Delineation of a politico-scientific complex to govern the “abnormal” child: mental hygiene, vocational curriculum, and Republican imaginations of re/productive citizenry, Turkey (1930–1950)

Abstract

The two decades following the establishment of the Turkish Republic witnessed the growth of the pervasive fear that vagrant and homeless children and child delinquents presented a threat to the physical, mental, and economic well-being of the nascent Turkish nation. Newspapers of the period regularly touched upon the issue, alerting the public and state officials to the increase in the number of vagrant and homeless children on the streets of Istanbul, and to the crime and other troubles caused by these küçük sefiller (“little miserables”), as a deputy from Istanbul called them. The language of these newspaper articles was an amalgam of both humanitarian sentiments such as showing charity and mercy to these groups and fears that necessitated their social and moral control in order that they become re/productive citizens of the new Republic. In this paper, I explore how certain child populations gained visibility and intelligibility during the first few decades of the Turkish Republic. I particularly focus on a modern child rescue institution, Çocukları Kurtarma Yurdu, founded in this period as an amalgam of numerous – at times competing – discourses that fixated on the bodies of “street children”, a colloquial term that referred to a heterogeneous group of children including child delinquents, vagrant, homeless, and destitute children. The institution blended modern mental hygiene principles derived from psychology/psychiatry with progressive vocational education and humanitarianism, with the ultimate goal of fabricating mentally and physically sound and economically productive republican citizens out of these “abnormal bodies”.

Keywords:

• Mental hygiene
• vagrant children
• psychopathy
• vocational education
• solidaristic ethics
• social assistance

Notes

¹ Safaeddin Karanakçı, “Çocuk Bayramı ve Sokak Çocukları [Children’s festival and street children],” Cumhuriyet, April 24, 1938, 5.

² Ibid.

³ Hıfzı Veldet Velidedeoğlu, “Başıboş Çocuklar [Homeless children],” Cumhuriyet, February 22, 1945, 2.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Mahalle was/is the quintessential social neighbourhood unit that constituted an essential component of sociality in Turkish culture, particularly in the Ottoman Empire. See İlber Ortaylı, Osmanlı toplumunda aile [Family in the Ottoman Empire] (İstanbul: Pan Yayıncılık, 2000), 21–9.

⁶ Nadir Özbek, “The Politics of Modern Welfare Institutions in the Late Ottoman Empire (1876–1909),” International Journal of Turcologia 3, no. 5 (2008): 46. For a summary of the social welfare practices in the late Ottoman Empire and the transformation to modern welfare practices, see, “Osmanlı’dan Günümüze Türkiye’de Sosyal Devlet [Social state in Turkey from the Ottoman Empire to the modern era],” Toplum ve Bilim 91, no. 2 (2002), 7–33.

⁷ “Osmanlı’dan Günümüze Türkiye’de Sosyal Devlet; Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nd ‘Sosyal Yardım’ Uygulamaları [Social welfare practices in the Ottoman Empire],” in Tanzimat: Değişim Sürecinde Osmanlı İmparatorluğ, ed. Mehmet Seyitdanlıoğlu and Halil İnalcık (Ankara: Phoenix Yayınevi, 2006).

⁸ For a history of the policies towards the “children in need of protection”, see Abdullah Karatay, “The Formation of Policies for Children in Need of Protection in the Republican Era” (Doctoral dissertation, Marmara University, 2007).

⁹ The first Islahhane was established in the early 1860s and by the early 1870s, 17 of them were established in various provinces of the Empire.

¹⁰ Nazan Maksudyan, “Orphans, Cities, and the State: Vocational Orphanages (Islahhanes) and Reform in the Late Ottoman Empire,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 43 (2011): 494. See also Özbek, “The Politics of Modern Welfare Institutions in the Late Ottoman Empire (1876–1909)”.

¹¹ Maksudyan, “Orphans, Cities, and the State”, 498.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Nadir Özbek, “‘Beggars’ and ‘Vagrants’ in Ottoman State Policy and Public Discourse, 1876–1914,” Middle Eastern Studies 45, no. 5 (2009): 786.

¹⁴ Ibid. See also Maksudyan, “Orphans, Cities, and the State”, 496; Ferdan Ergut, “Policing the Poor in the Late Ottoman Empire,” Middle Eastern Studies 38, no. 2 (2002), 161–162.

