No man's land: gender and sexuality in erotic narratives of the Late Ottoman Empire

Abstract

The emergence of Ottoman Turkish popular erotic narratives coincided with the proclamation of the Second Constitution in 1908. Thereafter, the publication of these narratives continued for around two decades until they were prohibited in the early years of the Turkish Republic on the grounds that they would damage public morality. This dissertation comprehensively reads examples of Ottoman Turkish popular erotic narratives. It provides insight into newly emerging discourses on gender and sexuality in the twentieth-century Ottoman Empire. In addition to investigating the emergence of new discourses on gender and sexuality through which the transition from sexual practices to construction of sexual identities unfolded, this dissertation is intended to demonstrate the Ottoman Empire’s political transition to modernity as well as to the nation state in relation to those newly emerged discourses.