Theses supervised by Prof. Dr. Nadir Özbek
16 theses · Boğaziçi University
The 2002 Civil Code: Its reflections on the human rights of women
The Turkish Civil Code put into effect in 1 January 2002 made many Amendments to the former Civil Code. The Code also introduced changes regarding women and family. While making amendments, the equality of genders was a concern and new rules were introduced about that. This study to discusses the changes to what they articulate or disclose and what they produce on. To understand how the New Code changed women?s everyday lives, the law with its legislative process, national and internationaldevelopments and the legal history of the women?s movements in Turkey were examined.
Nestorians, Kurds, and the state: The struggle to survive in the frontier in the late Ottoman Period, 1839-1908
This thesis examines the effects of the Ottoman Empire's modern state-making practices on the lives of the Hakkari's Christian Nestorian tribes, and on the Nestorian tribes' relations with the neighboring Kurdish tribes. Starting from 1840s, the lives of the Nestorian tribes underwent significant changes. First, they were attacked in 1843 and 1846 by the Kurdish tribes, who were under the command of Bedirhan Bey. Second, throughout the period between 1850 and early 1870s, the central state tried to extend its authority over their settlements, and turn these "savage" tribes into loyal Ottoman subjects. From the 1850s onwards, the state's agents' attempts to secure regular tax collection from the Nestorian tribes, in line with the afore-mentioned objectives, led to the emergence of a continual tax problem between the two parties. The main reasons behind this problem were the irregularities that occurred during the collection of taxes such as repeated tax collection, and over-taxation, and also the coercive means employed by the tax collectors and the local government agents. During the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II, significant problems emerged between the Nestorian and the Kurdish tribes. From the 1880s onwards, the conflicts and power struggles between them were among the leading problems in Hakkari. Based mainly on Ottoman archival documents, the taxation problem and the conflicts between the Nestorian and the Kurdish tribes, together with the state agents' attitudes towards these problems, are analyzed in this study.
The "Tanzimat State" in the Ottoman Iraq: Tribes,ideology/shiism and taxation, 1830-1910
This thesis, which handles the periods of the Tanzimat and Abdülhamid II, aims to examine the implementation of the Hamidian reform policies in the Iraqi province of the Ottoman Empire in the context of central government reactions towards the prevalence of Shiism in the nineteenth century. The focal points of this study are how the Shiite identity was perceived by the Ottoman state and the measures of the Ottoman Empire against the spread of Shiism in the Iraqi province. This thesis is based on Ottoman archival documents, and the narratives of contemporary observers and researchers about the Ottoman state policies against the spread of Shiism and the growing penetration of Britain and Iran throughout the Persian Gulf and Iraqi regions. It is also examines the relations between the tribes in Iraqi province and the Ottoman central state during the Tanzimat period. At the same time, this study aims to draw a wide-ranging panorama by the examination of the border policies of the Ottoman Empire, preventing the propagation of Shiism through the revival of Sunni educational institutions. Finally, the border policies of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century in Iraq did not result in an achievement as the state desired.
Conscription in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire: Its reflections on the lives of ordinary people and resistance, 1843-1876
This thesis examines the creation of a new army in the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century manned by conscripts. Starting from the eighteenth century, significant reforms were introduced in the Empire. A new army and a regular recruitment system were part of these reforms which are within the scope of this study. Especially after 1846, Ottoman subjects started to be recruited for military service as an obligation. This study presents the early years of implementation of the recruitment system. While analyzing the conscription law of 1846, the thesis takes examples of the practice of the law from archival documents. Finally, it tries to show the subjects' reactions to conscription, which might have created cracks in the relationship between the state and its subjects. These reactions ranged from negotiable methods for avoiding the military service obligation to open rebellion, desertion, and even banditry. The law forms a struggle field for the ordinary people who are mostly invisible in history studies. The thesis tries to tell the real stories of ordinary people by analyzing this point of contestation which provides a chance to hear them.
