Historians of the Ottoman Empire have up until now written extensively not only on the polyethnic and multireligious nature of the Ottoman Empire, but also on the specific ethnic and religious groups that made up this plurality. Yet, although the Gypsies were a part of this pluralistic society, they have not received sufficient critical attention from Ottomanists whether in Turkey or abroad. While a few important studies have recently been published on the Ottoman Gypsies, this scholarship, though indeed very useful as a guide to the rich materials available on the subject, are weakened by two competing arguments. The first of these arguments is that the Gypsies of the Ottoman Balkans provide a salient example of a group marginalized through stigmatization, segregation and exclusion, whereas the second maintains that Gypsies were benignly tolerated by the Ottoman state. These analyses however fail to take into account that the legal, social and economic status of the Roma people in the Ottoman Empire seems to have been, at different times and in different places, much more complicated than simple marginalization or toleration. The question in fact needs to be problematized through a consideration of regional, local and temporal differences. My previous readings of the kanunnames and the mühimme registers of the second half of the sixteenth century substantiate this view and demonstrate that the marginality of the Gypsies in the Ottoman Balkans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was neither absolute and unchanging nor inflexible and complete. The interaction of the Gypsies both with the state and with Ottoman society at large was both hostile and symbiotic. Thus, the purpose of this study is to delve further into this topic and analyze how the Ottoman Imperial state dealt with what I call “community in motion” at various levels in the late nineteenth century. Through close reading of a layiha (memorandum) written by Muallim Sa’di Efendi, a college professor in the city of Siroz (Serres) in communication with other archival sources located in Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi in Istanbul, the paper attempts not only to understand the ways and techniques through which the late Ottoman state produced and governed the Empire’s subjects but also to show how Gypsies interacted with and were received by the local population in Serres, including Muslims and Orthodox Christians. My argument is that during the sixteenth century, the imperial state adopts residential and religious mobility of the Gypsies, albeit with certain restrictions. Yet, by the late nineteenth century, one of the most significant concerns of the late Ottoman state was to “reform” (ıslah) the Gypsies. Constants attempts were being made to deconstruct, normalize and eliminate differences of Gypsies, for instance, appointing imams to the Gypsy neighborhoods to “correct” their faith or opening new schools to “save” them from ignorance and poverty that lived in.

The Progressive Women’s Association (PWA), founded in 1975 under the auspices of the Turkish Communist Party (TCP) when second-wave feminism was on the rise in Europe, emerged as the largest and most significant women’s organization in Turkey’s recent history. However, the organization did not position itself within the feminist paradigm. Instead, it worked for women’s causes without a feminist lineage. Thus, one of the principal questions of this study is how and to what extent the women’s movement in Europe, particularly second-wave feminism, was reflected by the women who founded the PWA and mobilized thousands of women during its five-year existence before it was shut down following the military coup in 1980. By relying on the journal Kadınların Sesi (Women’s Voice) published by the PWA, this study attempts to analyze how and to what extent women of the PWA followed and interpreted Middle East politics and specifically the condition of women in the Middle East. Previous studies on the PWA and its role in the history of the Turkish women’s movement have focused on locating the PWA within the socio-political context of modern Turkish history in general, and Turkish women’s history in particular. This study departs from the existing literature and unpacks how these women reflected upon the world in which they lived by focusing on what they wrote about the Middle East and women in the region.

No abstract

Türkiye'de Roman kadınlarla ilgili bilimsel literatür çok sınırlıdır. Dahası, Roman kadınların sesleri bu literatürde nadiren duyulmaktadır. Çoğunlukla Roman kadınlar bu çalışmaların öznesi olmaktan ziyade nesnesi olarak karşımıza çıkıyor. Feminist metodoloji bu pozisyonun karşısında duruyor ve yapılan çalışmalarda kadınların sesini öncellemeyi salık veriyor. Bundan hareketle, Roman kadınların seslerine ve aidiyet anlatılarına odaklanarak yapılan bu çalışma, Roman kadınların kendilerini Türkiye'nin sosyo-politik bağlamında etnik, dini, ulusal ve toplumsal cinsiyet kategorilerine göre nasıl konumlandırdıklarına cevap verme girişimidir. Dahası, Roman kadınların sosyal algıları ve onları daha çok aşağılayan ve kötüleyen sosyo-politik büyük anlatıları nasıl benimsediklerini, müzakere ettiklerini ve bunlara nasıl direndiklerini araştırarak mevcut literatüre katkı sunmayı amaçlıyor. Çalışma sonucunda, Roman kadınların kendilerini ve kendi etnik kökenlerini tanımlarken Türkiye'nin sosyo-politik bağlamında önemli ipuçları verdikleri fark edilmiştir. Ayrıca, Roman kadınların günlük hayatlarını idame ettirirken sosyal dışlanma ve ayrımcılık yaşadıkları, temelde etnik köken, yoksulluk, cinsiyet kıskacında kaldıkları, bu kıskaçtan sıyrılmak amaçlı çeşitli pratikler ve taktikleri uyguladıklarını söylemek mümkündür.