The narrative production of healthful and diseased environments and populations was a central feature of the nascent Turkish republic’s efforts to distance itself from its Ottoman legacy. In this dissertation, I explore the production of these narratives while paying particular attention to gendered tropes of health and place. This work builds on prior studies in geography that recognize certain spatial sensitivities in Foucault’s approaches to history, knowledge, and power. The archaeological and genealogical methods, applied by Foucault to the spatial dispersions of power/knowledge implicated in the production of subject forming discourses ranging from ‘discipline’ and ‘madness’ to ‘sexuality’ and ‘biopolitics’ reached their zenith for geographers in the so-called “governmentality lectures”. This dissertation builds on insights from Foucault and his geographic legacy to assess the production of governmental discourses pertaining to health, gender, and place in the early Turkish republic. Specifically, I address the production of “sanitary citizenship” and “scientific motherhood” as they emerged from various discursive formations dispersed throughout Anatolia: the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare’s “Medical and Social Geographies”, the novels of Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, the writings of Dr. Besim Ömer (Akalın), and the journal published by theTurkish Red Crescent Society. This historical study adds insight to contemporary debates about body politics and public health in Turkey.
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