Kişilik İnşasında Din Faktörünün Etkisinin Bir Kadın Üzerinden İncelenmesi: Bezmialem Valide Sultan
Authors: Ersoy Handan Zülal 
Published: September 2023

Personality is the whole of attitudes and behaviors that people reveal from the moment they interact with the outside world with their innate characteristics. The consistency of these attitudes and behaviors is the possible with will of men, which they strengthen with their minds. Although men’s mental ability contains innate features, the way they use it from the moment they interact with the environment reveals whether their behavior is voluntary or not. Religion, which is both an internal and an external phenomenon, is one of the factors affecting the will of human behavior due to this feature. For this reason, religion also helps in the construction of a person’s personality. This auxiliary role of religion is especially effective during childhood and adolescence. In the following periods, its effectiveness emerges in times of crisis. The crises of sexes differ in their management with the help of the religion factor. The effectiveness of women’s use of religion in self-construction and in times of crisis is an issue that needs to be investigated. In the literature studies on self-construction, in the research made on gender, the evaluation of women through a private person was not encountered. In order to contribute to the missing area in this regard, the effects of religion as a positive controlling power on self-construction were evaluated through women. Religious factors are more effective in the spiritual world of women. The fact that the female temperament is softer than the male temperament is a factor in this situation. Although this soft temperament may seem like a disadvantage, it breeds sincere surrender. This surrender is the sourdough of holistic self-construction. Bezmialem Valide Sultan, whose life was influenced by different religions, was analyzed in this context. The self-construction process was investigated. Different beliefs and different cultural structures affecting childhood and adolescence were evaluated. It was focused on bringing her personality to a holistic structure with the identities she acquired throughout her life. In particular, an examination was made of the charitable activities she carried out under the influence of religion. Examples of these activities of Bezmialem Valide Sultan were selected. Some of these sample activities are Waqf Gureba Hospital, Darülmaarif, Dolmabahçe Mosque, Galata Bridge, and Terkos Lake. Her personality was evaluated scientifically on reaching every part of society with the waqf institution, a religious phenomenon, with her religious philanthropy emotion. In this study, the technique of examining documents, which is a qualitative research method, was used. A review of primary and secondary sources on the subject was made. It was seen that the effect of religion was positive in the construction of Bezmialem Valide Sultan’s personality. When religion is the center of self-construction, it has been determined that the result is consistent and permanent with the charitable waqfs constructed by Bezmialem Valide Sultan. It has been concluded that the effect of religion is positive in self-construction in women.