¹⁵ Nadir Özbek, “‘Beggars’ and ‘Vagrants’ in Ottoman State Policy and Public Discourse, 1876–1914,” 787–8.

¹⁶ Selçuk Akşin Somel, in Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Selçuk Akşin Somel (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2003), 109.

¹⁷ Maksudyan, “Orphans, Cities, and the State,” 498–9.

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Institutionalisation for care of children in need intensified during the last decades of the Hamidian era with the establishment of a poorhouse (Darülaceze) in 1896 with a capacity for hosting about a thousand children, an imperial orphanage (Darülhayr-ı Âlî) in 1902 in Istanbul, and the Imperial Hospital for Children (Hamidiye Etfal Hastahane-i Âlîsi) in 1899. What this institutionalisation suggests is that the state gradually took up the task of “rescuing” the “problem” children to whom it had been blind in the past. See Özbek, “The Politics of Modern Welfare Institutions in the Late Ottoman Empire (1876–1909)”.

²⁰ The majority of the institutions for orphans, vagrants, and homeless children founded during the first two decades of the Republic were established by private foundations or private initiatives that received some or no funding from the central government and/or local municipalities. Some of these institutions such as Darüşşafaka (a major institution for poor and homeless children), were established during the late Ottoman Empire, while others like Himaye-i Etfal Cemiyeti (Child Protection Society, 1921) were established in the first decade of the Republic. For a comprehensive list of institutions for children during the first two decades of the Republic, see Hüseyin Sapmazlı, Çocuk Hakları ve Himaye Müesseseleri [Children’s rights and child protection institutions] (Ankara: Yeni Cezaevi Yayınları, 1945), 221–3. The table provided by Sapmazlı demonstrates the coexistence of modern and traditional institutions dating back to the late Ottoman Empire for children in need of protection.

²¹ Belediye Kanunu. 1580, March 4, 1930. In particular, Articles 17, 18, 34, 45, 48, and 69 listed duties and responsibilities of local governments towards these populations.

²² Ziyaeddin Fahri Fındıkoğlu, “Çocukları Kurtarma Yurdu [Child rescue institution],” İş: Felsefe, Ahlak ve İçtimaiyat Mecmuası 9, no. 34 (1943): 205–11.

²³ A governmental decree issued in 1933 mentions Fahrettin Kerim and İbrahim Zati as two experts in the commission. Cumhuriyet Arşivi, July 16, 1933, (sayı) 14722, (yer numarası) 38.53.1.

²⁴ Fındıkoğlu, “Çocukları Kurtarma Yurdu,” 206.

²⁵ Kazım Zafir, Çocukları Kurtarma Yurdu [Child rescue institution] (İstanbul: Matbaacılık ve Neşriyat Türk Anonim Şirketi, 1933), 3.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ Ibid., 4–8.

²⁸ Fahrettin Kerim graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in 1922 with a degree in psychiatry (Emrazi Akliye ve Asabiye mutehassısı), and in the same year went to Germany to work with Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926), the eminent German psychiatrist with a worldwide reputation, and spent seven months in Vienna working with Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857–1949), a well-known physician and psychiatrist. His work in Kraepelin’s experimental psychiatry laboratory and in the experimental psychology laboratory of Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie (German Institute for Psychiatric Research, also known as The Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Psychiatry) in Munich provided the epistemological underpinnings of his psychiatric-psychological approach to mental illness, as well as to social and moral crises in Turkey. Like his teachers Rasit Tahsin and Mazhar Osman, he was trained in what was called the Kraepelin school of thought that established the intellectual link between German psychiatry and Turkish psychiatry.

²⁹ Fahrettin Kerim Gökay, Ruh Hastalıkları [Mental diseases], 3rd ed. (Istanbul: Vatandaş Matbaası, 1931).

³⁰ Fahrettin Kerim Gökay, Ahlak Hastaları [The morally diseased] (Istanbul: Kader Basımevi, 1944).

³¹ Ibid., 6.

³² Fahrettin Kerim Gökay, “Milli Nüfus Siyasetinde (Eugenique) Meselesinin Mahiyeti” [The question of eugenics in the national population policy], Ülkü 3, no. 15 (1934): 206.