The Montenegrin frontier of the Ottoman Empire: Loyalties and frontier defense (1863-1870)
This thesis focuses on the period from 1863-1870 and analyzes the implementation of Tanzimat reforms in the Montenegrin frontier re-gion of the Ottoman Empire with respect to military defense practices. The thesis revolves around the state's efforts in the frontier region to implement Tanzimat reforms while organizing a border defense and sustaining the loyalty of people living on the frontier. The thesis draws on archival documents as well as contemporary studies and demon-strates the Tanzimat state's policies on the Montenegrin frontier within the context of the administrative and military modernization of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. It also examines the rela-tionships between frontier people, Montenegro, and the Ottoman ad-ministration. In addition, the thesis investigates how frontier people's own policies affected the efforts of the Sublime Porte and Montenegro to penetrate the area. At the same time, the study contains a general overview of the central state's attempts to directly control other fron-tier regions of the empire. These attempts by the Tanzimat state to control the frontiers were designated to increase treasury revenues and military manpower resources. The lack of sustainable sources re-strained the limits of the Ottoman central administration in frontiers.
In search of the working class: Workers' subjectivities and resistance in an Istanbul neighborhood
This dissertation is an urban ethnography scrutinizing workers' subjectivities and resistance in a working class neighborhood of Istanbul, Turkey. By utilizing extensive case method, it aims to listen and shed light on the cultured agency of Turkish workers. It examines the apparent docility of working-class in our era of capitalist hegemony, particularly in Turkey as one of the extreme cases of this global tendency. It also contributes to the research on remedies for that docility. By focusing on the sphere of work and drawing on an extensive field work, the research explores the issues of proletarianization, entrepreneurism, meanings of work, and compliance and resistance at work in a different light. It reveals that petty entrepreneurism is key to understand the hegemony of capitalism. It uncovers the variety of meanings that workers attribute to their work and detects four subjectivities that workers move among, namely the craftsman, the hard worker, the detached survivor, and the despiser. The dissertation discovers several aspects of the subjectivity behind compliance and resistance, which remains to be hidden. I disclose five dilemmas of working-class resistance, namely the dilemma of dependency, of the craftsman, of coworkers, of the small workplace and of morality. Among others my primary contribution to the literature on working class resistance is to scrutinize the dilemmas, the hidden requirements, and the sacrifices working-class resistance involves. I argue that interests and their cognition cannot fully ex-plain working-class resistance, but it requires a moral choice rather than merely a rational one.
Vision reframed: Sensory formation and instrumentalization of trachoma (1914-1924)
This thesis aims to demonstrate how the narrative of trachoma, an infectious eye disease, has become a subject of regulation with the developments in the medical discourse of the early twentieth century. To achieve this, the thesis comprises around five chapters, including an introduction and conclusion. The first chapter focuses on the early twentieth-century debates in which ophthalmologists instrumentalized changes in understanding vision. The second chapter examines how this instrumentalization occurred simultaneously across national borders by analyzing international congresses on medicine and ophthalmology. The third chapter aims to reveal how the new governmental techniques are applied by establishing standards in the sense of sight. This chapter focuses on the experiences of immigrants from the Ottoman Empire to the United States as they underwent medical examinations at Ellis Island, one of the largest centers for implementing these medical and governmental techniques on eye diseases.
Morale, obedience, discipline: The politics of motivation in the Ottoman Great War
This thesis aims to deal with how the Ottoman government implemented the incentives to motivate its soldiers and non-conscripted youth. This thesis takes into consideration the fact the Ottoman army is not a homogenous formation; therefore, the various incentives were implemented for various groups of the Ottoman army. My main aim of this thesis is to examine the government policies regarding the motivation, discipline and obedience of both conscripted soldiers and non-conscripted youth and to demonstrate the most fundamental notions by which the Ottoman soldiers were motivated during the World War I with keeping in mind the ethnic and religious heterorganic nature of the Ottoman Army. In this thesis, I will seek answers to what policies the Ottoman government implemented to strengthen motivation, discipline and obedience of its soldiers and the non-conscripted youth between 1914-1918. Also, I will examine how these policies functioned.
