War, Women, and Sex Work in Occupied Istanbul, 1918–1923.

This article examines the experiences of women selling sex in Istanbul during the Allied occupation from 1918 to 1923, highlighting how military presence, political upheaval, and regulatory regimes shaped their lives. Drawing on French, British, Turkish, and League of Nations archival sources—including rare direct testimonies from sex workers—it reveals the complexities of surveillance, violence, and economic dependency faced by these women, as well as their strategies of evasion and migration amid shifting political and legal frameworks. The study challenges dominant narratives that focus on moral decline by centering the agency of sex workers and situating their experiences within broader transnational and intercommunal dynamics of the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. It also discusses the impact of the occupation’s end on the sex trade, including the emigration of many foreign and minority women and the consequent demographic and economic transformations in Istanbul’s sex work sector.