³³ Gökalp was the founder of Durkheimian sociology in Turkey and one of the most powerful ideologues of the Young Turk movement and modern Turkish Republic. In fact, according to Taha Parla, most of the dominant political ideologies and public philosophies in Turkey from Unionism of the Second Constitutional Period (1908–1918) and single party Kemalism (1923–1950) to various contemporary Kemalisms were partly or thoroughly predicated on Gökalp’s political and social philosophy. See Taha Parla, The Social and Political Thought of Ziya Gökalp, 1876–1924 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985).

³⁴ Parla, The Social and Political Thought of Ziya Gökalp, vii.

³⁵ The space here does not allow for a comprehensive analysis of Turkish corporatist-solidarism. See, among others, ibid.; Taha Parla and Andrew Davison, Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order? (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2004); Andrew Davison, “Secularization and Modernization in Turkey: The Ideas of Ziya Gökalp,” Economy and Society 24, no. 2 (1995).

³⁶ Fahrettin Kerim Gökay and Cihad Atasev, “Cürümlerin Mediko-Sosyal Tedkiki,” in 22 Mayıs 1948’de Istanbul Etibba Odasında toplanan Türkiye Akıl Hıfzıssıhhası Cemiyeti’nin 19’uncu yıllık kongresinde tebliğ edilen raporlar (Istanbul: 1949), 15.

³⁷ Fahrettin Kerim Gökay, “Milli Nüfus Siyasetinde (Eugenique) Meselesinin Mahiyeti,” 207.

³⁸ Fahrettin Kerim Gökay and Atasev, “Cürümlerin Mediko-Sosyal Tedkiki,” 14.

³⁹ Sıhhat ve İçtimai Muavenet Vekaleti, Akıl Hıfzıssıhhası [Mental hygiene] (Ankara: Recep Ulusoğlu Basımevi, 1943), 8.

⁴⁰ As Sanem Güvenç Salgirli has demonstrated, Republican medical doctors were strong champions of a moderate lifestyle, which they embodied in their middle-class secular bourgeois habitus. Sanem Güvenç Salgirli, “Eugenics for the Doctors: Medicine and Social Control in 1930s Turkey,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 66, no. 3 (2011), 307–308.

⁴¹ Sıhhat ve İçtimai Muavenet Vekaleti, Akıl Hıfzıssıhhası, 2.

⁴² The articles were translated from French eugenicist Sicard de Plauzoles’ Principles d’hygiene sociale [The modern technique of child protection] (1927) and were published under the same title in Turkish. Except for the first article, there is almost no reference to the original author in the subsequent publications, and the division between the original author and the translator gradually disappears. In fact, Halkacı appropriated most of the ideas presented in these articles in a pamphlet he authored for and distributed through Çocukları Esirgeme Kurumu. See Kudsi Halkacı, “Çocukları Esirgemenin Modern Tekniği,” ed. Türkiye Çocuk Esirgeme Kurumu (Istanbul: Milli Mecmua Basım Evi, 1937). Thus, here I take it as problematic to differentiate between the first author and the translator.

⁴³ Kudsi Halkacı, “Içtima Hıfzıssıhha Prensipleri Iii [Social hygiene principles III],” Tıp Dünyası 7, no. 6 (1934): 2477–8.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 2401.

⁴⁵ “İçtima Hıfzıssıhha Prensipleri Iii”.

⁴⁶ William H. Schneider, “The Eugenics Movement in France 1890–1940,” in The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia, ed. Mark B. Adams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 70–109, 89.

⁴⁷ Kudsi Halkacı, “İçtima Hıfzıssıhha Prensipleri Ii [Social hygiene principles II],” Tıp Dünyası 7, no. 5 (1934): 4235.

⁴⁸ Schneider, “The Eugenics Movement in France 1890–1940,” 89.

⁴⁹ Halkacı, “İçtima Hıfzıssıhha Prensipleri Iii,” 2478.

⁵⁰ Fahrettin Kerim Gökay, “Milli Nüfus Siyasetinde (Eugenique) Meselesinin Mahiyeti” [The question of eugenics in the national population policy], 207.

⁵¹ Zafir, Çocukları Kurtarma Yurdu, 8.

⁵² Ibid., 7.

