Draft:Hayirye Süleymanoğlu Yenisoy

Hayriye Süleymanoğlu-Yenisoy (born Hayrie Memova, Bulgarian: Хайрие Мемова) was a specialist of Turkish and Bulgarian languages, born in the city of Krichim in 1934. She was from the first graduating class of Turkish Philology at Sofia University, and later started working there. Because of the accusations against her of Turkish nationalism and espionage in 1980s, she was suspended from the university and worked as a cleaner, and later at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. During the Assimilation Policy of 1984-1989, she adopted the name Irena Yasenova, and in 1989 she left Bulgaria for Turkey. Hayriye has over 250 books, articles, dictionaries and studies written over the years.

Early Life
She was born as Hayrie Memova (Bulgarian: Хайрие Мемова) in 1934 in Krichim, Plovdiv in a well educated family. She studied at the Turkish primary school, and later at the Bulgarian girls' high school in her hometown. She received her higher education at the University of Sofia, where she first graduated in Turkish philology in 1956 and then Bulgarian Philology. After completing her higher education, she was sent to Kardzhali to teach Turkish language and literature at the local Turkish Pedagogical School, where future Turkish language teachers were trained.

After this stay in Kardzhali, Hayriye was appointed as the head of the Turkish Schools Department at the Teacher Training Institute in Stara Zagora. There she joined the scientific expeditions of the Bulgarian Academy of Sience (BAS) to study the Thrace region. She led a group for the study of the Gagauz language and culture, which for 3 years collected rich material.

Early years
In February 1964, Memova began lecturing in the Department of Turkology at Sofia University, where she had previously graduated in Turkish Philology.

In 1970, she studied at the Azerbaijan State University in Baku, where she developed a topic on the Bulgarian-Turkish lexical relations, but was forbidden to defend her dissertation in Baku. She later managed to defend her dissertation in 1975.

In 1974, the admission of students to the Turkish Philology was stopped, and the professors were harassed to be removed from the university. In 1974 Hayriye was accused by the head of the Department for missing lectures and changing the study time. Her students were forced to confirm these changes. This led to a disciplinary dismissal procedure against her, and her works were criticized. A scandal arose in the department, when her colleagues insisted her book Turkish phonetics to be printed in Bulgarian, although it was originally allowed to be in Turkish. The scandal was resolved in 1976, when it was decided be in Turkish. In May 1981 it was forbidden to her to attend a scientific congress in Turkey.

Political persecution in 1981
On the eve of the Assimilation process, Memova began to pe persecuted by the State Security Agens. Her name appeared in state reports in February 1981, where an agent with the pseudonym Goranov accused her of applying for aassociate professor at the Sofia University, even though there are no students in the specialty of Turkish Philology. She was also accused for stealing Turkish books from the University and its library. The same agent claimed that she once criticized a Bulgarian dictionary while praising a Macedonian one. Another agent, Arabadzhiev, reported that she once complained that it was forbidden for Turks from her hometown to bury their dead with a hoca. Because of this, she was accused of Turkish nationalism and an investigation into her "Fox" case started.

Bulgarian-Turkish Thematic Dictionary case, 1981
In 1979 her Bulgarian-Turkish Thematic Dictionary was approved for publication by the Faculity Council. It was printed in July 1981 but soon control was placed over it and the rector ordered its destruction. The dictionary was saved with the help of Hayriye's colleagues Alexander Nichev and Lyudmila Stefanova who showed up for her and her work. Their reactions worked, however accessing and printing of the dictionary was porhibited.

Despite the ban, Memova supplied with 30 copies in August. In October the university received requests for large numbers from its affiliates, the editorial office of the newspaper Nova Svetlina, the Institute of Balkan Studies, from the Bulgarian Radio and from the Sofia Press Agency. This marked the beginning the period when Memova attracted authorities' attention and began to be persecuted; Sofia believed that the great interested to the dictionary was created by Memova herself. This led to her exculsion in October 1981.

Operation Fox
The Operation Fox began in March 1981 and lasted until December 1987. 72 agents and 19 trusten people were used for the investigation, most of whom were her former colleagues, students, relatives, former classmates, fellow students, and acquaintances. The case was under the control of the Sixth Directorate and Second Main Directorate; the last's main taks was to fight against espionage. Often the two directorates worked in sync when in was about "enemy migrations" and traitors. Hayriye Memova's case was filled in the pro-Turkish nationalism category. Their proofs were a book she brought from Turkey when she was at a congress and a Turkish letter inside the book. The letter had basic information about a gift - female neckalces from a friend from Turkey. However the Security Agents conntected these two things to her Bulgarian-Turkish Thematic Dictionary; according to them she was trying to give secret information and toponyms in Bulgaria to spies in Turkey with her Dictionary. The dictionary was declared as criminal literature.

