![]()
Zsa Zsa Gabor died of a heart attack at her home in Bel-Air, Los Angeles, on December 18, 2016, aged 99.She had been on life support for the previous five years.
She has written memoirs "One Lifetime Is Not Enough" and said her conquests included Frank Sinatra, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk[*], widely known as the father of modern Turkey but to her “a professional lover, a god and a king.” Zsa Zsa Gabor revealed the intimate details of her remarkable life. From her childhood in Hungary, her triumphs, disappointments and struggles, of her nine marriages and the lovers in between, Zsa Zsa tells all. "I want a man who appreciates the finer things in life... diamonds, furs and me."
She is survived by husband Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, whom she wed in 1986 and who claimed titles of nobility for himself, his wife and a number of adoptees.
[*] Once infamous as "the most successful courtesan of the twentieth century," Zsa Zsa snagged her first husband by proposing to Burhan Belge, a Turkish diplomat, when she was 15. Although they were married for several years, one of Zsa Zsa's two autobiographies maintains that she never slept with him but was instead deflowered by Kemal Atatürk, the father of modern Turkey. SOURCE
Mavi Boncuk |
Zsa Zsa Gabor born Sári Gábor February 6, 1917 – December 18, 2016) was a Hungarian-American actress and socialite. Her sisters were actresses Eva and Magda Gabor.
Gabor began her stage career in Vienna and was crowned Miss Hungary in 1936. Her parents, Vilmos Gabor and the former Jolie Tilleman, were jewelry and porcelain merchants. Jolie, in particular, spoke of pushing her three beautiful daughters — the other two were Magda and Eva — to be “rich, famous and married to kings.”
Zsa Zsa Gabor studied dance, languages and singing, and did stage work as a young woman. European society columns took note of her looks and love affairs. She was reported to have eloped for the first time at 14 and married Belge, the Turkish diplomat, in 1937.
She left Ankara, the Turkish capital, for Hollywood in 1941 with eight trunks of clothes. Her sister Eva, later to star on the CBS sitcom “Green Acres,” had taken up residence in the film colony.
Zsa Zsa Gabor immersed herself in a social circle that included the hotelier Hilton, whom she married in 1942 despite their three-decade age gap. The marriage crumbled for many reasons, including her tendency to rack up exorbitant bills.
Her embrace of grand living culminated in her aptly titled 1991 memoir, “One Lifetime Is Not Enough,” a book that billed the author as “Assisted by, Edited by, and Put Into Proper English by Wendy Leigh[1].
”She emigrated from Hungary to the United States in 1941 with a Turkish passport after her divorce to Burhan Belge[2] [3] and became a sought-after actress with "European flair and style" and was considered to have a personality that "exuded charm and grace". Her first film role was a supporting role in Lovely to Look At. She later acted in We're Not Married! and played one of her few leading roles in the John Huston-directed film, Moulin Rouge (1952). Huston would later describe her as a "creditable" actress.
![]()
Outside of her acting career, Gabor was known for her extravagant Hollywood lifestyle, glamorous personality, and her many marriages. In total, Gabor had nine husbands, including hotel magnate Conrad Hilton and actor George Sanders. She once stated, "Men have always liked me and I have always liked men. But I like a mannish man, a man who knows how to talk to and treat a woman – not just a man with muscles."
[1] Zsa Zsa and her ghost-writers have produced two memoirs: Zsa Zsa Gabor, My Story as Written for Me by Gerold Frank (1960), and One Lifetime is not Enough (1990) with Wendy Leigh. The first is superior by far, with much more detail about her early life, especially her first marriage. Neither book is any more reliable than a standard, self-serving show-biz memoir.
[2] Burhan Belge (1937-1941) Writer, diplomat, press director for the foreign ministry of Turkey. Zsa Zsa Gabor and Burhan Belge, her first husband, in Ankara, Turkey in 1940. Photo: Pictorial Parade / Getty Images Zsa Zsa Gabor: Born February 6, 1917 in Budapest, Hungary. Her birth name is Sári aka Shari Gábor. Burhan Asaf Belge: b. 1899- d.1967. Zsa Zsa and Burhan were married in 1937 and honeymooned aboard the Venice-Simplon Express. Burhan and Zsa Zsa divorced in 1941.
[3] from The Pasha & the Gypsy (II)(III)(IV)
The Turks are not known as a frivolous people, and Burhan Belge, by Zsa Zsa’s account, was as serious as they come. Born in Damascus in 1899, formerly a Member of Parliament in Turkey, the holder of a degree in architecture from the University of Heidelberg, a writer, journalist, and broadcaster, Burhan sprang from the very heart of the Turkish political elite. Like most intellectuals of his era, he had flirted with Marxism. Until 1933 he had co-edited “Kadro” (The Cadre), a political journal of leftist/nationalist thought, along with Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu, a diplomat and a prolific novelist, who was married to Burhan’s sister. The slant of this journal made the authorities nervous, however, and after they had closed down “Kadro,” both Burhan and Yakup Kadri were kicked upstairs to safer jobs. Now Director of Press for the Turkish Foreign Ministry, Burhan Belge traveled on a diplomatic passport and was called “Your Excellency” by all who addressed him. He was, in other words, an important man. Burhan was thirty-five; Zsa Zsa was fifteen.
They met at a party given by Zsa Zsa’s grandmother, Franceska Kende, just after Zsa Zsa got back from school. Frau Kende was a good friend of the Turkish Ambassador, and Burhan Belge, visiting on government business, had come with him to the party. Zsa Zsa remembered a dour, almost sinister-looking man of medium height, with a wide pale forehead which only emphasized his dark eyes and the little pouches beginning to show under them. He must have been in his middle thirties, and he looked world-weary and bored.
