Crime, criminality and criminals in Ottoman Antalya (middle of 19th century)

Controlling violence and criminals has been a fundamental problem of humanity. Understanding the sense of violence and crime has interested the attention of fields of social sciences such as psychology and sociology. Likewise, for a long time, crime and violence have also begun to appear in texts written in the field of history. This study is based on the cases of violent incidents such as wounding, murder, assault and rape, which occurred in Antalya and heard in the courts of Antalya between 1851-1866. It is known that Westernization efforts started to be seen in the field of law in the Ottoman Empire in those years when the Ottoman Empire was in a political and economic chaos atmosphere. In the 19th century, fermans published in Istanbul emphasized equal judgment and even mentioned state violence. Moreover, a Western understanding of judgement which banned torture was adopted. It has been observed how, in the 19th century Ottoman judicial system, the approach to violent crimes and criminal sanctions were put into effect in a provincial city, very far from the capital and behind the Taurus Mountains. It has obviously been tried to interpret these from the perspective of an ancient and heterogenous port city with all its ethnical and cultural diversity.