The field of modern Turkish history has transformed considerably in recent years moving from a state-centric approach to the state's interaction with its citizens, to social history and to new sub-fields such as medical history and history of women and gender. It is within this context of the broadening of the field that previously neglected topics and marginalized groups finally became subjects of historical scholarship on late and post-Ottoman Turkey. This panel contributes to this emerging scholarship by examining aspects of changing gender relations, sexual relations and prostitution in Turkey from the 1920s through the 1950s, drawing on sources such as archival documents, court records, newspapers, memoirs and autobiographies.
The first paper charts the gradual development in the 1920s and 1930s of regulatory state policies on prostitution. It argues that the regulatory policies that emerged by the mid-1930s were a result of debates and competing proposals by medical professionals, administrators and policy makers around issues of public health, criminality and morality. The second paper turns to the most important piece of legislation on sex work in Turkey: the 1933 Regulation on prostitution. It explains how the regulation of sex work in practice led to the creation of a strict regime of control and the surveillance of bodies and spaces--not only of prostitutes and brothels, but of the larger communities and indeed of the nation.
The next paper seeks to reconsider the definition of prostitution on the basis of the types of gendered relations and sexual encounters that emerge from an examination of memoirs and autobiographical works focusing on Ankara in the 1940s and 1950s. The paper documents a much wider range of illicit sexual practices and argues that actual sexual practices with many gray areas defied legal definition and therefore remained outside the purview of state monitoring.
The final paper considers prostitution and sexuality within the broader context of changing gender relations in the years following the 1933 legislation. Drawing primarily on memoirs and diaries, the paper offers a portrayal of male-female relations in the city, particularly in Ankara and nstanbul where illicit sexual conduct existed at one end of a wide spectrum of male-female interactions that created new opportunities as well as new constraints for marriage, sex and sexuality.
These papers collectively demonstrate how state agencies attempted to regulate prostitution, while various forms of sexual conduct and sex work still remained outside the sphere of state control.
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The transformation of gender relations was an area early Republican reformers targeted in their efforts to modernize Turkish society. Factors such as urbanization, and increased opportunities for education and employment in the growing cities such as Ankara, the new capital city with an expanding bureaucracy, led to the emergence of new urban spaces and a new set of social relations, including new forms of male-female interaction that replaced or were added to the traditional male-female relations. Working primarily from published and unpublished memoirs and diaries dealing with the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, this paper presents a portrayal of (largely middle and lower class) male-female social relations in the city, particularly in Ankara, where illicit sexual conduct emerged merely as one aspect of increasing male-female interaction in urban life. While existing scholarship has examined a variety of related topics such as gender and education, feminism, and ideological aspects of the Kemalist vision of modern women (as in the works of scholars such as Elif Ekin Akşit, Yeşim Arat, Ayşe Durakbaşa and Deniz Kandiyoti), this paper considers the social history and actual experiences of changing gender relations in the city as revealed to us in first person narratives. The city offered both new opportunities as well as new challenges to men and women, especially young professionals, for marriage, sex, and sexuality. This paper shows that male-female sociabilities outside of the family covered a wide range of relationships such as purely professional relationships in the work place and at school, companionships as roommates, boarder-landlord relationships, traditional forms of matchmaking practices as well as new forms of dating, and various forms of illicit sexual relations. The paper argues that at least some segments of society benefited from the permissive political and ideological climate promoting the ideal of a modern woman, modern life, and companionate marriage, while other groups (such as women engaged in prostitution and many provincial women) were in practice often either left outside of state-driven liberal social climate or were targets of state control and monitoring.
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Historical studies of prostitution often rely primarily on legal documents, court cases, and police records. These all show points where sex workers encounter the law, and thus focus on the kinds of economically-motivated sexual relations recognized by the state as illegal. The term “prostitution” is rarely defined in these studies, however, leading to the implicit suggestion that it is a clearly defined activity. In fact, there are a wide range of sexual relationships involving a greater or lesser degree of financial quid pro quo.