They used German, which Burhan spoke “perfectly,” and according to Zsa Zsa their conversation consisted mostly of the kind of banter which might pass between an exceedingly pretty, flirtatious child and an adult who could not take her seriously. At the end of it, after Zsa Zsa had objected precociously to his patronizing tone, an amused Burhan promised to marry her “when she grew up.” Thus ended their five minutes of acquaintance... She had won-or almost won-the title of Miss Hungary. She had appeared in an operetta alongside the greatest singer in Europe. She was beautiful, and she knew it. A famous film composer had fallen in love with her. Moreover, the Hungarian film producer Alexander Korda, now resident in England, had seen her in Tauber’s operetta and wanted to give her a screen test, but he had been unable to obtain for her a British work permit. After all this, how could she return to Madame Subilia’s School for Young Ladies? And if she could not go back to Lausanne, what would she do in Budapest? Go to another school? Find a job in theatre? Work in a jewelry store? What could she possibly do now?
Four weeks later, says Zsa Zsa, she was on the Orient Express, heading for Istanbul.
No, the Turkish Embassy told Zsa Zsa when she phoned, His Excellency M. Burhan Belge was not in Budapest at this time, but he was expected back from Berlin at any moment. She should call back later in the day. Two days later, contact made and date arranged, the sober diplomat and the Hungarian teen-ager were walking along the Danube Esplanade. They stopped in front of the Ritz, and Burhan suggested a drink at the Prince of Wales Bar. Burhan ordered scotch and soda; Zsa Zsa settled for a small glass of sherry. After some some moments of small talk, Zsa Zsa could stand it no more. “Excellency,” she blurted out, “will you marry me?”
![]()
One thing can be said for Burhan Belge: faced with a golden opportunity for legalized pedophilia, he made a creditable effort at resistance. After first gagging on his drink and then turning red, he asked her to repeat the question. Zsa Zsa reminded him of his promise from that summer: he would marry her when she grew up. Well, she asserted, she had grown up. Burhan laughed. Technically, she was correct: he had spoken those words. One can only imagine the bewilderment that assailed him. He was a true gentleman, a thoughtful and serious man. (Too serious, Zsa Zsa told him: he needed someone like her.) He was unmarried, and though Zsa Zsa didn’t know it, he had been married twice before. Predictably, he stalled for time. Burhan asked if he could think it over. How long? Zsa Zsa pressed. Until tonight, he suggested. They could have dinner together.![]()
Burhan chose the Hotel Gellért, a grand 233-room palace built in 1918 in the Art Nouveau style. It sits on the Buda (west) side of the Danube, and its restaurant still features a gypsy orchestra for dancing. Before dinner they danced the waltz, says Zsa Zsa, and she did her utmost to break through the older man’s reserve. The dress probably helped. Clinging to her body was a black gown that Eva had helped her get into. Also, she had brought some publicity photos to show him, including one of her in an open blouse eating grapes, another clad in a tight red sweater biting provocatively into an apple. Later, seated with this beautiful child at the dinner table, confronted by these teasing fruity images, Burhan Belge again looked down the barrel of The Big Question.
Poor Burhan. How difficult this must have been. Turkish nationalists are such serious people; and they hate to surrender. But they also like a challenge-and blondes. “Why not?” he said with a sigh. And yes, he conceded, she could also bring along Mishka, her favorite Scotty dog.
The family’s reaction, says Zsa Zsa, was surprisingly mild. As usual with the Gabors, some hereditary form of nitrous oxide, an aerosol of insouciance, seemed to fill their lungs. Her mother, seeing the need for a bridal trousseau, seized upon the news as an excellent excuse to do more shopping. (Before her daughter left, Jolie told Zsa Zsa, “It doesn’t have to be forever. If you don’t like Burhan, you can always come back to me.”) Her grandmother thought her very young for Burhan Belge, but she knew the man and thought very highly of him. As for Vilmos Gabor, Zsa Zsa thought that he was secretly relieved. This was a man who had hoped for a son and instead got three unmarried girls. In the past six months he had seen his house suddenly disrupted by a beauty pageant, sent his grieving wife away on a shopping trip, and ended up with a daughter in show business. And now, just weeks after returning from Vienna, that same daughter, little more than a child, proposed to marry a Turk. Vilmos, seeing that this willful girl was about to be taken off his hands, probably slept a lot easier.
Eva’s reaction, however, was different. The night before the wedding ceremony the two sisters crept into bed together for a hug and a good cry. The impulsive Zsa Zsa was now frightened, and for good reason. This was not a shopping trip to Vienna. She was fifteen years old, about to travel a thousand miles to a strange oriental land with a man she barely knew. If ever her sister needed help, Eva promised, she would come from the ends of the earth. All Zsa Zsa had to do was wire one word: “Gypsy.”
And so she did it. At the beginning of 1935, some weeks before her sixteenth birthday, Her Excellency Mme. Burhan Belge arrived in the capital of the new Turkey.
M. and Mme. Belge lived in a house on Embassy Row, situated along Atatürk Boulevard as it climbs from the center of the New City toward Çankaya Hill in the south. There, says Zsa Zsa, she tried to become a good wife. She stayed home; she learned to brew Turkish coffee; she studied Turkish with a tutor and was quizzed on vocabulary by Burhan when he came home from the office. After the quiz she would sit on a large hassock and listen while Burhan, trying to make up for her lost schooling, read to her from French, German, and English literature. Soon Burhan bought Zsa Zsa a horse, a white Arabian mare named Fatushka, which she stabled at the Ankara Riding Club north of town. From the stables she would go trotting off, traversing the entire length of Atatürk Boulevard from its beginnings at the edge of the old city, down and across the valley, dusty with new construction, up past the embassies and government ministries to Çankaya Hill, where Atatürk had built his home. She loved Ankara; Zsa Zsa says it “electrified” her with its mixture of modernity and exoticism. And almost immediately she began making friends.
