The demands arising from the Ottoman Empire’s involvement in the First World War led to dramatic changes in the way the state functioned and its capacity for intervention, a process which resulted in the emergence of a new relationship between the state and its people. For millions of men, this relationship materialized in the form of conscription and long-term military service. For women, it primarily entailed the withdrawal of men from their households and an increasing intrusion by the state into their daily lives. During the war, women, especially soldiers' wives and mothers, were subjected to a variety of state policies and regulations, and, as a result, came into much more frequent and proximate contact with state officials. Focusing on their perceptions of and reactions to the war and the dramatic changes it brought to Ottoman society, this paper examines how the war shaped these women’s relationships with the state and influenced their understanding of gender roles. War brought a profound modification of women’s social identity and the redefinition of their relationship with the state. It was their husbands’, sons’, and fathers’ conscription that initiated this redefinition. During the war years and its immediate aftermath, soldiers and their relatives established a more demanding relationship with the Ottoman state based on the claim for reciprocity in their service and sacrifice in the name of the state and the nation. The documents in the archives –mostly in the form of telegraphs and letters from soldier’s wives and mothers- suggest an internalized sense of entitlement vis-à-vis the state. These women in part justified their demands on the traditional claim of material need, but they also understood payments and provisions as something the state owed them because of their husbands’ and sons’ service and sacrifice. They made incessant demands on state officials to supply basic foodstuffs for them to feed their families and to pay their monthly allowances on time. In this paper, I will examine this complex and dynamic wartime relationship between the wartime state and Ottoman soldiers' families based on the official documents, reports, memories, and also ordinary peoples’ letters, petitions, and complaints.