longer know the name of the third young woman. I believe she was the one who was killed in a fire. They graduated from the "İzmir Kız Lisesi" (Girl's Lyceum in Izmir) one of the progressive Schools of the young Republic of Turkey in the same year.
In the schoolyard of the girls’ high school. Shortly before a theatre performance, her costume is already stained—yet she is happy.
The hundreds of photographs left to me by my family form, beyond their personal nature, a fragment of Turkey’s recent past. They are no more privileged than countless other lives. As I write these notes, I cannot predict who might be interested in these photographs. Perhaps in the future they may be of use to historians, sociologists, or photography scholars.
Sometimes, when I wander through flea markets and come across photographs stacked in boxes or scattered about, I feel a quiet sense of melancholy. I pick them up thinking that they are remnants of countless lives, images mostly taken during happy moments, and that the people portrayed are probably no longer alive. Then I put them back. Severed entirely from their context, stripped of their stories, these photographs seem to have lost their meaning. For the price of a few coins, they have turned into raw material—perhaps useful to a graphic designer. Yet once, they represented real moments that passed through the lens of a camera.
And still, they do carry meaning: no matter how clichéd it may sound, they are among the clearest documents of life’s transience.
I have nearly five hundred photographs left by my mother and father. In addition, there are photographs inherited from one of my mother’s aunts and from a cousin on my father’s side. Of course, displaying —or merely archiving— so many photographs on a website does not carry meaning in itself. I wanted to create this online narrative in memory of my family members who are no longer alive, and above all in memory of my mother, Ayşe Necla Demirok (Eğdemir), to whom I was deeply attached, whose death I have not come to terms with even at this age, and who never leaves my thoughts.
I lost my father when I was very young. My mother’s influence on my personality was decisive. Our relationship had almost turned into a friendship. We lived under rather modest conditions during my childhood. We were relatively isolated. My mother was a civil servant; we had a house left by my father. Our financial means were limited. I was a dreamer, unsuccessful at school, loved but not spoiled —an only child. From the age of eight onward, I was raised without a father, by a single mother. She gave me freedom in my thoughts and decisions and always respected my individuality. Perhaps because of this, despite my deep attachment to her, I moved far away at a very young age and built my own life. This brought her a profound loneliness.
She is sitting on the low wall along the promenade (Kordonboyu) in Izmir—the city she loved dearly, early 1970s. I can still remember her beautiful summer coat, which I always thought suited her perfectly. She always carried a certain elegance. As a child, I took it for granted that she possessed a modest yet unmistakable beauty.
Although I was unable to return to Turkey for a long time, I never felt emotionally distant from her. For me—so to speak—she was a harbor: distant, yet always reachable. This gave me a strong sense of confidence. We shared many things together. Still, I often feel that I was not present enough for her, and this thought fills me with sadness. On the other hand, whether I am in her apartment in Ankara or in Düsseldorf, where I have lived for 55 years, it feels as though she is still there and could call out my name at any moment.
Some of these photographs date back to the period before the Republic, but the vast majority belong to the years that followed. The photographs left by my parents were taken during the founding years of the Turkish Republic. They document a new, modern, energetic, forward-looking era—evidence of a modest yet hopeful time that left no room for despair.
Turkey’s recent history is on the verge of being erased. And yet, this was the young Turkish Republic. Without doubt, had it been able to develop the capability and determination to seize the rare opportunity it was given, today’s Turkey would be in a very different place.
Ayşe Neclâ Demirok, my mother
One of the recent photographs of my mother. She passed away in October 2023 at the age of 96. When I told her only remaining school friend, Müjgan, about my mother’s death, she said: “Neclâ left us too soon.” Müjgân herself passed away in 2025.
Another sentence my mother spoke to me in her final years determined the title of this page: “I did not understand how such a long life could have passed by.”
And one another, spoken by my friend Michael, in which he captured the inexorable fading of time, describes my futile desire to retrieve what has already passed:
“Enjoy the time with your mother, for she may no longer be here tomorrow.”
Since the age of 21 I had been living abroad, far from her — the only person left from my entire family — yet I always felt unquestionably close to her. She never knew how immense her support was for my life, simply through her existence.
My mother married my father shortly after graduating from the girls’ lyceum in Izmir, one of the exemplary schools of the young Republic, at the age of 21. She had given up hope of going to university. Her parents were no longer alive.
