Mimar Olmak Ya da Kadın Olmak Tezahürleriyle, Cumhuriyetin İlk Kadın Mimarlarından Leyla Asım Turgut
Being an Architect or Being a Woman in All its Manisfestations, Leyla Asim Turgut, One of the Republic’s First Female Architects

Summary/Abstract: This article is about Master Architect Leyla Asım Turgut, the daughter of Mustafa Asım Turgut, the Foreign Minister of the Ottoman Empire, a graduate of the State Academy of Fine Arts, one of the first female architects in Turkey and the first female academician of the Architecture Department of the Academy. The main purpose of this study is to contribute to the study of women's/architecture history through the biography of Leyla Asım Turgut. Questioning the gendered professional power relations between female and male architects in 1940s and 1950s Turkey through the figure of Leyla Asım Turgut is another point that this article emphasises. What facilitated the writing of the text was the fact that Leyla Asım Turgut, like aristocratic families in Europe, created her own private archive, preserving records of her family history and her own personal history. In her will, she donated part of this archive to the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Istanbul Painting and Sculpture Museum and the Istanbul Library Çelik Gülersoy Foundation. The photographs and archival material from the Leyla Turgut Terekesi, which have been transferred to these two institutions, have been used in the preparation of the text. Special handwritten notes on the back of the photographs facilitated the construction of the biography and even ensured its accuracy.

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