Zsa Zsa, who spent much of the daytime on horseback, met her first important friend while doing just that. One day at the Club, as she was about to ride off, she become aware of someone staring at her from behind. Sir Percy Loraine (spelled “Loren” by Zsa Zsa) told her years after how clearly he remembered that first meeting. “I saw you on a horse,” he said, “a perfect little figure in a riding habit, with golden hair under a black velvet cap.” At first, he claimed, he did not want her to turn around, because he knew he would only be disappointed. She did, however, and he was not. So together, they rode on: the expatriate Hungarian girl and her new friend, the British Ambassador.
Sir Percy Loraine, whose memories of Kemal Atatürk have been repeatedly quoted since their first broadcast in 1948, was perhaps the best friend Zsa Zsa could have made. Fifty-four years old, tall and graying, with blue eyes and that easy charm which English aristocrats seem to have invented, Sir Percy, says Zsa Zsa, made Burhan seem “tortured” in comparison. Loraine (1880-1961) was a veteran diplomat who previously had served in Cairo, Tehran, and Athens, and he would be Ambassador in Rome when war broke out in 1939. Sir Percy and Lady Loraine did not want to be in Ankara; both disliked the place intensely. Using the night train, Loraine escaped to Istanbul as often as possible. Only after the Ankara Hippodrome opened in 1934 did Sir Percy, a veteran horse breeder and racer, take a greater interest in Ankara life. Since then the equestrian academy had become the location of his stud farm.
Loraine’s tenure in Ankara (1934-39), which included a 1936 visit to Istanbul by King Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson, saw a major thaw in relations between Turkey and Britain. Soon he and his wife had invited the Belges to the Embassy for supper, and often thereafter Zsa Zsa came to tea. Sir Percy and Lady Loraine were kind to her; from them she added to her knowledge of etiquette and protocol, social graces so necessary to the wife of an important government official. Sir Percy Loraine, says Zsa Zsa, was “perfect.” She began to wish that she had married him instead.
Zsa Zsa’s love of parties meshed nicely with her social position, for these occasions were a large part of her marital life. She grew to love the diplomatic round, and it’s easy to imagine that, with her looks and linguistic ability, she would become an attraction. Even shopping, not a major leisure-time activity in a city as austere as Ankara, helped pass the time. What Ankara lacked in modern consumer goods, it made up for in local crafts and antiques. Zsa Zsa’s favorite antique shop, which she visited often while on her daily rides, was run by six Circassian brothers, the eldest of whom was called Numad.
Zsa Zsa compares Numad and his brothers to Modigliani figures, with long, slender faces, dark eyes, and the austere look of Spanish saints. Their shop was in the Old City, probably near Ulus Square. She would stop in on her way back to the stables, they would give her coffee, and she would browse among the copperware, the jewelry, and the rugs. Often, she says, Numad would present things for her appreciation, showing off his newest acquisitions, allowing her to try on a ring or a necklace. One day he showed her an especially lovely pearl. Zsa Zsa held it in her hand and admired it. The Afghan Ambassador, said Numad, would love to send it to her if she liked it.
“Really?” she asked. “And why should he do that?”
“If you would be nice to him-“
Zsa Zsa was insulted. Immediately she put him straight on that subject, threatening to leave his shop at once and not come back. We can presume that Numad apologized, for several days later Zsa Zsa was back. This time he brought out for her delectation a gold bracelet studded with emeralds and rubies.
“And who wants me to be nice to him now?” asked Zsa Zsa.
One can imagine this moment: a tiny shop in the narrow streets beneath the old citadel; in the background the cries of street venders; the sound of horse-drawn wagons creaking past on the cobbles. What feelings must have arisen in these Circassian brothers! Here was a blonde girl, a foreigner beautiful beyond imagining, standing in their shop wearing jodhpurs and carrying a riding crop. To them she was as unreachable as a cloud. Yet others, rich and powerful others that they could assist, might be luckier.
Numad chose his words carefully.
“Please, Your Excellency,” he began. “This gentleman doesn’t even ask to be thanked.” He went on. The nameless gentleman would gain pleasure simply by knowing that she had accepted the gift. Then sometime, perhaps-and with this Numad paused-perhaps he could come here and enjoy a coffee, so that the benefactor could see how beautiful the bracelet looked on her.
Zsa Zsa does not mention a film of oil glistening on Numad’s fingertips as he presented this innocent plan; still, it is easy to imagine. In any case, Her Excellency Madame Belge flicked her riding crop under his “long Circassian nose” and told him to forget it. And with that she went home.
But it wasn’t as if the thought of romance-real romance, hot love, and steamy sex-had not crossed Zsa Zsa’s mind. It was, after all, one of her chief daydreams. Jolie’s parting words pretty much set the tone; in her marriage to Burhan Belge, Zsa Zsa was not much of a wife and far from being a lover. So far she had kept him at bay, and the marriage remained unconsummated. On their first night as man and wife, aboard the Simplon-Orient Express, Zsa Zsa retreated to her berth and curled up with her little dog Mishka, who growled and yapped at Burhan when he drew near. Since then they had kept their distance, and she had played the part of untouchable schoolgirl to his stern professor. Burhan was cold, says Zsa Zsa, and distant. He seldom laughed and often withdrew into his own thoughts. She was afraid of him: not physically-she knew he would never harm her-but because with one look he could suck all the joy from her life. He was a serious intellectual, a thinker, a very famous man. Every Saturday afternoon on Ankara Radio he broadcast a summary of world events to the entire country. All his friends were ministers or diplomats. He often left Turkey on official missions, which he told her nothing about. He held regular political meetings in their home, and he warned her sternly never to repeat anything she might hear. All in all, Zsa Zsa felt privileged to be Madame Belge. But it soon became obvious: from one trap in Budapest she had talked herself into another.