Her brother, my uncle Necdet, was placed in the boarding program of the military school (Kuleli Askeri Lisesi) in Istanbul. Their uncle Rasim Bey took care of everything. After arranging what was necessary, he left for Adana to work as a journalist. There was no regular contact with him, apart from a few postcards we received from time to time. Between the sheets on the table, I found a note about his death in 2003. Nothing more.
My parents, Ayşe Necla (Eğdemir) Demirok and İbrahim Rüştü Demirok in front of Registry Office in Ankara, 5th September 1949.
left: my aunt Melahat Meral, my grand-grandmother Fatma Makbule Hanım, right side behind my father, Dr. Necmettin Bey (He must have held a position at the Hıfzıssıhha Institute and stood very close to our family.) his wife Tarhan Hanım, left side below my mother, on the right side my grandfather and my grandmother and my cousin Altan Meral.
On the top Rasim Bey and my 18 years old uncle Necdet Eğdemir.
My mother married in 1949. She was 22 and my father was eleven years older, already thirty-three. He must have been very proud of his wife and deeply in love with her. His letters still make that clear to anyone who reads them. He died when I was eight years old. They lived in very modest conditions. My father, Rüştü Demirok, was fifteen years older (born 9.3.1916), already thirty-six at the time. He played football and tennis, and he loved skiing. He was interested in literature and even tried his hand at poetry; we once found a script for a radio play he had written. He must have been very proud of his wife and deeply in love with her — his letters still make that evident to anyone who reads them. He died when I was eight years old. My parents lived under very modest conditions.
I still struggle with the deep desire for freedom that made me leave, and with the fact that I left her on her own. The conflict lay in the reality that her life had always been marked by loss. She lost her parents at an early age. Her marriage lasted only eight years before my father died unexpectedly. I was eight; she was thirty. She never remarried, saying once that she didn’t want me to grow up under a new father. Perhaps she simply never met the right person.
She had a strong and proud personality, and she had expectations—even of her friends. She experienced her share of disappointments. I was studying, in a relationship, and had already been living in Germany for about fifteen years. For a time, I couldn’t travel to Turkey. She had made the decision to marry again in 1990. She explained this decision by saying that her loneliness had become unbearable. For a while, the marriage seemed to hold. On top of that, she was able to take care of M.’s three young granddaughters, who brought a great deal of love and liveliness into her life.
A marriage of nearly two decades, a period marked by also dramatic events came to an end. She then returned to her own apartment—and to her solitude. She was not equipped with a fighting spirit or a strong will to determine her own fate. Her parents, who had died young, had also been gentle, reserved people. Naturally, social circumstances played a role as well. Therefore, she had been forced to allow things to happen—things that were decided and initiated by others. Yet whenever she sensed that she was being disregarded, disrespected, or taken advantage of, she would turn her back on those responsible or display remarkable resilience against them. She spent her life oscillating between these opposing states.
She was diligent, perfectionistic, and self-assured. She observed her surroundings—and especially people’s behavior—very critically. She did not mind being noticed for her beauty or her refinement, though she never flaunted it. She could not tolerate crude self-presentation, tastelessness, or uncultivated behavior.
Above: My mother in her twenties. Ankara, 1948/1949
She had to live always under modest conditions. Before her pregnancy, and then again after her husband’s death, she kept working without pause.
Later for many years she served as the secretary to the EGO (Municipal Utilities of Ankara) director general, a role she held with quiet persistence until the day she chose to step into voluntary early retirement. The reason for her decision to retire early was— as is still common practice here— that Mr. Hüsrev Ekicioğlu, the director she valued and respected, was dismissed following an election victory by the opposition. The new leadership was reorganized along political lines, which also put my mother’s position at risk.
A photograph of her that I took from the balcony of our apartment on Cebeci Oba Street in Ankara, 1967. She is returning from work, probably bringing something for dinner. I must have been fifteen or sixteen years old. She would have been about thirty-seven. In the background is the mulberry tree I used to climb when I was younger to pick the ripe white mulberries.
My mother, Ayşe Neclâ Eğdemir (later Demirok) born 08.05.1927 in Teşvikiye, Istanbul. Hasan Tahsin had not obtained the position he had hoped for after the war in Istanbul. Disappointed, he requested a transfer to Izmir. The family leaves short after the end of the independence-war to Izmir (Smyrna). This decision would benefit my mother. She would later describe the years spent in Izmir as the happiest period of her life.