Urban parks of Istanbul in the late Ottoman Empire: Constructed nature for recreation aims
This thesis examines the construction processes and perception of early urban parks of Istanbul in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-turies. Parks as constructed natural spaces developed on the interna-tional scale in the nineteenth century. The first urban parks of Istanbul, Taksim and Çamlıca Gardens in 1870, Tepebaşı Garden in 1880, and Gü-lhane Garden in 1913 were constructed. This thesis tries to show the different features of parks from public gardens known as mesire. Moreover, the motivation for creating these parks and their construction processes will be analyzed. This analysis and memoirs written at that time will demonstrate the profile of park goers. This thesis argues that the profile of park goers in the nineteenth century were cultural and political elites rather than ordinary people. Furthermore, the prohibition of Muslim women's entrance into parks is another aspect of this study. While the analysis of regulations on the situations of Muslim women draws a background, the represen-tation of Muslim women in parks in the novels will be discussed to see the perception of parks. This study asserts that parks were perceived as a threat to the morality of society in the late Ottoman Empire. The documents of Ottoman records, newspapers and journals, memoirs, and novels will be used as primary source in this thesis.
Law and order in Ottoman Iraq: Implementation of the criminal justice system (1840-1870)
This thesis discusses the initiation of Ottoman-reformed criminal procedures and courts into the provinces of Iraq between the 1840s and the late 1860s. It evaluates the Ottoman government's efforts to gain monopoly over the right to dispense justice in the region within the scope of the Ottoman centralization in its distant provinces. The introduction of new legal organization and the Tanzimat criminal procedures were part of the Ottoman attempt at reassertion of authority in the region. The records from the courts of the Iraqi provinces and the correspondences between the central and the provincial governments indicate how the Ottoman state prioritize the operation of justice as a mark of a legitimate governance in Iraq. The Tanzimat government gave significance to the standardization of trials and the adjudication of the criminal cases among the people of Iraq as a way to gain their loyalty. Besides the introduction of the criminal procedures, the implementation of an effective penal policy toward alleged criminals was seen as another solution by the government to pacify the tribal population and to establish a stable social order. In addition to the Ottoman government's judicial and penal policies, this thesis evaluates the Iraqi people's attitude toward the Ottoman courts to understand state-society relations in a region where tribal confederations were still strong and the people unaccustomed to the Ottoman judicial system.
Private indebtedness in Turkey after the 2001 financial crisis: An inquiry on class and inequality
The meaning of debt augmentation is clarified in the formation of the distinction between different classes or of different socio-economic levels and these different dispositions proliferate a vague world of meaning for the universal meaning and definition of the debt. The difference in meaning here will be handled over the private debts in this study. The proliferation and domination of the new form of capitalism, the financialization as a world sphere phenomenon has brought unprecedented economic inequalities and a very serious indebtedness trend. The aim of this study can be defined as a modest introduction to relationality between class relations, inequality and debt in particular case and context in Turkey. First, this study aims to investigate four types of level of income's new patterns about the debt phenomena via the consequences of the becoming debtor. In this inquiry, I want to briefly ex-plain and argue the problematic issues that what the indebtedness in the this specific comparison by the toolkits of new economic sociology and economic anthropology. Additionally, in particular I want to argue that the function of debt stimulates and strengthens the debt relations for the lower class or low-income groups, on the other hand debt supplies expansion and accumulation for the at the middle and upper class groups end of this process. Briefly stated, debt has a dissimilar function for different income groups or classes. Finally, in this context, I will conduct a discussion on the morality of debt.
Reclaiming the empire: Environment, marshes and hydraulic engineering in the late Ottoman period
This dissertation analyzes the transformation of the environment and the tensions and contestations to which this transformation led among various social actors in the Ottoman Empire. It focuses on attempts to reclaim marshes and other wetland regions such as lakes and rivers in different parts of the empire in the late Ottoman period. According to this dissertation, reclamation projects, which sought to turn uncultivated wetlands into agricultural lands, were part of a new concept of development that attributed the survival of the empire and the prosperity of the population to the growth of public works and a rise in agricultural production and commercial activity. They were related to an Ottoman modernity project in which the Ottoman government sought to establish authority over its territories, population, resources, economy, lands, and environment. Reclamation attempts were initially state-led projects, but in time because of the financial problems of the Ottoman state, they became profitable private enterprises over which entrepreneurs competed. These projects not only transformed the environment and ecology but also caused the disappearance of some means of subsistence for the local population such as fishery. Thus, they created winners and losers in society, leading to social tensions among various relevant actors. This dissertation problematizes the late Ottoman period by focusing on these tensions and struggles over the environment.
