«Where a Tatar sets foot, grass does not grow,» says one of the characters in the novel «Tatarcik» (1939) by Turkish writer Halide Edib Adıvar. The novel, written by a comrade-in-arms of Atatürk and the first feminist of the Turkish Republic, tells about women in the New Turkey, about the problems of national identity and the construction of a modern society. At the center of the narrative is a girl named Lale, the daughter of a Crimean Tatar, and her struggle against the prejudices of the old Turkey – ethnic, gender, and moral.