Halide Edib Adıvar

Halide Edip Adıvar (Ottoman Turkish: خالده اديب [hɑːliˈde eˈdib], sometimes spelled Halidé Edib in English; 11 June 1884 – 9 January 1964) was a Turkish novelist, teacher, and a nationalist and feminist intellectual. She was best known for her novels criticizing the low social status of Turkish women and what she saw from her observation as the lack of interest of most women in changing their situation. She was a Pan-Turkist and several of her novels advocated for the Turanism movement.

During World War I, Halide Edib Adıvar served as the inspector of schools in Beirut, Damascus, and Aleppo. In this role, she oversaw for six months an orphanage in Antoura (in modern-day Lebanon) where children orphaned in the Armenian genocide were subjected to forced assimilation. In her memoirs, Adıvar indicates that she was responsible for administering the orphanage but did not believe that the practice of forced assimilation was ethical, and she states that her ultimate goal was to save the lives of the Armenian orphans. According to researcher Keith David Watenpaugh, regardless of the motives, what was done at the Antoura orphanage constitutes genocide, based on the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.