State, bureaucracy and power in the Late Ottoman Empire (1908-1913)
This study explains power relations in the civil bureaucratic apparatus through the controlling mechanisms of appointing and dismissing state cadres. The struggle to control the bureaucratic apparatus during the first five years of the Second Constitutional period suggests an alternative narrative that challenges the existing literature on political history which describes power relations among the political elite only in terms of dominating the government and parliament. Alongside governmental and parliamentary conflicts, this study concerns the extension of power relations to the state apparatus through bureaucratic cadres. This approach is possible if the state is considered as neither a monolithic nor a unitary organization, as functional and institutional approaches to state theory do. Instead, such an approach must break from the modernization paradigm on which the literature of bureaucracy, including the late Ottoman bureaucracy, has long been based. Rather than focusing on grand narratives over long historical periods, this research evaluates short periods of time that were formed by everyday struggles among the actors who comprise history itself. This is evident when the complex struggles among different political and non-political actors to shaping state cadres are considered. For this reason, this dissertation puts to two antithetical practices – appointments and dismissals – under the microscope. Gubernatorial appointments and the mass purges (tensikât) are reviewed from this perspective.
Educating citizens for "Sexual manners": Politics of sexuality between 1945-1965 in Turkey
This study aims to examine the discourse on "sexual manners" that has become visible in the public sphere in Turkey between 1945 and 1965, a period marked by political, economic, and social changes. On the one hand, "sexual manners" turned into a constructive and regulative discourse for concepts such as femininity, masculinity, marriage, family, reproduction, and birth control, based on the legitimacy of "scientification," when the sexuality of the citizens was considered invisible and muted in the public sphere. The sexual manners discourse, produced by the authors gathered around Seksoloji magazine and similar publishing houses, developed discussions in line with the global literature for the well-being of the individual and collective body. On the other hand, sexual manners contributed to the circulation of new norms for "desired" citizenship by aiming to regulate intimate relations between individuals. This dissertation aims to discuss the transformation regarding the "appropriate sexuality" of the period by focusing on the tensions between discourse and practice through subjects such as virginity, sexual pleasure, divorce, and extramarital affairs.
From the movement of '68 to the rupture of '71: The transformation of student protests in Turkey
This thesis analyses the student movement in Turkey between 1968 and 1971 and the transformation of the protest repertoire. In 1968, the student protests that began in Europe and the United States were also reflected in Turkey. The thesis aims to reveal the difference of the Turkey's '68 movement from the Western '68 movement, the emergence of unique student organizations and the multidimensional transformation of the student movement's repertoire of actions until the '71 rupture. Focusing on the leading universities of the country, Middle East Technical University, Istanbul Technical University, and Istanbul University, the thesis examines the Federation of Idea Clubs, Dev-Genç, Socialist Idea Club, and Revolutionary Student Union, which were the main student organizations. It explains how the student leaders of these organizations transformed the movement in ideological and practical terms.
Modernite eleştirisinden siyasi projeye: İsmet Özel ve İstiklâl Marşı Derneği (2007-2024)
This thesis examines whether İsmet Özel's theoretical vision within Islamist thought can be transformed into a political movement through İstiklâl Marşı Derneği (İMDER, Association for the Turkish National Anthem). The study first situates Özel's intellectual corpus—which began to take shape in the political climate of the 1960s and is founded upon critiques of modernity, capitalism, and Western civilization—within the traditions of Islamism and modern thought in Türkiye. It then analyzes how this theoretical framework became institutionalized in the organizational structure, symbolic repertoire, and political discourse of İMDER, which was established under Özel's leadership in 2007. A thematic analysis of the association's publication, the journal Çelimli Çalım, reveals efforts to reinterpret İstiklâl Marşı (The Turkish National Anthem) as a manifesto, define Turkishness within the axis of an Islamic mission, and construct alternative visions in the fields of history, language, and economics. By integrating intellectual history, discourse analysis, and institutional examination, the thesis makes three original contributions: it investigates the understudied link between intellectual critique and organizational practice; proposes a methodological model for analyzing the text-institution relationship; and positions İMDER within the literature on nationalism, modernity, and Islamism.