Moral Crisis in the Ottoman Empire

To what extent did a perceived morality crisis play a role in the dramatic events of the last years of the Ottoman Empire? Beginning in the late nineteenth century when some of the Ottoman elites began to question the moral climate as evidence for the losses facing the empire, this book shows that during the course of World War I many social, economic, and political problems were translated into a discourse of moral decline, ultimately making morality a contested space between rival ideologies, identities, and intellectual currents. Examining the primary journals and printed sources that represented the various constituencies of the period, it fills important gaps in the scholarship of the Ottoman experience of World War I and the origins of Islamism and secularism in Turkey, and is essential reading for social and intellectual historians of the late Ottoman Empire.

Çigdem Oguz is a research fellow at the University of Bologna, Department of History and Cultures, Italy. Previously, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Naples Federico II, Department of Humanities, Italy. Her research interests include late Ottoman social and intellectual history and state-society relations, religious communities in the Ottoman Empire, citizenship studies, war studies, and women and gender in the Middle Eastern context.

1 Introduction
2 Intellectual contests over morality,and interpretations of "moral crisis": secular morality vs. religious morality
3 Public morals, prostitution, and cultural perceptions
4 Morality between discourse and daily realities
5 The family at the center of moral decline: legislation targeting the regeneration and protection of Ottoman Muslim families
6 Conclusion: the legacy of morality debates today
Bibliography