Selma Rıza

Selma Rıza (5 February 1872 – 5 October 1931) was a Turkish novelist, humanitarian, and the first female Turkish journalist. She was general secretary of the Ottoman Red Crescent Society from 1908–1913. Her brother was Ahmet Rıza, leader of the Parisian Young Turks, and later President of the Chamber of Deputies.

Biography

Selma Rıza was born on 5 February 1872 in Istanbul.

In 1892, when she was only twenty, she wrote an unpublished novel titled Uhuvvet ("Friendship").

Rıza secretly escaped from her family and Istanbul to Paris, France, in 1898 to meet her elder brother Ahmet Rıza, who was a member of the Young Turks movement. She continued her education in Sorbonne University, and lived in Paris for ten years. She affiliated herself with the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). She was the only female member of the society.

She fought for schools to be opened for Muslim women in Istanbul. Rıza worked hard to transform the Adile Sultan Palace, a royal palace in İstanbul, to a girls' school. With the help of her brother Ahmet, she succeeded and the palace was used as Kandilli High School for Girls up to 1986, when it was partially burned down.

During the Turkish War of Independence she supported Mustafa Kemal Pasha. After her death, her relatives assumed the surname Feraceli; so sometimes she is also known as Selma Rıza Feraceli.

She died on 5 October 1931.

Rıza's unpublished novel Uhuvvet ("Friendship") was eventually published in 1999, long after her death, by the Ministry of Culture.