This paper offers a rare female perspective on the inner workings of the Ottoman war effort and its personal toll. Drawing on a previously unknown memoir and correspondence found among the personal papers of Ku?çuba?? E?ref, an officer in the Te?kilât-? Mahsusa (Special Organization) formed by Enver Pa?a, this research reveals some of the many ways in which the Great War affected domestic life. The writings of E?ref’s wife Pervin Han?m provide a remarkably candid account of life during wartime. An analysis of Pervin Han?m’s writings reveals the several levels on which the war was experienced and internalized on the home front. An intelligent, educated woman, Pervin’s insights can be grouped into three broad and occasionally overlapping categories. First, on a basic, narrative level, Pervin records the comings and going of her husband and his associates as they undertook a variety of missions on behalf of Enver and the Ministry of War. Secondly, her account reveals the ways in which the political and the personal aspects of the war were intertwined. Whether entertaining officers at their home or putting up with the long, often unexplained absences caused by her husband’s secret missions, Pervin’s story demonstrates the connections between official duty and personal sacrifice, between patriotism and the personal cost behind the scenes. Thirdly, Pervin’s account provides ample evidence for considering the emotional history of the war. From the interruption of their honeymoon to the nearly constant anxiety caused by her husband’s numerous clandestine missions and his capture and internment as a British POW to her relief on his return, Pervin’s war was an emotional roller-coaster. Through a combination of loneliness, prayer, humor, pride, resentment, tears and worry, Pervin exhibited a wide range of affects even though she was mostly far from physical harm. Pervin’s narrative of external comings-and-goings and interal torment suggests that the personal cost of the war was far larger than we might expect. Pervin and her family cannot be considered to be “victims” of the war in the traditional sense and certainly not in comparison to the much more horrific crimes perpetrated during the war and, of course, by the Te?kilât-? Mahsusa itself. But Pervin’s case reminds us, perhaps, that war adversely affects almost all who live through it in some way.

The council Dar’ul Hikmet’il Islamiye (Abode of Islamic Wisdom) was established in 1918 under the office of the Sheikh al-Islam to provide religious responses to the rupture and turmoil World War I created in Ottoman society. Composed of a president and a minimum of nine members, diligently chosen to fulfill the high expectations of this post, the council was involved in both intellectual, theological as well as practical, and everyday aspects of religion in a post-WWI society. Its members discussed, for instance, whether Muslim women could be given license to work as prostitutes; whether women whose husbands had not returned from war could religiously be considered divorced and remarry; or how the increased rates of abortion could be prevented. It appealed to the Ministry of Interior to strengthen the surveillance on the public observance of Islam against the increasing trends of unveiling, Muslim women’s singing in coffee houses, or alcohol drinking in close proximity to mosques. The council offers a unique venue for exploring the dilemmas WWI created in Ottoman society and the ways religious authorities responded to them. This paper is written based on the archival registers of the council, the declarations it issued in contemporary periodicals, and the articles its members wrote in its journal Ceride-i Ilmiye. The paper focuses on the council’s conception of public morality. It argues that in the aftermath of WWI Muslim religious authorities began to perceive immorality (ahlaks?zl?k) as one of the greatest challenges and threats to society. Furthermore, in this conception public morality was to a great extent a gendered one that sought to regulate Muslim women’s public attire, behavior, and acts. The council Dar’ul Hikme acknowledged the socio-economic roots of immorality, and as such considered poverty and destitute among its primary causes, and paid attention to gender specific outcomes of war on women. However, it still identified public observance of morality crucial, and emphasized Muslim women’s specific roles for its maintenance.

World War I brought tragedy to Armenian women. Most experienced the War as involuntary removal from their homes, sexual violence, and transplantation into a Muslim household or institution, frequently accompanied with the death of their relatives. They bore children with Muslim fatherhood, repopulating the land that was being vacated of Armenian identity. The first part of this paper discusses the Ottoman government’s policies specifically regarding Armenian women. I demonstrate that a “climate of abduction” was created, one in which the Muslim population was given near-free access to Armenian female bodies. In the aftermath of the War, the defeated Ottoman government had to allow surviving Armenian leadership to find and reintegrate these women to their natal community. The second part of the paper discusses the functioning of this rescue effort and the kind of discourses produced about formerly kidnapped Armenian women and children, who, more often than not, had no choice but to re-turn to their former group. Many were then (re)married off to proper Armenian men, their reproductive capacities now serving the Armenian nation. I demonstrate that both during the genocide and in its aftermath Armenian women’s bodies turned into weapons to take revenge from the enemy. Both sides used its sexual and reproductive potential to emasculate the enemy, claiming and reclaiming who owns what.

The presentation will discuss how, starting in 1924, Sahbiha Sertel, a prominent intellectual and journalist of the early Turkish Republic, began to address the problems of widows and orphans. Through her journal Resimli Ay (The Illustrated Monthly) she both revealed and investigated their economic distress and almost total lack of protection.  It is clear from Sertel's articles that she wanted to use this coverage to make the government more responsive to the the plight of poor women and children, especially female children, whom the war had left without breadwinners and without opportunities--except all too often prostitution-- for earning their own livings.  Sertal wanted to influence society to create more opportunities for women and she especially wanted to shame the government for not taking greater responsibility for the well-being of these women and children.  Her articles struck a chord in a way that was perhaps surprising and unintended by her; one of the orphan girls highlighted in her coverage was, as result, found by surviving members of her family. This lead to Resimli Ay's  becoming the site of a an outburst of letter-writing from readers pleading for information about relatives missing since the war, whether missing in battle or lost in the chaos of evacuations.  Many letters came from veterans who had returned hone to discover their families were missing.  Others came from families seeking news of missing soldiers. Still others came from civilians who had been separated from and lost sight of members of their households. The letters  made visible the anguish of scattered families and the reality that the successive Ottoman, Occupation, and Republican regimes had neither the resources nor it seemed  much interest in helping families learn the fate of those lost in the war. They also reflect the anguish and experience of many "ordinary" people, and Resimli Ay gave special attention to the condition of such people, writing about women and children without resources, and about the struggles of returned soldiers of the rank-and-file variety. The articles and resulting letters draw attention to two things:  first, that there was an active republican left in the early post-war years, which tried to focus government policy and public sentiment on questions of class and gender; and, second, that the widespread social dislocation and trauma caused by the War were of a type that made it almost impossible to separate the battlefront from the home front.