Suspended as a lecturer from the University of Sofia, the secret services keep following her, several times sending a her students who secretly had microphones. On the eve of the assimilation process, in August 1983, a raid was made at the same time in the houses of Hayrie Memova, Rıza Mollov, Mefküre Mollova (both former professors at Sofia University) and İbrahim Tatarlı (expelled from Sofia University at the same time as Memova) and Salih Bakladzhiev. Their archives were confiscated, including tape recordings and field studies on the dialect and folk art of the Turks in Bulgaria, personal studies on dialectology and history, folklore and publications.

During the assimilation process, her name was changed from Hayrie Memova to Irena Yasenova. She was not happy with her new name and preferred to be called Hari by her colleagues instead of Irena.

On October 5, 1985, early in the morning, her house was again searched by government officials who were looking for "traitors of the motherland" who were hiding to not to change their names, although she had changed her name. Officers began patrolling her home around the clock and secretly placed a listening device in her house.

In BAS
Although she continued to work at the Sofia University de jure her employment card was confiscated and she didn't receive a salary from the University. Memova tried to get her employment card back it was unsuccessful attempt. This led her to work as a cleaner at the Electrocar Plant in Sofia for half a day. There her colldagues described her as being of higher cultural level than the others and as being sly and quit.

After being suspended from the university, she looked for ways to work at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Although at first Academician Pantalei Zarev arranged for her to work at the Academy, his decision was soon annulled. In 1985 the Minister of Education Alexander Foll appointed her at the Academy. Same year, she successfully fought to get her emloyment card and to receive salaries for the four years when she was de jure a lecturer.

She started working at the BAS in 1985 on August 1, but her appointment remained problematic and she was officially appointed on July 1, 1986 as a research assistant in the group Ethnolinguistic problems of the Balkan peoples. She was under pressure at the BAS when they wanted of her to write a letter in which she shows her support for the state-sponsored assimilation process. After refusing to do so, she submitted documents to leave her job, but the director did not accept her request.

In 1987, she wrote the book "Slavic lexical component in the Turkish language and the Balkan Turkic languages" under the name Irena Yasenova.

In Turkey
In 1989 the border between Bulgaria and Turkey was opened. Hayriye's family also moved to Turkey in August 1989 and adopted the surname Yenisoy. The same year in December she received the scientific title of senior research associate for her book Slavic lexical component in the Turkish language and the Balkan Turkic languages written two years ago while she was in Bulgaria. In 1991, she was appointed to the faculty of Ankara University Faculty of Languages, History and Geography and became the founder of the Bulgarian Language and Literature Department. In 1993, with the permission of the rector of Sofia University, her Bulgarian-Turkish Thematic Dictionary was released. In 1995, she defended her doctoral thesis at the Institute of Linguistics at the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences. For a while Hayriye was a lecturer of Rumelian Turkish Dialects and Literature of Balkan Turks at the Muğla University, and then in Sofia Higher Islamic Institute, Austrian Turkish Federation in Vienna, and the Dutch Turkish Federation in Amsterdam. She gave converences at universities such as the Oslo University, Baku State University, and Gazi Famagusta University. Hayriye worked as a consultant at the Ministry of State and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Turkey for a while as well. In 2021, her memories were published by her son and Erhan Süleymanoğlu.

Notable Works
She has over over 250 published books, monographs, studies, collections, textbooks, as well as articles published in university yearbooks and international scientific journals. Majority of her works deal with the Bulgarian language, Turkish language; their dialects, phonetics, morphology, syntax, and stylistics. She has 6 Turkish-Bulgarian dictionaries and one dictionary dedicated to the frequencies in the Turkish language. A large part of the literary works are dedicated to the literature created in Bulgaria by the Turks. Hayriye Süleymanoğlu-Yenisoy is also known for her folklore studies, all collected while she was a teacher in Rhodopes.


 * Rhodope Turkish folk tales (with Emil Boev), 1963
 * Turkish Language Phonology, 1976
 * Dictionary of Turkish Words in Bulgarian language (with Alf Grannes and Kjetil R. Hauge)
 * Bulgarian-Turkish Thematic Dictionary, 1981
 * Slavic lexical component in the Turkish language and the Balkan Turkic languages, 1987 (under the name Irena Yasenova)
 * Contemporary Bulgarian Language, 1997
 * Anthology of Turkish Literatures Outside Turkey
 * Slavic-Turkic Linguistic Relations Throughout History, 1998
 * Examples from Bulgarian Turkish Children's Literature - Folklore Genres, Poems and Prose Writings, 2002
 * Reflection of Balkan Wars 1912-1913 in Literaturе
 * The migration fate of Balkan Turks in our Literature, 2005
 * Türkçenin ters sıklık sözlüğü, 2006
 * The case of Turkish education of Bulgarian Turks (1877-2007), 2007