Biopolitics In The Ottoman Empire Summary

Miller describes biopolitics as focusing on the the health of the population as a whole, as opposed to the individuals within the society. but in more simplistic explanation, it is including everyday life into politics. The emersion of biopolitics, in some ways, eliminated the debate between authoritarian and liberal minds. As the family unit was is the smallest unit for political minds to develop in, the inclusion of family law makes entirely too much sense for it to be ignored. Thus biopolitics began to emerge in the Ottoman empire.

She explains the progression from standard politics to biopolitics in the Ottoman empire. As a rights based state, and seeing as it copied a portion of its regulations, those from the constitution, from napoleonic, french law. But with the tanzimat period, the era in which reforms were being made to all areas of politics in the Ottoman Empire, the state began to further incorporate gendered criminal codes. In 1926, the Ottoman Empire's successor, Turkey, started to take ideas from the Italians. This new development only increased the strength of the chokehold the state held

on its female citizens. The nation’s honor depended on its women, just as a family’s honor did.

With this increased power over women, the 1926 criminal code, and all those that proceeded it, allowed political influence on various personal aspects of women’s everyday life.

Both reproduction and sexuality no longer were off limits to government influence, they were ideas and actions up for political review. Interestingly, the regulations regarding abortion, where thequestin is usually dependent on the “rights” of the fetus, are not included with murder but with criminal threats. In this way, the law makers are forcing the issue away from a personal matter and more into the community’s problem. The reproductive rights of women are appropriated to control medical professionals. While these women’s issues are brought into the political sphere, they are also gaining theoretical equality, they have a stronger influence over the honor of the

nation.

A woman’s sexuality is also closely tied in with the honor of the state. In criminal codes, there were oflen times “typos” that interchanged the words honor and chastity. And as soon as they gained identity in the political world they became sexual beings that needed to be leashed for the greater good of the state.. This shows the transition of the idea of women's sexuality, by gaining rights, women became “loose women.” Men can only commit adultery in their own homes, while women can do so anywhere they are. Regulations on women's sexuality got tighter and tighter, while those on men changed less and less.

Miller believes that this biopolitical revolution is deeply rooted in Islamic belief. Both the Tanzimat-era supposedly was organized by specialists that wanted to rearrange Islamic law to incorporate more modern ideas. However, the way in which reproduction is included in the penal code does step away from the Hadith. As she explains, Islam has multiple schools of thought and each has a slightly differing opinion on abortion. But all of these depend on the time that classifies a fetus as a living being, once the fetus is “alive” it is considered murder and the abortion is thereby morally wrong in the eyes of God.