Suspects by Default: Istanbul’s Bachelor Lads

Etymologically, the Turkish word bekâr (“bachelor”) derives from the Arabic root b-k-r, meaning to hurry or to go first. In Islamic law it denotes a woman who has not had sexual relations. Through a widening of meaning it has come to mean, as it does today, an unmarried person.

The history of the “bachelor rooms” (bekâr odaları) carries within it the social and political fabric of the Ottoman Empire. For such a form of settlement to emerge at all, single people had to come to the capital, Istanbul, and stay there for a long time.

First question: why did they come?

The avarız tax, levied in emergencies such as war or earthquake, was very hard for the poor to pay. What was meant to be temporary had, like today’s “earthquake tax”, become permanent. When paying it became impossible, people picked up their sacks and headed for the capital. To stem this migration, avarız funds and foundations gradually appeared in Anatolia to help those who could not pay.

The rule, with few exceptions, was that everyone should live where they were born and farm the land allotted to them; to prevent migration to Istanbul in search of work, the çift-bozan tax was introduced — a penalty on anyone who left his field untilled for three years. And when the Celali revolts broke out and the “order and tranquillity” of Anatolia collapsed, those who could escape fled to Istanbul for safety.

Second question: who came?

The poor of every community came, without doubt. If one must name ethnicities, it would not be wrong to say that it was mostly young Kurdish and Armenian men who came to work as porters and construction labourers.

The state sent back the çift-bozan it caught, because one could come to the capital only temporarily and only with a job. Those who stayed had to name a guarantor. Ottoman social life rested on the obligation to present a guarantor in order to settle in a neighbourhood — even for married people. Nor was guaranteeing a mere formality: if the person you vouched for committed a serious crime, you too could be sentenced, up to and including the galleys.

Only someone who found a guarantor and could also pay a deposit could move into a bachelor room. Because bachelors were regarded as dangerous, these rooms had officers — the hâkim and the zabit — responsible for keeping order. Bachelors could lodge in rooms in the great hans, while the workers of small businesses, especially bakeries and mills, could stay in their employers’ own bachelor rooms. A bachelor could not live in a neighbourhood of married families; the only exception, in cases of necessity, was on the surety of the neighbourhood imam.

Once building bachelor rooms to let proved a profitable investment, many of the wealthy went into the business. Some rebuilding their houses after fires even began adding bachelor rooms illegally as outbuildings. With bachelor rooms multiplying steadily, a ban on new ones finally came: “Apart from the masonry rooms and wooden hans currently existing in Istanbul and the three towns, the creation of new hans and bachelor rooms is entirely prohibited.”

Could so many young men gather without politics getting involved? When Süleyman the Magnificent grew angry with the Janissaries, he declared: “I will have you broken by the cobbler bachelors of the Mercan rooms.” It was no empty threat: those bachelors, forty thousand strong, promptly placed themselves at the sultan’s command. Describing the different kinds of bachelor rooms, Evliya Çelebi writes: “The Yolgeçen Rooms: the largest of the bachelor rooms. They have 400 cells, yet when need arises they can turn out a thousand armed braves.”

In 1528, under Süleyman, a house was broken into at night, the whole household murdered and the house robbed. The culprits were never caught. The bachelors took the blame: declaring “they did it”, the authorities executed 800 bekâr uşağı — “bachelor lads”, as they were called. In 1721, 18 bachelor lads accused of involvement in a theft were hanged in different parts of the city as a public example. Whenever a crime occurred whose perpetrator was unknown, these rooms were raided at once.

The Janissaries were not idle either: as both tradesmen and hardened strongmen, they later took control of the rooms. Far from being supervised, these places became dens of crime that no one dared approach.

Long before he massacred the Janissaries in 1826, Sultan Mahmud II had decided in 1811 to break up this power and its “nests of sedition”. The plague of 1812 offered a perfect opportunity to carry out that will, and considerable demolition followed. The most extensive demolition — note the name — took place in the Melekgirmez (“angels don’t enter”) quarter. After the “Auspicious Incident” of 1826 the surviving Janissaries fled to Anatolia, leaving the buildings and rooms largely empty. Those who were genuinely bachelors rather than Janissaries were exiled to Gelibolu and İzmit, with no right to return.

Most sources claim that no legal regulation of bachelor rooms was made in the Republican era. This is wrong. Under a regulation issued in 1930, the owners of such places were obliged to give the police the names of those staying and working there, on pain of punishment under Article 543 of the Penal Code.

One may ask: did the people who lived here never marry — did they stay for life? For those who wished to marry and had enough money, a go-between, known as “the one who fathers the lad”, would find a girl who was poor, orphaned, or a servant from one of the great mansions. Some did this for money, others genuinely as a good deed…