In the Age of Freedom, in the Name of Justice : Slaves, Slaveholders, and the State in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic, 1857-1933

This dissertation concerns itself with the practice of slavery in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic in the second half of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth centuries. It places slavery at the intersection of the new liberal political order that began to form in the mid-1850s, the expulsion of the Caucasian peoples and their subsequent transplantation in the Ottoman Empire, and the international anti-slavery law that was taking shape simultaneously. It examines the social and legal (trans)formations at this particular juncture, traces the legal making and perpetuation of “Circassianness” as an “enslavable” ethnic category, and consequently argues that slavery bore a key significance in defining what citizenship came to mean in the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic. Ottoman slavery comprised both male and female slaves, employed respectively for agricultural work in rural areas and for domestic and sexual services in the large urban centers of the empire. Their social destinies were markedly different from each other throughout the long course of the practice, but especially so in the “age of freedom,” which was laden, above all, with the Ottoman state’s promise of equality before the law. Male slaves demanded their “equality” in conspicuous ways by bringing lawsuits against their owners or through occasional armed resistance. Female slaves, on the other hand, whose flow towards the elite households of Istanbul did not cease at least until the second decade of the twentieth century, developed other forms of relationships both with their owners and slavery as a practice. Clinging on to the slave trade and at times wielding it as a weapon, they continued building extensive patronage networks across the empire, although their political participation became marginalized within an increasingly gendered political community, as the nineteenth century drew near its end. Based on slave petitions, slaveholding elites’ correspondences, police interrogations, legal records, and parliamentary minutes, this dissertation probes the entangled histories of slave emancipation and citizenship in the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic. Without dismissing its distinctive features, such as the multiple legal systems that governed it or the lack of its abolition, my aim is to place the Ottoman practice of slavery in its larger political context, not only within the Ottoman Empire but also the entire globe, and dismantle the categories of Islam and nationalism, which respectively essentializes Ottoman slavery and overcodes citizenship, along the way

Shiny Things and Sovereign Legalities: Expropriation of Dynastic Property in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic

This article probes the legal expropriation of dynastic property in the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic. Focused on the period from Abdülhamid II's deposal in 1909 to the decade immediately following the abolition of the caliphate in 1924, it takes parliamentary debates as entry points for exploring how this legislative process redefined the sovereign's relationship with property. Although this process was initially limited only to Yıldız Palace, the debates that surrounded it heuristically helped to shape a new understanding of public ownership of property that was put to use in other contexts in the years to come, most notably during and after World War I and the Armenian genocide, before establishing itself as the foundation of a new ownership regime with the republican appropriation and reuse of property two decades later

Endometrial carcinoma risk among women diagnosed with endometrial hyperplasia: the 34-year experience in a large health plan

Classifying endometrial hyperplasia (EH) according to the severity of glandular crowding (simple hyperplasia (SH) vs complex hyperplasia (CH)) and nuclear atypia (simple atypical hyperplasia (SAH) vs complex atypical hyperplasia (CAH)) should predict subsequent endometrial carcinoma risk, but data on progression are lacking. Our nested case–control study of EH progression included 138 cases, who were diagnosed with EH and then with carcinoma (1970–2003) at least 1 year (median, 6.5 years) later, and 241 controls, who were individually matched on age, date, and follow-up duration and counter-matched on EH classification. After centralised pathology panel and medical record review, we generated rate ratios (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs), adjusted for treatment and repeat biopsies. With disordered proliferative endometrium (DPEM) as the referent, AH significantly increased carcinoma risk (RR=14, 95% CI, 5–38). Risk was highest 1–5 years after AH (RR=48, 95% CI, 8–294), but remained elevated 5 or more years after AH (RR=3.5, 95% CI, 1.0–9.6). Progression risks for SH (RR=2.0, 95% CI, 0.9–4.5) and CH (RR=2.8, 95% CI, 1.0–7.9) were substantially lower and only slightly higher than the progression risk for DPEM. The higher progression risks for AH could foster management guidelines based on markedly different progression risks for atypical vs non-atypical EH

The uncertainties of freedom : The second constitutional era and the end of slavery in the late Ottoman Empire

Taking the constitutional revolution of 1908 in the Ottoman Empire as its point of departure, this article traces the constitutional regime’s emancipatory efforts and failures through a series of claims made by slaves (a majority of whom were women) and their families (or relatives and other agents acting on their behalf) to citizenship. Focusing on the few years that followed the revolution—during which the end of slavery largely overlapped with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the Turkish republic—the article explores the social and political conditions in the late Ottoman Empire, which set the limits of freedom, justice, and equality and determined who was entitled to have them and who was not