Prostitution in dersaadet: Places, agents, and discourses (1876-1923)

As a result of the tendencies of "history from below" and "feminist history" in the Turkish historiography, a great deal of neglected areas of the Ottoman society have been revealed during the past two decades. Nevertheless, what was said of Ottoman everydayness up to now constitutes solely a little part of what may be written about. In this context, this work moves the claim of being a micro history thesis which focuses on the prostitutes, procurers and lechers as the neglected characters when the late Ottoman social life is the main topic. Main argument of the thesis is the idea that offers that prostitution in İstanbul created new social trails by intertwining with the discourse of public health in the reign of Abdülhamid II. Coming to the scene of history of the actors in prostitution, so to speak, their relationships with the state or the effects of regulative authority of the state upon them is included in this work as well as the relations between them. Modern state perpatually recreates and regulates the public spaces through its arrangements. As a social relationship, prostitution had its share from the Ottoman modernization and was transformed into an institution which reinforcing the puissance over the society beginning from the end of nineteenth century. In the final analysis, this work has chosen Istanbul as its sample in the scope of its subject. The core reason of this preference is that Istanbul provides the essential materials in terms of its demograhical intensivity and etno-religious patterns. This thesis chronologically includes the years of 1876-1923. In the thesis, background of institutionalisation of prostitution in Istanbul shall be focused upon through the discourse of public health and urban order. Besides, a large scale profile is to be constructed about the actors in the business of prostitution in perspective of gender and is shown that they formed a sui generis subculture with its own rituals.