The whole family in Izmir: my uncle Necdet, my grandmother Emine Vedia, my grandfather Hasan Tahsin, and my mother Ayşe Neclâ, who must have been around twelve at the time. Everything seems to want to continue in modest perfection. How could they have known that, only ten years later, nothing would be left of the harmonious mood captured in this photograph? After losing both her parents, she had to move to Ankara and marry my father at the age of twenty-one. My uncle, meanwhile, was sent to the "Kuleli Military Lyceum".(right s.)
Fatma Makbule (Ekit) / Ziya (Ekit), my great-grand parents
My mother also had to take her grandmother Makbule Hanım into her new life after she married to my father (this part of the story will be told in the next pages.). At that time, she must have been close to ninety. I remember her sitting all day in a corner by a small window, hardly speaking. Once, I heard her singing the old Ottoman march “Sivastopol önünde yatar gemiler…”
She had been the wife of an Ottoman pasha — my mother’s grandfather — Zekai Pasha (later Zekai Ekit), who once served as the administrative mayor of Damascus. My mother used to tell the story of his death: a fishbone got stuck in his throat. She didn’t mention it to be dramatic, but simply to warn me to be careful whenever we ordered fish at a restaurant.
His widow, my great-grandmother Makbule Hanım (above, with my mother and my uncle), lived until I was about six or seven. When I think back to that time, I still feel sorry that I didn’t behave more kindly toward her. As a child, I reacted only to how sad she always looked, without understanding anything about her life or what she had gone through. I wish I had known more about her earlier life, her parents, and so on. Even my mother didn’t have any further information, except that the family originally came from Ottoman Macedonia. Once she must have told my mother, when she was a child, that my mother also had Circassian blood.
Fatma Makbule Hanım with her grandchildren -my mother and my uncle- on the balcony in Izmir, probably in 1938/1939. On non of her pictures is to recognize a smile.
I do not see even the slightest hint of a smile in her photographs. I knew that she was a respected lady, and thus I have always interpreted her unchanging expression as a sign of restraint and moderation—perhaps a form of courtesy toward the family that took her in after what was likely a devastating turn of fate.
It was said that during the lifetime of her husband, Zekai Pasha, she had lived in comfort and resided in a köşk in Istanbul. Her circumstances must have changed entirely with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and during the War of Independence.
It is also known that the Pasha—formerly serving as a mutasarrif (Mayor in an Ottoman Sancak) in Damascus—took on the surname Ekit after the founding of the Republic and was thereafter known as Zekai Ekit.
There is no studio photograph showing my great-grandmother Makbule Hanım alone. She appears only once, in a group photograph taken on the occasion of her daughter’s marriage—my grandmother Emine Vedia—dressed in black, standing to the left of the groom.
Seated in front of Emine Vedia is a relative—or possibly a close neighbor—referred to in my mother’s notes as Hatice "aunt". Seated in front of Hasan Tahsin Bey is Makbule Hanım.
Zekai Pasha, photographed in the studios of Nicolas Andriomenos, a well-known Ottoman Greek (Rum) photographer in Istanbul.
The photograph above was taken either during the period when Zekai Pasha served as Mutasarrıf of Samsun or toward the end of his tenure.
The image on the left, produced by the same studio, shows him at a younger age, possibly during an earlier phase of his career.
I conducted research online, but was unable to find any records beyond these images.
In the photograph below appears his wife—my grandmother, Makbule Hanım—alone. The same sadness visible in all her photographs is present on her face.It is likely that her husband, Zekai Pasha, had already passed away. I suspect that this photograph was taken in her köşk, an Ottoman wooden town villa. When I think of the painted porcelain gas lamp standing on the commode—one that I myself recently shattered—it becomes clear to me just how old it must have been. However, I'm not sure about the date the photo was taken, as the number 24 is on the back. It could be from 1924. In that case, köşk would no longer have existed.
What is striking here is that the marriage took place during the Ottoman period, and the women therefore appear quite heavily veiled. As the photographs show, shortly afterward the same individuals appear dressed without these dark headscarves and garments in the post-Republican era.
It is also noteworthy that Muslim women were rarely included in Ottoman-era studio photographs, whereas men and children were photographed without apparent reservation.
My grandfather, Hasan Tahsin, was born in Ottoman-Pristina in 1887. He graduated from the Military Academy of the Ottoman Army in 1904, became an officer in 1907, and took part in the Balkan Wars and the First World War. He participated in the War of Independence between 1921 and 1923. He later taught Infantry Strategy at the Military Academy of the newly founded Republic of Turkey, which he left in 1926 at his own request. My mother once told me that immediately after the founding of the new republic, he applied for a position in Istanbul but did not obtain it. Shortly thereafter, he took up a post in Izmir as head of the Gümrük Kaçakçılık (Customs Anti-Smuggling Department).
