‘Protecting the national body’: regulating the practice and the place of prostitution in early republican Turkey

Abstract

In the formative years of the Turkish Republic, the regulation of prostitution was geared toward biopolitical ends: safeguarding public health and eliminating syphilis. Viewing sexually transmitted diseases as a threat to the nation's population and economy, the Ministry of Health and Social Assistance played a crucial role in the identification and definition of prostitution as a public health risk. Out of this medicalized framing of the disease and of prostitution, the republic adopted legislative remedies for both. Prostitution was legislatively regulated to achieve comprehensive surveillance and policing -sometimes amid debate between state interests promoting regulation and those concerned with matters of morality. A modernist nation-state, otherwise characterized as progressive with regard to the status of women, instituted a regulatory regime to define appropriate sexual practices and places and mandate the licensing and medical examination of some of its most marginalized female citizens.

Labor Market for Sex Workers: Stigma and Occupational Choice

“…Some stylized facts relating to scholarship on market for sex work 1) Sex work scholarship is multidisciplinary. Academic literature on sex work ranges from works in medical sociology and public health (Evered & Evered, 2013;O'Neil et al, 2004;Sirotin, Strathdee, Lozada, Nguyen, et al, 2010), political science (Hubbard, Matthews, & Scoular, 2008;Sanders & Campbell, 2007) , economics (Arunachalam & Shah, 2012;Della Giusta et al, 2008;Edlund & Korn, 2009;Farmer & Horowitz, 2013)and philosophy (Nussbaum, 2000;Pateman, 2009).…”

“…Similarly, Turkey also has a system of registration of sex workers whereby single, Turkish women over the age of 18 may register to work in a state licensed brothel. The legal framework on sex work in Turkey was a consequence of policies in its formative years that viewed sexually transmitted diseases as a threat to the population and therefore closely monitored and regulated brothels in a medicalised system (Evered & Evered, 2013). Special identity cards are issued that identify such women as sex workers and many sex workers avoid registration because of the stigma associated (Simsek, Kisa, & Dziegielewski, 2003).…”

Framing "our social disaster"

“…In most instances, these apprehensions gave way to statement both medical and moral, and culminated with calls for and legislative enactments of regulatory regimes governing not only sex work but also the sexualities of targeted citizens (i.e., women and girls), as well [9]. While many Ottoman era regulations were local or site-specific in either application or actual enforcement [10], initial localized efforts in the republican era [11] culminated in eventual state-wide legislation and enforcement [12].…”

Draining an Anatolian desert: overcoming water, wetlands, and malaria in early republican Ankara

“…Because malaria was rooted in forms of nature that ranged from wetlands to man-made rice fields, as opposed to diseases that were linked with social conditions, human activity, or standards of morality, the state's mandate for confronting malaria was far broader than for other diseases. While other public health laws were limited largely to the bodies and behaviors of the state's populace, subjecting citizens to surveillance and even to invasive examinations, 48 the laws addressing malaria confronted a wide range of human and physical landscapes throughout Anatolia. In this context, the republic unambiguously identified wetlands, whether natural or man-made, as potential enemies of the state.…”