Abstract:

In this study through an in-depth analysis of a series of documents from the Turkish national archives that date in 1936-1939 I delve into the ways in which the issue of destitute children manifested itself in the early republican era. As the prevailing scholarship maintains childhood as a social construct is contingent and fluent, and has been re-invented and re-structured by each society over time in accordance with the changing value systems and world views informing those societies. The fact that childhood is almost invariably re-discovered by the founding nationalist elites as part of their nation-state building strategies is also well-documented. In Turkish case the concept of childhood was extensively utilized as a discursive instrument as the nationalist cadres fought their way into creating a new regime and re-habituating the society in the Western mould. The “child cause” as it was named by the decision makers and the pro-regime intelligentsia of the era encompassed policies with respect to bio-political power technologies, citizen formation practices and introduction of the modern notion of childhood. This study ascertains to explain the reasons that generated the conspicuous discrepancy between the glorification of children in official discourse and the actual perception and treatment of destitute children in the early republican era. Although the issue of children at risk have been studied conventionally under the rubric of social policy and the history of social services in Turkey I assert that the case of destitute children as reflected in the mirror of national archival documents has the potential to give insights into the meaning and value of the child and to enhance our knowledge in the understudied realm of the history of childhood.

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