Bedia Muvahhit, née Emine Bedia Şekip, (January 16, 1897 – January 20, 1994) was a Turkish stage and movie actress. She is remembered as one of the first Muslim movie actresses in Turkey debuting in 1923.

Biographie

She was born on January 16, 1897 to Şekip Bey, a prosecutor from profession, and his wife Refika at Moda neighborhood of Kadıköy in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire. She began her primary education at Saint Antoine School on Büyükada, and went on at Kadıköy Terakki School for secondary education. Then, she studied at the French language high school Lycée Notre Dame de Sion Istanbul. She could speak French in additom to Greek as foreign language.

Bedia Muvahhit was employed in 1914 as a switchboard operator at the state-owned telephone company in Istanbul becoming one of the first Muslim women in the Ottoman Empire to work at the public service sector. Following a campaign of a newly established journal and an association for defending women's rights, the post administration decided to replace the telephone operators, who were in the beginning foreign language speaking girls from Christian or Jewish minorities with heavily accented Turkish.

In 1921, she began to work as a teacher for French language at the Erenköy Girls High School. During this time, she met stage actor Ahmet Refet Muvahhit, while she asked him for an autograph after a theatre play. The couple got married in 1923. From this marriage, Bedia Muvahhit had a son Şuayip Sina Arbel (1922-1991). In 1923, Bedia Muvahhit quit her teacher post, and devoted herself to an acting career. She successfully played in movies and on stage. However, her spouse Ahmet Muvahhit died in 1927.

She married in 1933 to Friedrich von Statzer (1906-1974), aka later Ferdi Statzer, an Austrian musician, who came in 1932 to Turkey, and was teaching classical piano at the Istanbul Municipal Conservatory and serving as a composer and classical pianist at the Istanbul Municipal Theatre (Ottoman Turkish: Darülbedayi‎), where she was acting on stage. Her second marriage lasted 18 years until 1951 when they divorced. Rıght after, she adopted her surname from the first marriage.

Bedia Muvahhit died on January 20, 1994 at the age of 97 in Istanbul University Hospital, where she was taken following a home accident. She was laid to rest at the Asiyan Cemetery.