Homosexuality in 19th and 20th Century: Comparison Between Ottoman Empire and Western Culture

Abstract

This paper analyzes approaches towards homosexuality in Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, specified in streets and hamams. The queer activities in the street have been studied through a commonly known public play. Queer activity in hamams has been analyzed first through an orientalist point of view, questioning the possibly biased knowledge coming from a Western perspective. Then, hamam as a queered space is conveyed in terms of the male customer types and their aim in visiting the baths. Overall, this paper showcases some approaches to homosexual acts through queered spaces.

Keywords: homosexuality, homosociality queer spaces, the Ottoman Empire, hamams, streets.

1. Introduction

Homosexuality is the orientation of people to their sex over the years. In the 19th and 20th centuries, there were lots of queer activities in lots of nations. Especially, in the Ottoman Empire, queer activity was common in society and there was a conducive environment for homosexuality embedded in culture and tradition and even by the laws that coordinate the lifestyle of the citizens. The Ottoman Empire had two laws that affected its people’s lives. The first one is the sharia law, which was the rules interpreted out of the Quran, the holy book of Islam. On the other hand, since the Ottoman Empire was a cosmopolitan state, it also needed laws to regulate the non-Muslim people under its rule. Additionally, sharia was the rules that were not written exactly rather they were “interpreted” or “extracted” by the Islamic authorities so, so it was missing parts, which needed to be filled. Thus, there was another body of rules, the kanun. Sharia laws define sexual intercourse as “when a male organ is put into a female vulva” and there is not any mention of anal intercourse explicitly[1]. It restrains extramarital sex, which has different rules for men and women but as there is not any male sexual organ present in female sexuality and likewise, no female vulva in male homosexual intercourse, anal intercourse did not comply with sex crimes of sharia law and no legal punishment was required to be policed. The only law that restricted homosexuality was when a young boy involved in prostitution offered his body to older men and this would be charged with finery[2]. This mention of younger boys in prostitution points out that it was a common or present practice in the Ottoman Empire. In the Kanun, restricting rules against homosexuality were not imposed as well. The charges were usually finery, the same as Zina. The Ottoman Empire had a basic set of rules for sex crimes in general. Therefore, the public bearly had any restrictions on having homosexual intercourse. These queer activities are discriminated according to specific places. The most prominent provided more queer rituals and performativity and also embedded in society with the laws of the Ottoman Empire These places that queer activities or homosexual people have mostly seen in the Ottoman Empire were the streets and Turkish baths.

2. Queer Activity on Streets

The street is a public space, belonging to the lower class. The French philosopher, Henri Lefebvre discusses that public space is a production of the public[3]. This theory applies to the representational space so, the spaces that are created in the public plays, are actually the echoes of the real spaces. Moreover, it can be discussed that this process of producing spaces is a paradoxical circle because the production of the representational space may contain pieces of the creator’s creativity out of its consciousness and since the representational space has an impact on the real space creation, the real space is affected by the representational space as much as the representational space getting affected by the real space. Thus, it can be assumed that the plays mirror the public life and vice versa, the public life starts imitating the plays.

One of the most known public plays in the Ottoman Empire is Hacivat and Karagöz. Precedent to being appropriated for public screening, it was written and screened in the palace for the high audience of the ruler and the statesmen. As for the appropriation for the public, there have been changes in the script. Heterosexuality started to be included as a subject matter. As for these changes, the way that the female character Zenne, figure 1, was portrayed has also altered. Zenne became an epochal portrayal of women in the way that she was a libidinous individual like men. Unlike the literary arts addressed to the higher class, heterosexuality and female libido are upfront. In the literary arts with a high-class audience, heteroeroticism was courageous to be taken as a subject matter and similarly, women were not a part of erotic literature. These topics were considered shameful and inappropriate to speak of in front of a high audience. These changes are the reflection of the space where the play is screened at.

Figure 1: Zenne[4]

Homosexuality is treated as well. For example, in one of the plays, Hamam, a couple of females fell on the ground of the public bathhouse, hamam, and starts kissing with pleasure[5]. Moreover, in general, Hacivat and Karagöz altercate and they most commonly make sexual references, which implies homosexual connotations including themselves. The dialogues between these two often refer to wanting to have a sexual relationship with one another. In one of the other plays, the Great Wedding, women consciously admit to being lesbians to Karagöz[6]. These plays are displayed for and in front of the public. They embody the public, itself. Yet, these plays are courageous in the way that they reflect the hidden or the untold openly. It can be interpreted that since these plays were shadow plays, they are frankly representational so if they were theater plays with human actors, they could have gotten bad reactions from the audience. The concept of representation is obvious and adequate to not offend the public. The homosexuality of the era may be a result of the male body being easier to reach and not considered haram and vice versa for females. In the Ottoman Empire, people were restricted in the way that they show affection and love for the beloved due to the religious enforcements so their feelings and sexual desires may have evolved in a differently driven way.

