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This chapter presents the works of Fatma Aliye and Halide Edip Adivar, two cornerstones of women’s writing in Turkey. They were witnesses of the transition between the Ottoman and Republic modernization, but also of the lack of change in the patriarchal mentality that dominated both periods. The author focuses on how this transition, from a multicultural, multilingual and poly-ethnic empire that encompassed a vast geography for centuries, to a nation-state based on a monolingual, mono-religious and mono-ethnic society, has been experienced by these two women writers.