Samiha Ayverdi: Paradoxes of a Turkish-Muslim Woman Samiha Ayverdi (1905-1993), a nonconformist Turkish intellectual, was an important figure in Turkish conservative circles of the twentieth century. Born into the well-known Ayverdi family and being a high-ranking member of the R?fai order in Turkey, she spread her influence over a circle of like-minded intellectuals, authors and artists through the family-sponsored Kubbealt? Foundation. She was also the author of some 36 works, ranging from Islamic propagandist pamphlets and historical novels to highly autobiographical collections of essays on Ottoman-Turkish history. In a country where female activism was historically associated with the westernized and westernizing Kemalist elite, Samiha Ayverdi’s intellectual position is perplexing. Ayverdi’s works are at the intersection of tradition and renewal, conservatism and emancipation of women, Ottoman elitism and Turkish nationalism, mysticism and bourgeois life, fiction and autobiography. This paper aims to explore apparent contradictions in Samiha Ayverdi’s self-portraiture. How could a woman impose herself as an authority on a male-dominated, conservative, Muslim audience? How could a militantly Muslim woman play a leading role in a Muslim mystical brotherhood, while she was the living example of an emancipated, westernized and unveiled Turkish woman? Why are most of her works based on supposedly autobiographical experiences, exposing her daily life in her household, while Islam orders a strict separation of the private and the public spheres for women? How could Ayverdi claim to speak from inside Turkish conservatism, which has a populist and egalitarian dimension that challenges the alleged elitism of the Kemalist establishment, while she constructs a Balkan-Ottoman aristocratic elitism of her own? Although she celebrates the Ottoman imperial past and statecraft, why did Ayverdi choose to ignore the multicultural fabric of the Ottoman society and advocate anti-Semitic, anti-Armenian and, generally speaking, anti-Western views? In responding to these questions, we will attempt to uncover the multiplicity and complexity of Islamic identities in Turkey as well as work towards a reassessment of the concept of conservatism in a society which underwent tremendous change throughout the twentieth century. The fact that we are dealing with an outspoken female intellectual introduces an important twist to the discussion of both Islamism and conservatism.