"Ziba mahallesinde gece yarisi
Sabaha Galata'dan geçer yollari
Maytaba alacaklari tutar kahvede
Zararsiz bir deliyi
Ula Hasan derler gazeteyi ters tutaysun
Çaktirmadan gazetesini tutuştururlar fakirin
Sonra oturup sessizce aglarlar "
Istanbul Destani | Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu
There are two sorts of legally registered houses: Public Houses and Pensions. The former are where prostitutes live and ply their trade in the usual way. The latter are more like rendezvous houses; nearly all the girls live in their private houses, coming only at certain hours to them. There are also private houses in Kassim Pasha visited by the poorer class of Moslems, and in Shishli visited by the richer class. Besides these, there are about twenty to twenty-five hotels in different parts of the city, where there exists an agree- ment between the girls and the waiters so that at any time a room may be had for a rendezvous. Location and Number: There are three main red-light districts in the city, two in Pera and one in Galata. The Abanos sub-district in Pera is three times as large as the Zibah sub-district, while the Galata district is much larger than these two combined. There is another smaller district in Scutari, in Bulbul-dere, and various other houses in many other parts of the city. The registered houses and pensions in the Pera and Galata districts belong to Christians and Jews; those in Scutari and Kadikeuy to Moslems.
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Sanitary Conditions: The houses on Abanos Street, Pera, are of better class than the others. In the Zibah sub- district the conditions are such that it would be difficult to conceive worse. The sanitary conditions on Abanos are as good as can be expected under existing circumstances. There seems to be an attempt on the part of the keepers of these houses to keep the toilets clean. The rooms for the most part are clean and well furnished. The other streets drop from fair rank to plain dirty. Something should be done either to clean the houses on these streets or to close them up to the Allied soldiers and sailors. In Galata, the best houses are in Sherbet-Hane Street. Those on the other streets might rightly be termed shacks. There is an out-of-bounds for British, French and Italian soldiers and sailors in this district. Even if the American sailors are allowed to visit here, they are seldom or never seen in the district. The houses in the Scutari and Kadikeuy districts could not be visited since the proprietors and inmates are Moslem women. It is said they are very clean; the houses in Kadikeuy and Moda being of a better class than those in Scutari.
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Management: The streets in the Galata district do not seem to be as well policed as those in Pera during the day, but the keepers report much activity among the Allied Police about closing time, which is lO p.m. A number of the keepers have already been fined for keeping open a few minutes later than this hour. All keepers claim that this greatly hurts their business, as that is just the time business is ready to begin. No evidence of girls being kept in these houses against their will, save that a few expressed the desire to get away if they could.
Sanitary Conditions: The houses on Abanos Street, Pera, are of better class than the others. In the Zibah sub- district the conditions are such that it would be difficult to conceive worse. The sanitary conditions on Abanos are as good as can be expected under existing circumstances. There seems to be an attempt on the part of the keepers of these houses to keep the toilets clean. The rooms for the most part are clean and well furnished. The other streets drop from fair rank to plain dirty. Something should be done either to clean the houses on these streets or to close them up to the Allied soldiers and sailors. In Galata, the best houses are in Sherbet-Hane Street. Those on the other streets might rightly be termed shacks. There is an out-of-bounds for British, French and Italian soldiers and sailors in this district. Even if the American sailors are allowed to visit here, they are seldom or never seen in the district. The houses in the Scutari and Kadikeuy districts could not be visited since the proprietors and inmates are Moslem women. It is said they are very clean; the houses in Kadikeuy and Moda being of a better class than those in Scutari.
Management: The streets in the Galata district do not seem to be as well policed as those in Pera during the day, but the keepers report much activity among the Allied Police about closing time, which is lO p.m. A number of the keepers have already been fined for keeping open a few minutes later than this hour. All keepers claim that this greatly hurts their business, as that is just the time business is ready to begin. No evidence of girls being kept in these houses against their will, save that a few expressed the desire to get away if they could. 
Mavi Boncuk |
This map shows the location of police stations, allied police stations, prisons and red light districts in Istanbul shortly after the war. Unknown cartographer: Adult Delinquency Map, in: Johnson, Clarence Richard (ed.):
Constantinople To-day or The Pathfinder Survey of Constantinople. A Study in Oriental Life, New York 1922, p. 351;
source: Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/constantinopleto1922john.
See also:
The Regulation of Prostitution in Beyoglu (1875–1915) MUGE OZBEK
Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 46, No. 4, 555–568, July 2010
Intoxication and Imperialism: Nightlife in Occupied Istanbul, 1918–23
Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2017) 37 (2): 299-313.
https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-4132917MacArthur-Seal's article explores how the Allied occupation of Istanbul between 1918 and 1923 revived and reshaped nightlife after a period of wartime privation. Soldiers and sailors sought in the nocturnal city to escape the military regimes governing their lives, bringing them into unregulated contact with local civilians. The frequently violent consequences of such encounters fueled nationalist opposition to the occupation and hence drew the acute concern of Allied military authorities. Investigating the Allies' regulatory efforts to control nightlife reveals the extent of imperial intervention in the occupied city, which has been so far underappreciated in a literature centered on the occupation's geopolitical impact and significance. All this has produced copious and heretofore unstudied documentary evidence. This article draws on the diaries and memoirs of Allied servicemen; newspaper critiques of nightlife entertainments and behaviors; and correspondence among bar and theater owners, their supporters, critics, and French and British diplomatic and military representatives.
Awakening a Horrible Monster": Negotiating the Jazz Public in 1920s Istanbul
G. Carole Woodall
From: Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
Volume 30, Number 3, 2010
pp. 574-582
Istanbul of the 1920s evoked a period of transition and redefinition in the aftermath of World War I and the onset of the Turkish Republic (1923). Precisely, what position Istanbul would occupy as well as its constituents in the nascent republic was in flux. Debates around distinctly modern, transnational cultural practices emerged in Istanbul's illustrated press, determining the parameters, albeit ambiguous, around modern life. One such debate centered upon jazz and its respective dances, namely the Charleston. Jazz represented a distinctively interwar, transnational sound. Cultural critics perceived the movement and rhythms as "uncontrollable" and difficult to describe. Critic Akil Cem had even proposed that the Charleston steps be "tamed" by limiting the steps from twenty to five, while writer Fikret Adil referred to jazz as "awakening a horrible monster." The jazz public exuded a heterogeneous, cosmopolitan character that blurred public borders in terms of class hierarchies and gendered, linguistic, and ethnic boundaries, and threatened an emerging Turkish cultural order. Both the narratives of American jazz exceptionalism and a predominant 1930s-centric Turkish nationalist narrative marginalized if not rendered silent the 1920s Istanbul jazz scene. In this article, I historicize jazz and highlight a transnational border crossing of performers and cultural products. By so doing, I place the city as being a participant of an urban transnational latitude. Specifically, I look at how jazz was identified, criticized, and appropriated by engaging with various printed and visual materials. I argue that the "horrible monster" of jazz was the site of negotiating different notions of the public in 1920s Istanbul.