This paper reevaluates the concept of prostitution by examining a variety of types of commercial and quasi-commercial sexual relationships in Turkey (specifically Ankara) in the 1940s and 1950s. Gender roles and gender relationships were still in the process of being redefined by the Kemalist revolution, and for a young sexually active man a wide variety of options presented themselves. Options ran the gamut from brothels and the purely mercenary prostitution they represented all the way to women (especially widows and divorcees) who wanted nothing more than sex. Within that range, though, were also those who would never accept money for sex, but did not mind being given presents, and those who used sex in an attempt to trap a man into marriage. Furthermore, women could be found who, in addition to sexual favors, provided domestic services such as sewing or cleaning.
This paper draws heavily on a unique set of (currently unpublished) memoirs describing one man’s experiences with various commercially motivated sexual experiences in Ankara in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These memoirs give us an insider’s view of this world that cannot be derived from legal and administrative discourse and police reports. Of course, they give us primarily the male view of this world, but also, indirectly, something of the women’s perspectives as well. It also draws on recent work on prostitution in the early Turkish republic (such as that of Mark David Wyers, and of Evered and Evered). In addition, it looks at comparable work from earlier periods, such as Ahmet Rasim’s autobiographical work on womanizing in the late Ottoman Empire, as well as works on the subtle shadings of sexual relationships in other parts of the world, such as Elizabeth Clement’s Love For Sale, on World War One-era New York City.
Sexual relations in 1950s Turkey went beyond the confines of marriage and state-monitored prostitution. This paper begins to examine their complexity.
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Dr. Emine Ö. Evered
In the early years of the Turkish republic, numerous policy and other proposals were circulated in an effort to curb prostitution. While some, such as the 1920 law that banned excessive spending at weddings, sought to encourage marriage, others targeted existing practices, such as the "oturak alemi", a party for young men to initiate them into ‘manhood’ by hiring local prostitutes to serve alcohol, danced, etc.. Depicted by local authorities as a widespread practice in the central Anatolian provinces, this ‘tradition’ was seen by some as the lead cause of crime and the primary avenue for transmission of syphilis and other diseases; they thus demanded its abolition to ‘save’ the nation and its youth. Approaches targeting foreigners were also promoted, such as a strict policy that relied on nationality and passport laws in order to ban the entry of ‘suspect’ foreign women or to facilitate their deportation. Meanwhile, alternative policies suggested that the keys to this matter could be found in the moral and occupational rehabilitation of women engaged in sex work. This approach promoted opening boarding facilities that would provide education, training, and the acquisition of employable skills needed to attain a better life and livelihood. These competing plans and proposals shaped governmental policies, leading to bans on secret prostitution and promoting a legalized and regulated sex work regime within the republic. This paper employs archival sources, legal records, and data from the medico-social geographies and newspapers of the 1920s and 1930s to examine this question of prostitution in Turkey and how state leaders conceptualized is suppression.
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Prof. Kyle Evered
After lengthy discussions in the early 1930s, the Turkish government opted to legalize prostitution and thoroughly regulate it. The 1933 “Regulation for the Struggle against Prostitution and Venereal Diseases Spread by Prostitution” was one of the most comprehensive laws in modern Turkish history, but contrary to what its title implied, this 126-article law did not aim to eradicate but rather ‘regulate’ sex work within the republic. In doing so, the state introduced strict provisions that re-mapped prostitution, creating invisible and contained spaces out of view and often on the peripheries of towns and cities. As much as the state aspired to conceal brothels, it also sought to render the bodies of prostitutes legible to state officials who would subject them to medical examination, licensing, and—when necessary—courses of treatment and bans from working. To achieve control, the movements of sex workers within their own communities were restricted and monitored under systems of surveillance, and local councils and leaders were recruited as active collaborators in the governmental administration of brothels. In this context of regulated bodies, places, and sexuality, the state achieved a measure of control over licensed sex work but also criminalized all other practices. Concentrating on the 1933 regulation and associated archival documents and state records, this paper examines this matter of control from the vantage of the geographic scales implicated in the republic’s regulation of sex work, ranging from the body, to regulated brothels, to the country’s communities, and to the nation-state.
