Sociologist (b. 16 December 1946,
Üsküdar / İstanbul). For a while she used the pen name Ümit Meriç (Yazan). She
is the daughter of the writer and the academic Cemil Meriç. She attended Üsküdar Sultantepe Primary School
(1958) and graduated from Çamlıca High School for Girls (1963), Istanbul
University, Faculty of Literature, Department of Sociology (1969). She entered
the department she had graduated form as an assistant. She completed her
doctorate there. Her doctoral dissertation was Cevdet Paşa'nın Cemiyet ve Devlet Görüşü (Cevdet Paşa’s View on
Society and State). She became an
assistant professor in 1985 and a professor in
Her first work named Dante ve Beatrice (Dante and
Beatrice) appeared in the magazine Yeni
İnsan and later her articles were published in magazines and journals such
as Türk Edebiyatı (with the pen name
Zeyneb İdrisoğlu), Dağarcık (1984), Sosyoloji Konferansları (1974-78), Tarih ve Toplum (1984), İlim ve Sanat (1985), Sosyoloji, Pedagoji, Yeni İnsan, Inquiry (1986)
and Zaman. In 1971, she received an
honorable mention at the competition held by the History Foundation and
received another honorable mention form the Turkish National Culture Foundation
with her doctoral dissertation. Since 1971, she has visited France, Russia,
Japan, Thailand, Algeria and Tunisia and has attended academic conferences in
some of these countries. She is a member of the Turkish Literature Association,
the Society of Sociology, and the Adalar Foundation.
She was eight when her father, the
famous sociologist, Cemil Meriç lost his sight. Different from what other
children might have done she held her father’s hand and took him to scientific
debates. Up to the age of 41, almost every day she read magazines, books and
journals to her father and wrote her father’s words, thus becoming her father’s
eyes. She witnessed her father’s sorrows, happiness, anger and resignation.
While she was attending the third class of French Language and Literature, she
changed her mind and studied sociology, following in her father’s footsteps. On
17 Ağustos 1999, after an earthquake struck northwestern Turkey and after her
thirty-year career as an academician, she decided to cover her head and retire
from İstanbul University, Faculty of Literature, Department of Sociology. Ümit
Meriç married the director Aziz Yazan, who made a biographical documentary of
her father; they have one daughter.
After she retired, she joined the
studies on social structure conducted by İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality as
an advisor. She contributed to the study, Kentim İstanbul (My City
İstanbul), with a work named İstanbullu Olmanın 34 Altın Anahtarı (34
Golden Rules of Living in İstanbul, with Dr. Ayşenur Kurtoğlu and Cafer Vayni).
WORKS:
Cevdet Paşa'nın Toplum ve Devlet Görüşü (Cevat Paşa’s View of Society and State, 1975), Sosyoloji Tarihine Giriş (Introduction to the History of Society, 1984), Japonya'da Sosyoloji (Sociology in Japan, 1984), Babam Cemil Meriç (My Father Cemil Meriç, 1992), 21.Yüzyılın Eşiğinde Sosyoloji Konuşmaları (Sociology Speeches on the Threshold of the 21st Century, 1994), Ebediyetin Huzurunda Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar In the Comfort of Literature, with Selma Ümit Karışman, 2002), Türkiye Kanatlarınızın Altında (Turkey is Under our Wings, 2002).
REFERENCE: Prof. Dr. Ümit Meriç Yazan’
