Avni Tuncer with his grandchildren Orhan and Gün

Here you can see my father Avni Tuncer with my son Orhan and my daughter Gün, in a ?Yali? in Kandilli, Istanbul. The photo was taken in 1969. Father was an authoritarian person; so, when I decided to marry a Muslim Turk, I faced the difficulty of introducing my future husband to him first, before telling my mother. I told my future husband to come to our office in Cermanya Han. Shortly before he appeared, I told my father, 'There is someone I am seeing. He wants to marry me. I invited him to come and meet you.' My father simply said, 'OK.' Then Günel arrived; I introduced him; he sat down. There was a brief silence, after which my father said, 'I am going to ask you something.' Günel said, 'Go ahead.' My father asked, 'Do you like white [feta] cheese?' Günel was surprised and replied, 'I like it a lot.' 'Well, then,' said my father, 'I give you the girl.' My father liked to joke. I had two children: my son Orhan, born in 1966, and my daughter Gün, born in 1968. I worked in my father's office. My aunt Viktorya, who was like a grandmother to them, came to stay with us on Monday mornings and went back on Friday evenings. This continued until my son turned two. I stopped working when my daughter was about to be born, because Tantika had become too old to take care of two small children. One day, my husband and I had a serious talk and considered the two alternatives open to us: either we moved near my parents' home in Yesilyurt and left the children with them when I went to work, or he quit his job and went to work with my father. We chose the latter because my father had a good business; we also reasoned that we could not leave him alone, as he could not hear well, could not drive, could not talk with the clients on the phone and that, in short, the business would collapse if we left.

Photos from this interviewee