Naked modernisation: the rise and fall of the erotic humour magazines in 1930s Turkey

Abstract

This article discusses four erotic humour magazines – Piliç (Chick) (1930–1931), Bıldırcın (Quail) (1931), Çapkın Kız (The Flirtatious Girl) (1931) and Güvercin (Pigeon) (1931) – that appeared one after the other between 1930 and 1931 within the political, social and cultural atmosphere of the period in Turkey. It argues that the sudden emergence of these magazines was due to two important factors. The first factor is related to the rapidly reviving nightlife and entertainment scene in Istanbul from the 1920s onwards. The second factor is that the print media gave more space to sexual images of women to recover its sales figures, which suddenly dropped after the adoption of the Latin script in 1929. These magazines, published by well-known publishers in Istanbul and fuelled by the images in erotic magazines and postcards coming from abroad, promoted Western notions of beauty and fashion trends while glorifying monogamous relationships and sexual heteronormativity achieved through marriage along the lines of the modernist elites. This visual and textual erotica, which soon became the centre of controversy and was curbed by criminal sanctions, constitutes an important source to contribute to the literature on women's social position and sexual lives in early republican Turkey.