Women, Visibility, and Politics of Night from Ottoman Empire to Contemporary Turkey

By Nurçin Ileri. When Kamelya Hanım was found dead in her home on Taksim Street in 1896, the news made headlines with sensational details in the newspapers of the time. In January 2016, 19-year-old E.F.B. was raped and robbed while returning home at night on Istanbul’s Bağdat Avenue, causing a similar media coverage. What was it that made the attitudes toward the victims in these two separate incidents, a murder and a rape that took place in vastly different historical periods and social contexts, so strikingly similar? The discourses and policies that aim to exclude women from urban spaces and the public sphere continue to persist by relying on traditional moral codes and the belief that the city can never be safe for women.