To Bring About “A Moral of Renewal”: The Deportation of Sex Workers in the Ottoman First World War

Abstract

This article examines the Ottoman Empire’s policy of deporting sex workers to the interior of Anatolia during World War I and uses the history of sexuality as a new methodological approach to understanding wartime policymaking. It argues that similar to the Ottomans’ European co-belligerents, the preservation of public morality was not a political end in and of itself. Rather, the usage of sexuality as an analytical lens reveals that gender and sexual politics were part and parcel of the Ottoman effort to ensure its sovereignty as it fought a war for its survival. The war’s effect on gender and sexual politics were therefore not merely incidental; they were crucial components of decision-making deemed necessary for the preservation of the empire. As such, I suggest further integrating the Ottoman Empire into the World War I of “larger Europe,” viewing Istanbul as a source, rather than a repository, of social and political policy. I draw upon petitions that detail the experiences of deported sex workers, communications between the police and provincial leaders, reports from the Ottoman military, and observations from foreign sources to outline the contours of the policy of deporting sex workers. The article uses the deportations to illustrate intra-Ottoman power struggles, as local administrators quibbled with Istanbul over the execution of the policy. These sources also indicate that the policy had uneven impacts on women depending on their ethnicity, religion, and national background.