This photograph resembles a scene from a theatrical play. It appears to show Zekai Pasha (on the right) as an officer cadet at a military school in the Ottoman Empire.
The image seems to have been taken in a photography studio. Unfortunately, there are no inscriptions on the back.
Fencing was certainly not typical of the Ottoman army; however, French or similar European influence is unmistakable. Such sports were likely part of the training of elite officers, preparing them for higher-ranking positions.
Unfortunately, I lack further information about him.
Emine Vedia Eğdemir (Ekit), my grandmother
Left image: The young years of my maternal grandmother, Emine Vedia, whom my mother always remembered with great affection and whom she lost before her marriage. I believe the photograph was taken before the wedding.
I think the group photograph above on the left was taken after the wedding ceremony with her husband, my grandfather Hasan Tahsin (Egdemir) (see the translation of the inscription!). They are both standing. The person seated at the bottom right is her mother, Makbule Hanım—my great-grandmother, whom I had the chance to know. She lived much longer than her daughter (my grandmother) and therefore lived with us for some time. When she passed away, I must have been around five or six years old, in the years 1955-1956.
On the right above, Emine Vedia is shown as a baby, while the photograph at the lower left shows her with her brother Z. Refik (Ekit). Both images were taken at the Studios Nikolay Anoriomenos in Sultan Beyazit. At the bottom, Z. Refik is shown as an adult. He was fluent in French and, in later years, worked for a film company (still to be researched!) on the dubbing of French films. I assume he also attended a military school, as was customary at the time.
Various photographs of my grandmother from different periods; the passport photo on the right side probably dates from the time after she lost her husband and began to provide for the family. Sadly, she would fall ill and pass away not long afterwards. My mother, at just under twenty, and my uncle, at sixteen or seventeen, would be left orphaned.At this point, the two siblings are separated for good. As was customary, the boy is sent to a military school, while the young woman is sent to relatives in Ankara, with the prospect of marriage.
Z. Rifat Ekit, my great uncle
The man in military uniform in ottoman style is also the brother of my grandmother Emine Vedia, Z.Rifat Ekit, the uncle of my mother, the son of Makbule Hanim.
My mother once told me that her grandparents—more precisely, her mother and uncles—had lived in a so-called typical Istanbul köşk. She did not know the exact location. After the death of her grandfather, Zekai Pasha (Ekit), the family fell into financial difficulties, and the house, a traditional wooden structure, had to be sold. However, she had no precise information about this part of the family history and did not possess any detailed knowledge.
On the left, according to my mother’s account, her uncle Z. Rifat is sitting on the small garden wall of the aforementioned köşk.
When I think back to my early childhood, when I encountered my quiet great-grandmother, who always seemed unhappy, it becomes even clearer to me how much knowledge of past times was lost with her death. She must have possessed a very refined character. I was perhaps five or six years old when she died. In her final years, she had led such an unobtrusive existence that I do not even remember feeling her absence after her passing.
Hasan Tahsin Eğdemir, my grand father
The right picture: The whole family in Izmir: my uncle Necdet, my grandmother Emine Vedia, my grandfather Hasan Tahsin, and my mother Ayşe Necla, who must have been around twelve at the time. Only ten years later, after losing both her parents, she had to move to Ankara and marry my father at the age of twenty-one.
The left one was taken probably soon after the independence war before the founding the Republic of Turkey 1923. Hasan Tahsin Bey left side, his brother Rasim Bey is behind him holding a poodle in his hands.
He would leave Istanbul for a new position in Izmir with his wife and daughter, my mother Necla. Their first son died. My uncle Necdet wasn't born yet.
Hasan Tahsin had not obtained the position he had hoped for after the war in Istanbul. Disappointed, he requested a transfer to Izmir. This decision would benefit my mother. She would later describe the years spent in Izmir as the happiest period of her life.
mother at Girls-lyceum at Izmir/ İzmir Kız Lisesi
Resim arkasi not:
24/10/1930, Cuma Hatırası,Hürriyeti Ebediye
My Grandparents and mother at her 3
my mother // şems-ül mekatip ana mektebi (kindergarden in izmir or istanbul?), 1932
Hakimiyeti Milliye ilkokulu Izmir.