⁵³ Kazım Zafir, “‘Çocuk Mahkeme Ve Cezaevleri’ Mi ‘Çocuk Kurtarma Yurdları’ Mı? [Juvenile courts and correction institutions or child rescue Institutions?],” İş: Felsefe, Ahlak ve İçtimaiyat Mecmuası 9, no. 34 (1943): 197–200.

⁵⁴ Zafir, Çocukları Kurtarma Yurdu, 5.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 13.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 9.

⁵⁷ Children’s lives at the institution, although mildly regimented under the surveillance of pedagogues and mental health experts, were not firmly structured, which would be one of the reasons on which government officials would capitalise to take over the administration of the institution in 1939.

⁵⁸ Cited in Fındıkoğlu, “Çocukları Kurtarma Yurdu,” 206–7.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 207.

⁶⁰ Şevket Pamuk, “Economic Change in Twentieth-Century Turkey: Is the Glass More Than Half Full?,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey: Turkey in the Modern World, ed. Reşat Kasaba (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008),

⁶¹ Ibid., 278.

⁶² The vocational curriculum was not unique to Çocukları Kurtarma Yurdu. The programmes of both the Institution for Deaf, Mute, and Blind, and the Juvenile Correction Institution were heavily labour-based. The Juvenile Correction Institution held five main workshops for crafts and small industries: shoemaking, tailoring, carpentry, textile, and smithery. Children were placed in one of these workshops after an initial inspection of their health and social condition and examination of their literacy levels. The Institution for Deaf, Mute and Blind housed smithery, carpentry, shoemaking, embroidery, musicianship, and tailoring workshops among others. Out of the 73 graduates of the latter institution, by 1937, 30 had specialised in carpentry, 13 in embroidery, 13 in shoemaking, 9 in musicianship, 5 in tailoring, and 3 in textile. See Hüseyin Sapmazlı, Çocuk Hakları Ve Himaye Müesseseleri (Ankara: Yeni Cezaevi, 1943), 192; Sıhhat ve İçtimai Muavenet Vekaleti, Sağır Dilsiz Ve Körler Müessesesi [The institution for deaf, mute and blind] (İzmir: İtimat Basımevi, 1938).

⁶³ Cumhuriyet Arsivi, September 10, 1940. Dosya 18754, yer numarasi: 174.201.6.

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ Sıhhat ve İçtimai Muavenet Vekaleti, Sağır Dilsiz Ve Körler Müessesesi, 14.

⁶⁶ Ibid.

⁶⁷ The Regulation of Penal and Correction Houses for Juvenile Delinquents, for example, stipulated that basic literacy and frequent mental and moral suggestions be provided to the delinquents in order to increase their cultural level and moral development. See Çocuk Suçlulara Mahsus Ceza ve İslah Evleri Hakkında Umumi Talimatname [The Regulation of Penal and Correction Houses for Juvenile Delinquents], (Ankara, Yeni Cezaevi Matbaası: 1952).

⁶⁸ Sıhhat ve İçtimai Muavenet Vekaleti, Sağır Dilsiz Ve Körler Müessesesi, 31.

⁶⁹ Kimsesiz Cocuklar, Cumhuriyet, August 17, 1935, 1.

⁷⁰ Fındıkoğlu, “Çocukları Kurtarma Yurdu,” 208–9.

⁷¹ Alaettin Cemil Topçubaşı, “Sokak Çocukları: İstanbu Belediyesinin Tesis Ettiği ‘Çocukları Kurtarma Yurdu’na Bir Tetkik [Street children: An investigation of the Child Rescue Institution founded by the Istanbul Municipality],” Cumhuriyet, July 29, 1934, 3.

⁷² See also Karatay, “The Formation of Policies for Children in Need of Protection in the Republican Era”.

⁷³ Cumhuriyet Arsivi, September 10, 1940. Dosya 18754, yer numarasi: 174.201.6.

⁷⁴ Kimsesiz ve serseri cocuklarin terbiye ve islahi icin alinmasi gereken tedbirler [Measures to be taken for the education and correction of homeless and vagrant children], Cuhuriyet Arsivi, February 7, 1943. Dosya 203114. Yer numarasi. 179.236.5.

⁷⁵ Ibid. According to the report, there were about 2516 male and 332 female destitute and vagrant children in Istanbul, the majority of whom originated from the working-class families of the far regions of Anatolia who had migrated to Isanbul for work.