In the few times they met, Zsa Zsa felt far closer to Burhan’s brother-in-law, Yakup Kadri, the Turkish ambassador to Albania. Here again, the man was much older, and they had few intellectual interests in common; still, Yakup Kadri was charming and fun, “lusty and out-going,” and he was proof that Turks did not have to be dour. Zsa Zsa first met him and his wife, Leman (who was, she said, as cold as her brother), when she arrived in Istanbul to meet Burhan’s family. At that time, family surnames had just become mandatory in Turkey. Mustafa Kemal changed his name to Kemal Atatürk. Burhan had become Burhan Belge; Yakup Kadri became Yakup Kadri KaraosmanoGlu. [Before 1934, first names only were used, with personal tags sometimes added to differentiate among those with common names. Mustafa, for example, was extremely common. Mustafa Kemal added the second name, meaning “perfection,” after it had been bestowed upon him by one of his teachers.]
Using this full name, Yakup Kadri KaraosmanoGlu (1889-1974) became one of the outstanding writers and political figures of his era, and according to Andrew Mango he was one of Atatürk’s four favorite writers. Yakup Kadri was born ten years before Burhan Belge, and like Burhan he came from an old Ottoman family, the Kara Osmans of Manisa, who were famous enough to be mentioned in the poems of Lord Byron. Into his eighty-five years he packed a lot of living. In 1922 he witnessed the fall and burning of the great city of Smyrna, now called Izmir. As a writer and journalist he supported the rise of Mustafa Kemal, and his novels chronicled the social changes that Turkey underwent after the revolution. As an ambassador he served in Albania, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Iran, and Switzerland, and in the 1960s he became a member of Parliament. Zsa Zsa describes his luxuriant mustache, his twinkling eyes, and mischievous laugh, which, she said, “captivated” her.
Zsa Zsa says that some months after her arrival in Ankara, Yakup Kadri was promoted from his post in Tirana to an ambassadorship in the much more desirable city of Berne, in Switzerland. To celebrate, and because they were leaving the next day, Burhan suggested that they should take Yakup Kadri and Leman out to dinner. This, it turned out, would be an important event. Here again, however, we run afoul of Zsa Zsa’s unreliability as an historian. She specifically states that Yakup Kadri had been posted to Berne. However, the biographies of Yakup Kadri are quite clear: he did not go to Berne until 1942, and then, for a second posting, in 1951. The posting cited could not have been Berne: by 1942 Zsa Zsa no longer lived in Turkey. But surely we can forgive her for this mistake. She was, after all, only sixteen years old, and the exact details of the man’s diplomatic career were not her concern. After Albania, however, the biographies do say that Yakup Kadri was posted to Prague in 1935. Even more than Berne (a notoriously stodgy capital in any case), this certainly would have been considered a step up from Tirana, and congratulations would have been in order. Zsa Zsa remembers a farewell dinner for Yakup Kadri and Leman. Surely this was the occasion.
In considering the events that followed, we must remember that Ankara was a “diplomatic concentration camp.” Sir Percy Loraine referred to its “pathetic bleakness.” His wife called it “the most Godforsaken hole I have ever been in.” The city’s total population may have risen to 100,000, but the ruling elite and its attendant diplomatic corps numbered a lot less than that. Within this tightly closed perimeter, everybody either knew everybody else or knew someone who did. And one man-ever-inquisitive, hungering for society-was always ready to make new friends. In the Ankara of the 1930s, “going out” meant limited options. There was the cabaret in the Ankara Palas hotel, just opposite the old Parliament building in Ulus, near the Old City. But mostly there was Karpiç’s Restaurant.
![]()
If there was a real center to upper-crust Ankara life during those years, this had to be the place. Ivan Karpiç was a Russian immigrant who had opened his restaurant near Ulus Square, just around the corner from the Ankara Palas Hotel and the Parliament. Through the Second World War and into the 1950s, his place remained a fixture of Ankara life. During the war, when Turkey remained neutral, Hitler’s diplomats, as well as the diplomats of other Axis powers, would dine at Karpiç’s, literally within spitting distance of their British, Russian, and American counterparts. In the Hachette Blue Guide to Turkey, published in 1960, the Karpiç Lokantasi (“orchestra in the evening; tel. 12-236”) still shows up plainly on the fold-out map of Ankara, the only restaurant to be so-honored. In Istanbul Intrigues, his study of espionage in wartime Turkey, Barry Rubin describes it thus:
Legend had it that Ivan Karpiç began his restaurant at Atatürk’s request so that the republic’s founder could have somewhere to dine. Atatürk even held cabinet meetings there. The décor was simple; one journalist compared it to a “Kansas railroad station lunchroom.” Yet Karpiç’s colorful clientele made it a magical place?Karpiç’s assistant, Serge, darkly handsome like a film star, actually ran the place. But the bald, round-headed Karpiç, with his thick accent and white coat, provided the atmosphere. He personally scooped caviar in generous dollops from a big dish, supervised the preparation of the food, proudly oversaw his shish-kebab specialty, presented flowers to the ladies, and watched to ensure that everyone was happy with everything.
![]()
Georges Karpitch (1877-1953) known as “Baba Karpiç”, Ankara, 1940s. He was from Novorossiik. He was an Armenian named Kevork Kececiyan and emigrated possibly in 1920 with wife Margarita and son Aram.. His first restautant was in Istanbul (1925). He moved his restaurant to Taşhan, Ankara in 1928 and operated until 1953.See NOTES (in Turkish)
So when Zsa Zsa tells us that Burhan one day announced, “We’ll take Leman and Yakup to Karpiç’s,” this makes perfect sense. It is simply unthinkable that they would have eaten anywhere else.
