writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

To sum up, Ottoman women’s resistance to violence through their everyday narratives during the
war years can be examined in the light of not only educated women’s memoirs, literary works or
letters but also new archival sources that have not been evaluated thoroughly so far, such as
Ottoman women’s petitions and telegrams to the state agencies or folk songs composed by peasant
women. These sources are vital to deeper understanding ordinary Ottoman women’s everyday
experience and their forms of political action. They show us that Ottoman women did not only
remain as passive victims of wartime violence but they used rhetorical strategies which made them
part of decision making on war‐mobilization as “mothers, sisters or wives of soldiers” on the home
front. Ordinary women’s resistance to violence through such narratives made them politically
important actors of the Ottoman public sphere during the war and helped them to acquire some
citizenship rights as well especially in terms of economic rights. Therefore, these new sources show
us that we also need to take a closer look at ordinary women’s daily and ordinary narratives and
everyday resistance to better understand Ottoman women’s movement and history that has been
studied so far by looking primarily at upper‐class or intellectual Ottoman women’s associations and
publications.
Keywords: World War I, Women's resistance, Violence, Ordinary women, Everyday life
Dr. Elif MAHİR METİNSOY
elif_mahir@yahoo.com
Post‐Doctoral Fellow at Middle East Technical University, Department of History, Ankara
Notes
1
Jeremy Black, The Age of Total War, 1860‐1945 (Westport, Connecticut; London: Praeger
Security International, 2006), 1‐2.
2
Françoise Thébaud, “La Grande Guerre: le triomphe de la division sexuelle,” in Histoire des
femmes en Occident, eds. George Duby and Michelle Perrot, Vol. 5, Le XXe Siècle, ed. Françoise
Thébaud (Paris: Perrin, 2002), 63‐144.
3
Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H. Quataert, “Women in the Era of the Interventionist State: Overview,
1890 to the Present,” in Connecting Spheres: European Women in a Globalizing World, 1500 to
the Present, eds. Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H. Quataert, 2 nd ed. (New York; Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000), 235‐239.
4
For instance Italian peasant women suffered from sexual and other forms of violence coming
from stranger men and state bureaucracy during World War I. Anna Bravo, “Italian Peasant
Women and the First World War,” in Total War and Historical Change: Europe, 1914‐1955, ed.
Arthur Marwick, Clive Emsley and Wendy Simpson (Buckingham; Philadelphia, Pa.: Open
University Press, 2001), 88‐95.
5
Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi [hereafter BOA], DH.İ.UM, 7‐1/23, 24 Rebîülevvel 1334 [30 January
1916].
6
BOA, DH.İ.UM.EK, 44/56, 13 Rebîülevvel 1336 [27 December 1917].
7
BOA, DH.İ.UM.EK, 24/35, 26 Muharrem 1335 [22 November 1916].
8
“Evlâd ve zevclerimizi askere gönderdik sapana yapışarak ziraâtte bulunduk sagîr, hayvanatla
hizmetkârların yemeklik hakkını vermiyorlar hemen bilcümle mahsûlatımızı almak istiyorlar
şimdiye kadar yediğimiz de nazar‐ı dikkate alınıyor aç kalacağız merhamet buyurulması niyâz
ederiz fermân.”
9
BOA, DH.İ.UM.EK, 80/35, 9 Zilhicce 1334 [7 October 1916].
10
One kıyye is 1300 grams.
11
BOA, DH.İ.UM, 20‐3/2‐33, 29 Receb 1336 [10 May 1918].
12
BOA, DH.İ.UM.EK, 76/1, 5 Cemâziyelevvel 1333 [21 March 1915].
13
BOA, DH.İ.UM, 20‐1/1‐14, 4 Cemâziyelâhir 1336 [17 March 1918].
14
The true name of the Sultan is Reşat, but this woman like many other peasants mispronounces
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