Özet:

Suicide has been an ongoing phenomenon from the past to the present. Although sociology and psychology experts have shown interest in this phenomenon, the issue of suicide has recently become an area of interest for social history. Depending on the area of expertise and the question of the research, the phenomenon of suicide has been handled and discussed in a multidimensional way, and a large literature on suicide has emerged. Studies have focused on the cultural, economic and social factors that affect suicides, as well as the cause, place, time, gender and age of the victim. In addition, it has been tried to find answers to questions such as how the suicide was committed and the method used, why the person resorted to this method, whether there is a relationship between the method used and the gender of the person, and the economic and social world. Similar approaches and questions have also preoccupied researchers interested in the history of suicide. However, the number of studies on suicides in the Ottoman period is very few, and there is no study directly on female suicides. This study, which is based on research focusing on female suicides in the last period of the Ottoman Empire, seeks an answer to a much more specific question such as "Which method did the women who tried to commit suicide use in the last period of the Ottoman Empire". The researches were carried out in Turkey and although it changed from time to time until the modern period, it was concluded that women and men often committed suicide by hanging, targeting themselves with a firearm, jumping into the water, and drinking chemicals, due to family problems, betrayal, illness and psychological reasons, especially economic problems has been reached. As it is today, some responsibilities that the late Ottoman world imposed on women from time to time caused confusion in the emotional world of women and left them with the thought of ending their lives. Various factors such as gender, geographical location, time, emotional world of the victim and ease of access to the materials to be used were influential in individuals’ choosing the suicide method. In this study, 194 documents taken from the Ottoman archives on women’s suicide methods were examined and four methods that are frequently encountered were tried to be exemplified.

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