In an oblique way, Zsa Zsa’s memory of Karpiç’s confirms the impression of a “Kansas railroad station.” She remembers a huge square room with pillars, a gigantic Turkish flag above the entrance, and Atatürk’s portrait everywhere else. One can almost hear the click of scurrying heels on the terrazzo, the announcement of what train is leaving from which track. Their table sat to one side of the dance floor; next to that the orchestra (Hungarian musicians, says Rubin) was playing. Zsa Zsa was looking at her menu when music and conversation suddenly stopped. The restaurant fell silent, the double doors at the entrance flew open, and amid a flurry of evening gowns and tuxedos, one man came into focus.
About the color of his eyes, there is disagreement. In most accounts, they are a shade of blue. King Edward VIII, without noting the color, said they were the coldest, most penetrating eyes he had ever seen. Sir Percy Loraine remembered them as a “penetrating ice-blue.” In 1990, Zsa Zsa remembered them as green. In her first account, however, she looked up from her menu and saw a “slim man with gray eyes the color of steel.” He wore black tie, and accompanying him were three or four other men, similarly attired, along with women in evening gowns. A squad of uniformed police had preceded him, and these now formed a cordon as the gray eyes entered and stood gazing at the room. By now everyone was standing, and Zsa Zsa quickly followed.
“Atatürk,” Burhan whispered in her ear.
Zsa Zsa stared. Atatürk, remote, immobile, and aloof, withdrew a cigarette and tapped it on a gold case as he surveyed the room. Their eyes met, and the rest, she says, was inevitable. That, at least, is what Zsa Zsa says in her 1990 memoir, the book where she “tells all.” The 1960 book with Gerold Frank delivers less kismet but more detail and is, therefore, a lot more interesting. In that book Atatürk doesn’t make eye contact at all when he enters. But she continues to stare. The room, she says, remained quiet, at attention, as the great man was seated, and until he sat down no one else, women included, would do so. The resemblance to royalty could not have been more complete.
Yakup Kadri stood on Zsa Zsa’s left. He leaned over and asked “teasingly” what she thought of their “Grey Wolf”-another of Atatürk’s nicknames, and the title of a negative biography (1932) by H.C. Armstrong. This bantering about the great man was certainly in character. Yakup Kadri knew the man well. He dined with him often, and, though not an intimate friend, by that point he had certainly moved beyond idolatry.
Zsa Zsa turned again to stare at Atatürk, who was only some thirty feet away. Desperately, Leman whispered to her not to stare, not to call attention to herself. Yakup Kadri grinned and continued to tease. His wife was right, he told Zsa Zsa: Atatürk may try to “adopt” her.
By that time in her Turkish residence, Zsa Zsa certainly knew all the stories about Atatürk: he was the greatest soldier, the greatest lover, the indefatigable playboy, the great reformer, the savior of the nation. She knew about his adopted daughters, his mistresses, and his capacity for strong drink. She didn’t know which stories to believe or disregard. Some, however, her own husband had told her, and Burhan was not the kind of man to pass along lies. Now she could only look on, a comely young woman melting before a dominant older man.
Inevitably, however, as Zsa Zsa glanced at the President’s table their eyes did meet. Zsa Zsa blushed and looked away, but it was too late. Soon an aide arrived, inviting Burhan Belge, Yakup Kadri, and their ladies to join Atatürk at his table. There was, of course, no way of turning down this invitation. As Zsa Zsa describes it, all of them knew what was up. Leman, Burhan’s older sister, looked terrified. Her brother, she must have assumed, was about to be cuckolded by the President of the Republic. Yakup Kadri the novelist could barely contain his laughter. He knew Atatürk, and he knew that his brother-in-law had married a knock-out. One can almost see him twirling his mustache, gleefully contemplating the entry that this incident would make in his writer’s notebook. As for Burhan, Zsa Zsa reports that his face had darkened like a thundercloud.
At the Gazi’s table, Burhan seated himself and his wife as far from Atatürk as possible. Still, she became the immediate focus of conversation. Atatürk asked if she had ever tasted raki.
“No, Pasha Effendi,” she answered.
This got a big laugh from the rest of the table, but Zsa Zsa did not know why. She had in fact confused two titles of address. Mustafa Kemal had certainly been a pasha, a general, but he was never an effendi. This was a label generally reserved for menials. [Ali Pasha, for example, was the famous ruler of Ioannina, in northern Greece. But if a man named Ali owned a restaurant, he would be called Ali Bey. And if another Ali worked at that restaurant sweeping the floors, he would be called Ali Effendi.]
Since Zsa Zsa had never tasted raki, which is very much like ouzo or Pernod, Atatürk (“with a hand that trembled slightly”) poured a glass and sent it to her. Zsa Zsa, after a fit of coughing, managed to get it down. Atatürk next asked if she smoked. Again, to repeated laughter, she told the “Pasha Effendi” that she did not. Promptly the Pasha sent down one of his own, “a thin, flat cigarette rimmed in gold, with `K.A.’ embossed in tiny crimson letters.” Zsa Zsa puffed, tried to inhale, then coughed. Atatürk, she says, seemed to be enjoying himself.
In this, it is the detail that convinces: the hand that trembles slightly; the initials on Kemal Atatürk’s custom-made cigarettes. And there is another telling detail as waiters arrive to serve the food, and the members of the party begin to eat. For according to Zsa Zsa, Atatürk only watched. He ate nothing. But his glass of raki was continually refilled.
At length Atatürk asked one of the other ladies present if she danced the waltz. The lady in question demurred. Atatürk then asked Zsa Zsa. Of course she knew the waltz: she was from Budapest. Kemal Pasha rose, a bit unsteadily, and the entire room rose with him. And so, before the entire company, Fred and Zsa Zsa took a turn.
Fred and Ginger it was not. She was terrified; he was full of raki. The pasha danced heavily, she says, and held her strongly in his grip. They conversed. Atatürk explained to her the absurdity of “Pasha Effendi.” He asked how she liked Turkey. Of course, she adored it. Zsa Zsa, feeling more confident, began to regret the simple black dress she had worn and wished she had worn something with a plunging neckline. She essayed a look at the Gazi’s eyes. Gray or blue-or green, as she described them in 1990? All the above, it seems. “The pupils,” she says, “were so light blue as to be almost colorless; it was like looking at a blind man and yet one whose eyes pierced you through.”
