Hurriyet Daily has presented Zabel Yesayan as an Armenian feminist in
the Ottoman Empire

February 13, 2015

The Turkish Hurriyet Daily has covered Armenian writer, publicist,
translator, literary critic Zabel Yesayan, presenting her as a
representative of the renaissance of Armenian culture and a supporter
of feminism in the Ottoman Empire, writes Artsakhpress.

Yesayan was one of the few Armenian intellectuals who were able to
avoid the arrests and displacement by the Young Turks on April 24th.
However, in 1923, she moved to Soviet Armenia where, in 1935, she
published the famous book entitled “Gardens of Silihtar”. In 1937, she
was arrested under the charge of espionage, was exiled and died in a
prison in Baku in 1943.

According to Panorama.am, the newspaper mentions that Yesayan’s
growing feminism was growing with the conservatism of her community
that was dying out.

“Those young women couldn’t leave their homes alone. Some were even
forced to get married to men whom they ignored. They couldn’t dress
however they wanted to. Apparently, they were deprived of the most
basic rights and were afraid that they would become mothers sooner or
later-something that they wanted to escape from so that they could
start living the life that they wanted to live,” wrote Zabel.