Young women suicides in the early republican period

One of the basic features of modern thought is the practice of classifying by establishing dualities, and this practice operates on a gendered platform. On the other hand, with the ideological power it receives from biological determinism, modern medical knowledge, infiltrates between the female body and modern managerialism by fixing the dualities and in this way it defines the definition of modern womanhood. This thesis discusses the construction of "modern femininity" by medical knowledge through the suicide of young Muslim/Turkish women in Istanbul, which the early Republic described as an epidemic. In this way, the study focuses on the gender regime of the Ottoman-Turkish modernization process, the construction of the "new female ideal" and the role of anti-colonial nationalism.