Back at the table, Atatürk, proposing a toast, announced that Hungary and Turkey would henceforth be sister states. Their languages were similar; their people had similar histories. At last he sat down heavily, and those at the table continued with their meal in silence. That was when Atatürk announced that he was leaving, and that he would drive Madame Belge home.
One does not envy Burhan Belge at this moment. One does not envy anyone at the table. Indeed, given the tensions involved, it’s a wonder that any of Karpiç’s food got eaten that night. Burhan, however, showed what he was made of.
“If you please, Excellency,” he said, “I should prefer to do that.”
Ignoring him, Atatürk went on: Burhan could take home whichever of the other ladies he wished.
Burhan repeated: he would take his own wife home.
What? Atatürk asked. You don’t want one of these lovely ladies?
This time Burhan didn’t reply, and this time Atatürk laughed. Burhan had passed the test. “This is a man,” he said with approval. And with that, after appropriate bows, the President’s party left the restaurant.
Atatürk’s behavior wrought predictable reactions: Burhan and his sister were angry; Yakup Kadri was amused; Zsa Zsa was excited. She was sixteen years old, and she had danced with one of the great men of the age. “I think he approves of you,” Yakup Kadri said. In the space of a few minutes, her life had exploded like a star.
In the following weeks, little changed in Zsa Zsa’s routine. Fatushka the white Arabian remained the center of her existence. Sometimes she would ride her almost to the grounds of the Presidential Palace on Çankaya Hill, and there she would hope that Atatürk would emerge so that she could say hello. On Wednesdays she met with the Prime Minister’s mother, an ancient lady who invited the wives of government officials to take tea with her on that day. There she chatted in broken Turkish with the old woman, a fiercely traditional female who refused to take off her veil just because Atatürk told her to. At other times she had tea with the Loraines, who told her stories of their life in Cairo.
But Zsa Zsa became homesick, and who can blame her? Her best friends-her family-lived a thousand miles away. They could only communicate through letters, and the letters from Budapest, though welcome and full of news, only reminded her of the lush, vibrant world she had abandoned. In Ankara she had no one to confide in. Burhan was more a guardian uncle than a friend. She had spent two years in a Swiss finishing school followed by three months’ work in an operetta; she spoke four languages and was learning a fifth; she had gone to a man she didn’t love and talked him into marrying her. And now? More and more, Zsa Zsa felt like a castaway, self-marooned in an ocean of dust.
One day she rode past the Circassians’ antique shop in old Angora. Numad, she says, was seated by the front door in the sunshine, and he called out a greeting. Her Excellency must come in, he said, for he had something to show her. In his office, after he had sent a boy for coffee, Numad took out a tiny object wrapped in tissue wrapper. He handed a magnifying glass to Zsa Zsa.
Zsa Zsa, daughter of the diamond store, lover of jewels and glitter, was entranced. It was a miniature of a human hand, fashioned in gold. According to Numad, it would bring good luck to whoever possessed it. The Hand of Fatima, he called it-modeled on the hand of the prophet’s youngest daughter, she who married Ali, the fourth Caliph, and was mother to Hussein, founding martyr of the Shi’a sect.
But Zsa Zsa was also skeptical. It could not, she thought, be the Afghan Ambassador again, for his taste in jewelry wasn’t that good. So who was it this time?
Numad dropped the tiny object into her hand. Out of his mouth came the same line as before. It was hers because she was so pretty. Zsa Zsa began to object, but this time Numad seemed more serious. It would bring her good luck, he said. She should not refuse. Somebody wanted her to have it because “beauty with good fortune is a blessing, but beauty without good fortune is a curse.”
And so this time it wasn’t as easy. This time a tiny, beautifully fashioned object had been offered to her, not a gaudy bracelet crusted with gems. (Eventually, Zsa Zsa says, she found out that it came from the Topkapi Museum.) It’s mine? she asked: I can take it with me? Not quite, Numad said. From the same drawer he produced a key. She could have the Hand of Fatima and the luck that went with it, but first she had to use this key, which opened the door of a house in the Old City. He promised her that it was not what she thought; she would not be compromised. But he could tell her nothing else.
Already in Vienna she had turned down the chance to become the kept woman of Willi Schmidt-Gentner, a man she adored, and instead became the proper wife of Burhan Belge. And still she had managed to keep her virginity. This piece, the Hand of Fatima, absolutely enchanted her. And the key? Human curiosity was beginning to make inroads.
However, “This is ridiculous,” she told Numad at last. He could take back his magic totem.
The Circassian begged Zsa Zsa to think it over. “Excellency,” he said, “you cannot let this pass.” He was quite serious. But she walked out anyway.
Zsa Zsa didn’t sleeep much that night, and for the next week she lived in a fever of speculation and curiosity. Who was doing this? What was going on? Was it all a practical joke? Perhaps the ever-mischievous Yakup Kadri had arranged it. But he was out of the country. And Burhan was the last person to do something like that. Several times she rode past Numad’s shop and stopped in to see the Hand. By the end of week, mad with curiosity, she went back to the shop for a final time:
All right, I thought. I’ll find out. I said to Numad, “Where is the key?” He produced a small key. On a slip of paper he wrote the address in the heart of the old city. “At four o’clock tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “Do not be late.”