3. Queer Activity in Turkish Baths

3.1 Orientalist Point of View

The public bathhouses or hamams are one of the essentials of Turkish culture, originating from the Ottoman era. Turkish Bath was a significant ritual that stands for relaxation, cleanliness, purification, and social gathering. Here, the term ‘social gathering’ in hamams has been interpretively ornamented in many sources, being a subject of homosexual activity. For example, the film Hamam, a 1997 Italian- Turkish co-production by Turkish director Ferhan Özpetek. The film was criticized for Orientalising, Figure 2: Hamam distorting the true account of Turkish Bath tradition. It narrates the homoerotic confusion of the protagonist Francesco who enforcedly stayed in Turkey through his new discovery about adoring the local bath culture consisting of naked men.[7] The public homosexual practices in the context of hamam have been refined to make it a true scandal portrayal. The main problem was that the culture was viewed and narrated from a Western tourist perspective, fetishizing the tradition and mobilizing already distorted notions of Turkish Bath culture being a subject of homosexual tourism of male Western travelogues in their visit to Istanbul.[8]

It is no lie that hamam has a relationship with sexual activity: It is the unifier of sexual and sacred in Islam. Purity is an essential element in Muslim belief. After and even before any kind of physical activity especially sexual acts, one should wash oneself to restore purity and prepare for the sexual act. “The Hamam is the epilogue of the flesh and the prologue of the prayer. The practices of hamam are pre-and post sexual practices”(Evans and Cook, 177). In this understanding, sexual life is centered around hamam. Therefore bathing tradition can be associated with more social and symbolic acts, not only with cleansing. Entering a male Hamam, an all-male community bespeaks the derealization of the female world. In relation, the purpose of attending to the hamam might be like the Orientalists convey.

3.2 Queer Rituals and Performativity

Hamam has been a place for same-sex people to involve in social relationships. It is a subject of urban queer culture by the public, yet private and closeted homosocial environment it provides. Rooms are segregated according to gender, male and female. However, due to the grand topics like social inequality, gender roles, feminism, misogyny, the asserted roles of women in society, and more, the homosocial activities and privatization in queered hamams differ in women and men. According to the oral history data, the privatization in the men’s section is more precisely constructed than in the women’s section in terms of homosociality and private spaces. The women in most hamams psychologically sustain their reproductive sexuality as wives and mothers, hence they rarely engage in homosexual relationships. Therefore in this article, predominantly male homosexual intercourses will be analyzed.

As a potentially queered space with various spatialities, the users of Ottoman-Turkish hamams differ in terms of their sexual identities and their aims of visiting the hamam: 1) The privileged local customers who are well known by the manager. 2) Homosexual men pretending to be heterosexual in traditional rituals. 3) Men who came alone to have casual sex. 4) A group of men came for queer entertainment 5) Low-incomed men who seek financial support. Most of these men have closeted themselves in hamams to secure their privacy and perform same-sex acts being actors of queer performativity, adopting Hamam as their performance stage. Certain traditional rituals are to celebrate important events in one’ s life cycle, aiming these distinct customer profiles: ceremonial occasions and queer entertainment. In women’s section, there is kırk hamamı, görücü hamamı and adak hamamı. In men’s section, there is sünnet hamamı, asker hamamı, damat hamamı and bayram hamamı. Oral history data shows that some men who perform sex in queered hamams have been involved in these rituals in the role of a heterosexual male, mimicking the heterosexual norms. In this manner, Hamam rituals can be seen as the servant of homosexual desires. Also, due to the inhabitant intimacy between same-sex persons, hamams performing rituals might be the realization spaces that evoke the sexual identity construction of individual participants.[9]

4. Conclusion

To conclude, in Ottoman Empire there were lots of queer activities in society. The prominence of these activities changed depending upon the spaces. On the streets, it was mostly the portrayal of homosexuality to the public rather than intercourse. These representations being openly expressed convey that the public was aware of the homosexuals among them. Hamam is a public space that was known for homosexual activities and where these activities were practiced consenting. The public did not completely accept these activities’ presence in hamams but they were commonly practiced by them. This study emphasizes the presence of such activities and their extensiveness in the Ottoman era with also taking the possibly biased Orientalist perspective into account.

[1] Ze’evi, D. 2006. Producing Desire Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900. Los Angeles: University of California Press. [2] Ze’evi, D. 2006. Producing Desire Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900. Los Angeles: University of California Press. [3] Pasin, B. 2016. “A Critical Reading of the Ottoman-Turkish Hammam as a Representational Space of Sexuality”. In Middle East Technical University Journal of the Faculty of the Architecture. 33, no. 2: 121-138.

[4] Aregem.ktb.gov.tr. 2022. Karagöz. [online] Available at: <https://aregem.ktb.gov.tr/TR-12744/karagoz.html>

[5] Ze’evi, D. 2006. Producing Desire Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900. Los Angeles: University of California Press. [6] Ze’evi, D. 2006. Producing Desire Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900. Los Angeles: University of California Press. [7] Hamam. 1997. [film] Directed by F. Özpetek. Italy, Turkey. [8] Cook, M. and Evans, J., 2015. Queer cities, queer cultures. London [i pozostałe]: Bloomsbury Academic. [9]Pasin, Burkay. 2014. "A Critical Reading Of The Ottoman-Turkish Hamam As A Queered Space.” PhD diss., Middle East Technical University.

Further Reading and Sources

Cook, M. and Evans, J., 2015. Queer cities, queer cultures. London [i pozostałe]: Bloomsbury Academic.

Hamam. 1997. [film] Directed by F. Özpetek. Italy, Turkey.

Pasin, Burkay. 2014. "A Critical Reading Of The Ottoman-Turkish Hamam As A Queered Space.” Ph.D. diss., Middle East Technical University.

Pasin, Burkay. 2016. “A Critical Reading of the Ottoman-Turkish Hammam as a Representational Space of Sexuality.” In Middle East Technical University Journal of the Faculty of the Architecture. 33, no. 2: 121- 138.

Ze’evi, D. 2006. Producing Desire Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900. Los Angeles: University of California Press.