Актуальные вопросы тюркологических исследований

109 XХXIII–XXXIV Кононовские чтения [14: 158–171]. To some extent it rivals that of Grace Ellison’s — the British suffragist and journalist who corresponded from Turkey to the Daily Tele- graph in 1913 and two years later published her book which was based on her previous articles [3: 65–67; 4: 202–221]. One may presume that as graduate of the American College in Constanti- nople Halidé Edib was pleased not only to make an acquaintance of Ariadna Tyrkova but also to meet such a celebrity as her husband Harold Williams, a famous polyglot, journalist and an authority on Russia and international relations. In those days, as a British authority on Russian affairs Harold Williams could perhaps rival only Emile Dillon, a graduate of the Oriental Department of the University of Saint-Petersburg who stayed in Russia corresponding to the Daily Telegraph and the Times for decades until 1914 [8]. Incidentally in 1909 Dillon came to Cambridge to make a speech on Irish Home Rule which was to impress greatly one person among his audience. This listener would be Halidé Edib coming to England that year for the first time. In her memoirs she wrote: ‘The sincerity and personal charm of the old man stirred me strangely. I remember leaning over the railing of the gallery to hide my tears, so deeply was I moved, and I have elsewhere publicly owned that his speech was one of the emotional causes which started me on the road of nationalism’ [1: 293]. Before starting her political carrier as the first female MP in the Duma (Russian Parliament) A. Tyrkova had become a member of the Constitution- al Democratic Party. A leading figure of the party was Pavel Miliukov who would be the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Rech’ and, after the Revolution in February 1917, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government. It is interesting to note that the first public speech of Tyrkova which took place at the Organizing Congress of the new party in January 1906 was di- rected against Miliukov and Yusuf Akchurin [Akçura]. At the Congress both men were united in denying women the right to vote. In her memoirs entitled “Towards Freedom”, Tyrkova wrote that Akchurin, who was the head of the Kazan Tatar delegation at that meeting, argued that it would be against the law of shariat as well as against the tradition to grant the voting rights to the Muslim woman. Finally it was Tyrkova who emerged victorious in this dis- cussion and a plank demanding women’s suffrage was included in the politi- cal programme of the party [15: 225–229]. The leaders of the Constitutional Democratic Party, both official and non- official ones, had maintained contacts with the leaders of the Union and Prog-