In both of her memoirs, despite the fabrications, fantasies, and contradictions, Zsa Zsa tells the same basic story of the Hand of Fatima, the key, and the house in the Old City. Of course, it’s quite possible to believe that she has made it all up, that these are the fantasies of a glamour queen who wants to embellish her legend and sell books. But this time it sounds like the truth. There is George Sanders’ assessment of her character: guileless, spontaneous, willing to take a chance. There are the details that ring true: the look of the Old City; Atatürk’s drinking habits. But above all, there is one indelible image, that of the gorgeous blonde Hungarian, charming and a bit spoiled, bored and adrift, riding alone on a white horse through a dusty Anatolian town. Say what you will about romantic fantasies, the cold fact is that in the sparse, brown Ankara of the 1930s, Zsa Zsa would have been impossible to ignore. And in that city there was one man who ignored nothing.
Anyone who has traversed the upper streets of Old Ankara remembers the way they dip and twist as they negotiate the contours of the hill; the way the cobblestones, polished and broken by the centuries, seem to shift beneath the feet. This time Zsa Zsa, sans Fatushka, had to walk the gauntlet alone.
Zsa Zsa tells of her impressions from that day: the fresh carcass of a sheeep hanging in a butcher shop; the dim cave-like shops; the street cries; the merchants lounging in front, calling out for the favor of her patronage. For any woman, let alone a sixteen-year-old girl, such a walk cannot have been easy. As a society, Turkey is relentlessly male, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the streets of its older neighborhoods, where merchants, houses, and life lie together in jumbled knots.
Eventually she found a street so narrrow it was virtually an alley, and a slender wooden door cut into a high wall. Numad’s key meshed with the lock, and the door swung open.
From the narrow, shaded street, Zsa Zsa stepped over a high sill onto cobblestones drenched in sunlight. A large olive tree rose from the center of a courtyard; blue-white Angora cats lounged in the sun. Zsa Zsa made her way past them to a covered staircase. At the top of the wooden steps a door was ajar, and inside a man, his back turned, was sitting in an armchair.
“I knew you would come,” said a deep voice.
Of course, it was Atatürk. This we knew; and, without daring to form the thought, this Zsa Zsa had also guessed, hoped, dreamed. The little girl, longing to be swept off her feet, had found the ultimate Older Man.
But what happened next? Did Zsa Zsa find Tea and Sympathy, as she tells us in her 1960 memoir? Or did she, as she reveals in 1990, discover a Tidal Bore of Passion, an end to her virginity at the hands of a lover and demi-god? Place your bets here. This writer’s money goes on Passion. The 1990 Zsa Zsa says:
Just as I was about to speak, Atatürk clapped his hands and, as he had orchestrated it, the dancing girls appeared, their multicolored veils floating suggestively in the coolness of the room. As they danced their slow, sensuous dance, wordlessly Atatürk motioned that I sit on the red velvet and copper-colored cushions next to him. Mesmerized, I complied. He offered me his pipe-and, unquestioningly, I took it. Then he passed me a gold-and-emerald-encrusted cup filled with raki?I sipped from the cup.
The delicious hilarity of this scene, complete with dancing girls (!) who made no appearance whatever in the 1960 account, does little for Zsa Zsa’s reputation as an truth-teller, but it also does nothing to demolish two undeniable facts: 1) Zsa Zsa was ripe and beautiful; and 2) when it came to women, Kemal Atatürk did not waste time.
“It was inevitable,” says Zsa Zsa.
In this I have to agree with her. Something happened, surely. Zsa Zsa’s first account, though quite credible in its account of their conversation, beggars belief when it suggests that she left after an hour of chit-chat and then continued meeting Atatürk for tea and conversation over the next six months. But what else could she have written in 1960? Zsa Zsa’s public image was wicked enough by then. The moral temper of the times probably convinced her to keep some things to herself. And there is another consideration: Burhan Belge, who was still alive at the time of publication (he died in 1967). Throughout the account of her first marriage, Zsa Zsa makes clear her respect for Burhan despite their utterly incompatible personalities. “Poor Burhan,” she says when recounting her childish behavior. She knew the trials she had already put him through-their sexless marriage, her less-than-mature demeanor at social functions, her tendency to say whatever popped into her mind-and it is to her credit that she did not further humiliate him by “telling all” while he was alive.
Zsa Zsa left Atatürk after an hour. She had to get home before 5:30, when Burhan returned from the office. Night was fast approaching, she says, and she hurried home in the “half dusk.” This memory seems genuine, and it is consistent with a scenario that begins their acquaintance late in 1935. Since Ankara lies at 40 degrees north latitude, parallel with Philadelphia, this makes it likely that their meeting took place well after the autumnal equinox-between November, perhaps, and February.
Burhan was already home when she arrived. When he asked where she had been, she told him (1960) she had been with Kemal Atatürk. But Burhan, she says, did not believe her. Zsa Zsa says (1990):
After that, we met regularly every Wednesday afternoon, once I had finished at the Riding Academy. We spent hours together in Atatürk’s secret hideaway, locked in each other’s arms, while he dazzled me with his sexual prowess and seduced me with his perversion. Atatürk was very wicked. He knew exactly how to please a young girl. On looking back, I think he probably knew how to please every woman, because he was a professional lover, a god, and a king.
He “seduced me with his perversion.” Well. Goodness gracious, as Donald Rumsfeld might say. The mind boggles-and after having boggled for a while, it turns and retreats in disarray. But while Zsa Zsa was being blown away by the wickedness, perversion, and sexual technique of a professional lover, god, and king, Atatürk, she says, was alert and inquisitive.
He would question me ceaselessly about the true allegiance of the ambitious men who visited Burhan, their leader, to talk politics with him. As Atatürk must have known, these men talked quite freely in front of me, revealing their plans and their feelings about the man they called “The Savior of Turkey.” And many of them hated him.
Zsa Zsa says that because of this, she held the fate of many important men in the palm of her hand. Well, maybe. Still, the account of Atatürk’s inquiries rings true. It is consistent with the man’s character and restlessness of mind that he would use the liaison for as many purposes as possible.
