In the early Turkish republic of the 1920s, population was a central concern for the leadership of the fledgling Kemalist state amid fears of a demographic collapse. Beyond viewing population as simply a geopolitical asset, a robust citizenry was also identified as a crucial foundation for socio-economic development following the War of Independence. Employing critical theory perspectives on governmentality and biopolitics, this paper focuses on how an associated demographic discourse concerning population – in terms both numerical and medical – thus provided a basis for emerging programs in public health, confronting the very real threats posed by disease. Employing the example of the nascent republic’s anti-malarial campaigns, this study thus examines the discursive context in the state’s struggles against malaria. In doing so, it also engages with the early development of medical geography and the cartographic charting of malaria and geographies of risk. Also, in evaluating the modes of governance at play, it addresses and evaluates both the legislative measures and the public education strategies that were employed in combating this widespread disease amid the broader contexts of nation-building. Based upon an analysis of official primary sources, archival documents, and secondary literature on both republican Turkey and histories of anti-malarial projects, this study thus traces one vital trajectory in the development of modern governmentality (i.e., that of public health) within the early Turkish republic. Still confronting malaria today in some of the areas of southeastern Anatolia – where national cohesion and modern development likewise remain elusive, absolute eradication may be viewed as an unfinished project. Despite shortcomings with the war on malaria, the state and its proponents began to write histories of eradication in triumphal fashion almost as soon as the programs themselves began to take shape. Omitted from these ‘linear’ narratives of nation, population, and progress, however, were any references to how the campaign itself not only served to legitimate the state but also enabled it to insinuate itself into the lives of its citizens, their livelihoods, landscapes, and communities in ways that hitherto were unimaginable.

This paper examines the emergence of state-led anti-syphilis campaigns in Turkey during the 1920s and 1930s and explores how the state created a new medical and moral order surrounding its citizens’ sexualities. Amid the Ottoman Empire’s collapse, Turkey’s fledgling Ministry of Public Health and Social Services sought to deal with the increasing prevalence of syphilis throughout its rural communities as connected with the return of soldiers from World War I. In this context of public health, matters of sex, reproduction, and sexual health were subject to state intervention and control and in ways that included but also transcended concerns over morality. Implementing this transition, the state proceeded carefully to ensure that its efforts to govern the sexual lives of its citizens did not contradict with societal mores or values. Making syphilis a subject for state regulation, moral pronouncements regarding the disease were reframed, represented, and dispersed as lessons in public health. In my paper, utilizing information from official and unofficial primary sources, I analyze this transformation as part of a broader process of medicalization and state expansion that reshaped understandings of sexuality, morality, and reproduction during the socio-political transitions from a religious empire to a nominally secular nation-state. First, my research begins with an examination of the data collected and submitted to the state by its provincial health directors. Gathered from 1923 onward, this data and their monthly reports described in colorful detail the physical, human, and epidemiological landscapes of Turkey’s provinces. Second, I examine the legislative frameworks, such as the 1934 Public Health Law, by which the state enacted institutional controls over syphilis – and society. Third, I explore how the state sought to engage with its citizenry by analyzing posters, brochures, and medical booklets that were produced by the Ministry of Public Health in 1920s and 1930s. Not only revealing how the republic endeavored to educate the public, this public health and safety literature illustrates the scope and discourse of early campaigns against syphilis. Fourth, I deal with how the state prioritized policies affecting prostitution and subjected prostitutes and brothels to weekly examinations, inspections, and taxes. Finally, I evaluate how these campaigns helped contribute to a political culture in Turkey geared towards both the gathering, ordering, and assessing data on the livelihoods, activities, cultures, and bodies of its citizens and the obligations compelling doctors to report disease incidence, treatment, and failure to comply with treatment.

What role did class, gender, ethnic, and religious differences play in the consumption and production of healing practices in Syria between 1922 and 1956? How did treatment of mental illnesses change during this period, and what led to these changes? What can patient case files and scientific articles tell us about the lived experiences of illness? This presentation provides preliminary answers to these questions through the use of data culled from medical records of Ibn Sina Mental Hospital, the first modern public psychiatric hospital in Syria founded in 1922 and the only hospital of its kind in the country until 1956, when a second public psychiatric hospital opened near Aleppo. Using patient files and scientific journals of the period, I argue that the use of particular labels and healing practices were a product of a plural medical and scientific marketplace where both elite Western?trained physicians and well?connected local healers contributed to a multi?layered discourse of illness and wellness. Data in some sources from the period suggest that the government?run hospital faced a number of obstacles in finding acceptance, procuring funding, and producing beneficial results for patients in the 1920s?1940s, and more recent sources suggest the situation hardly changed in the early post?colonial period. Nevertheless, the medical marketplace of the time developed into a richly diverse field for individuals and their families seeking diagnosis, treatment, and – ultimately, it was often hoped – rehabilitation. From young soldiers to refugees and shopkeepers, the Ibn Sina Hospital for Mental Illnesses (as it is known in Arabic in Ministry of Health records) was a temporary home for Syrians and foreigners of many walks of life during a period of great political and social transformation in the region. In this paper, I critique the usefulness of Foucauldian approaches on the clinic and on madness in the study of this period in medical and Middle Eastern history. My argument about medical narratives and stigmatization is also influenced by theoretical concepts and empirical methods of scholars working on the history of psychiatry in Egypt and colonial African states. Ultimately, this research has larger implications for studying health in modern societies, particularly in the study of the role of etiology and the effect of labeling in seeking and responding to treatment, and in the study of the role of the modern state in developing health care institutions.

Abundant, fresh, and of course healthful produce. Few imaginaries of the greater Mediterranean fail to render a seaside pastoral landscape dotted with the myriad treasures of nature’s vast bounty. Nevertheless, as Fernand Braudel noted, the Mediterranean has historically been an uneven landscape of abundance and famine, comprised of complex networks of access, excess, want, and need. In the eastern Mediterranean alone, along the shores of western Turkey, the tropes of abundance and health continue to demarcate international engagement with the region, as evidenced by the growing fascination with so-called “wellness tourism,” Turkish hamams, and most recently, organic Turkish agricultural products. The Green Revolution officially arrived in Turkey with the distribution of high yield wheat seed in 1968, but the agricultural landscape of Turkey was fundamentally altered beginning with the agricultural policies of the Kemalist state. Regardless, a wide swath of the population never abandoned its “traditional” methods of cultivation (no chemical herbicides, pesticides, etc). Yesterday’s traditional has become today’s “organic;” with significant implications for the meaning of agriculture, health, and well-being throughout Turkey. Based on ethnographic, cartographic, primary and secondary document analysis, this study seeks to interrogate the discursive and material production of “organic” agriculture in Turkey and its impact on landscapes, livelihoods, and uneven dimensions of access to healthful produce in Turkey, as continued emphasis is placed on the connections between agricultural and health policies. Specifically, the following concerns will be addressed: how have competing environmental narratives reflected an uneven geography of (agricultural/"natural") abundance and scarcity throughout the region? How have these narratives been implicated in the proliferation of foreign market oriented organic agriculture in recent decades? While this trend could benefit Turkey as a whole, what are the complications for local producers? (i.e. many Turks engaged in agriculture grow on small farms using "un-certified" agricultural methods and are forced to compete with modern agricultural techniques and non-organic crops (i.e. corn, wheat). In addition, large farms that are having trouble transforming their non-organic methods have taken to buying-out or encroaching upon smaller farmers. Finally, what is the overall impact of organic agriculture in Turkey with respect to local livelihoods and local health?