Zsa Zsa concludes: My romance with Atatürk lasted for six months and during that time he used me and I used him. I gave him information-harmless though it was. And he gave me lessons in love, in passion, and in intrigue. He also ruined for me every other man I would ever love, or try to love. In Turkey, Atatürk was a god. He was a god and he had loved me. For the rest of my life I would search for another god to eclipse him.
NOTES“Ankara’da yalnız ve yalnız Süreyya var” Turan TANYER
EXCEPT
Karpiç Ankara’da Karpiç, rafine bir restoran yarattı. Mutfak ve sofra sanatını geliştirdi. Daha o günlerde restoran kültüründe temel ilkelerini saptamıştı. Saptadığı ilkelere sıkı sıkıya bağlıydı ve herkesin uymasını istiyordu. O isteyince çalışanlarının dikkatli olması gerekiyordu. Gelenlerin de. Bir restoranda sadece yemek hazırlamanın, servisinin değil, yemek yemenin de “zevk işi” olduğunu söylerdi. 1928 yılına kadar İstanbul’da kaldı. O yıl Cemal (Taşhan) Bey’in çağrı- sı üzerine Ankara’ya taşındı. Cemal Bey, Hakimiyeti Millîye Meydanı’ndaki babadan kalma Taşhan’ı yenilemiş[7], modern bir otel kılığına sokabilmek için oldukça masraf etmişti. Zaten devir “asrî”lik devriydi. Asrî fırın, asrî helâ... Derken, asrî lokanta. Asrî otelin, asrî restoranı olmalıydı. Karpiç, Taşhan’ın altında açtı bu restoranı. Ve çok geçmeden burası, Yeni Ankara’nın en önemli mekânları arasına karıştı. İstanbul’da olduğu gibi, mutfak, hizmet birinci sı- nıftı. Hatta Nahid Sırrı Örik’in önümüze sürdüğü, hiç bir iş bilmez çıtkırıldım Paşazâde Cezmi, burnunu kıvırdığı şu taşra Ankara’sında tek sözü edilebilir yer olarak burayı gösteriyordu:
![]()
“(Cezmi) Otelden çıktığı zaman saat bire yaklaşmış bulunuyordu, karnı da şiddetle acıkmıştı. Dün akşam yemek yemiş olduğu büyük lokantaya doğru pek tabii bir şekilde ilerledi. Bu lokanta Taşhan denilen ve meydana da ismini veren sarı renkte, iki kat binanın ön tarafında, ilk katında idi ve Cezmi dün gece methini İstanbul’dan duymuş bulunduğu bu yere ‘kimbilir ne kadar zaman için son defa olarak!’ deyip giderek yemek yemiş, gerek yemeği, gerek müziği ve gerek halkı âdeta beğenmiş, İstanbul’dan hatta Almanya’dan tanıdığı birtakım kimselerle karşılaşmış, henüz yeni şahsiyetinin pek mütevazı hüviyetini takınamadığından, ‘Eh, gelinebilir bir yer!’ hükmünü vermişti.”[8] 1930’ların başında bugünkü 100. Yıl Çarşısı’nın bulunduğu yerdeki Şehir Bahçesi, Ankara Belediyesi tarafından elden geçirildi. 1932’de bahçenin Bankalar ve İstasyon caddelerine bakan dış taraflarında yer alan dükkânların yapımı tamamlandı. Bu dükkânlara Akba, Haşet kitapevleri, şekerci Osman Nuri, Hacı Bekir, çiçekçi Sapuncakis, konfeksiyoncu David, Foto Naim (Gören) ve daha pek çok ticarethane yerleştiler. Bahçenin bugünkü İnebolu Sokağı’nın yanına düşen köşesindeki büyükçe yapı da “lokanta” olarak düşünülmüştü. Karpiç’den, kendisine maddi destek de verilerek “Şehir Lokantası”nı işletmesi istendi.
Karpiç öneriyi kabul etti; 1932’nin Haziran ayında yeni yerine taşındı. Kurduğu düzen burada da aynen sürdü. 1935’de Türk yurttaşlığına alınan Karpiç, ölene kadar işinin başında durdu. Sevimli, işine sadık, alçakgönüllü, espri yüklü, çok sevilen bu insan Ankara’nın “Baba Karpiç”i olarak bilindi. Kentin tarihine bir efsane olarak yerleşti. Baba Karpiç’in otuz yılı aşkın sürede yanından pek çok kişi gelip geçti. Mutfağında, salonunda Ruslar, Ermeniler, Türkler vardı. Mutfak önce Rus ustalara, sonra Mengenli ustalara, salon kısmı da Hemşinlilere emanet edilmişti. Yıllar içerisinde burası bir okul oldu. Ünlü restoranlar buradan doğdular; usta aşçılar buradan yetiştiler. Bunların arasında Baba’yı İstanbul’dan Ankara’ya izleyen birisi vardı. Serj Homyakof; sonraki adı ve soyadıyla Süreyya Homyak. Fitne-Fücur’ün Ankara’ya geldiğinde gitmeden yapamadığı gece kulübünün patronu Süreyya Bey, ki, zaman içerisinde o da kendi efsanesini yaratacaktı.
[7] Taşhan, Ankara'nın Altındağ ilçesinde Ulus Meydanı'nda 1895-1902 yılları arasında vali Abidin Paşa'nın mektupçusu İsmail Bey tarafından inşa edilmiş, 1936 yılında yıkıldıktan sonra yerine Sümerbank Genel Müdürlük Binasının yapıldığı bir binadır. Ulus Meydanı'nın adı bir zamanlar Taşhan Meydanı idi.
[8] Nahid Sırrı Örik, Tersine Giden Yol, Oğlak Yayınları, İstanbul 2008, s. 29-30.
SOURCE Kebikeç İnsan bilimleri için kaynak araştirmalaridergisi Sayi 31 2011 ISSN 1300-2864
