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PREMIERE PARTIE : DOSSIER THEMATIQUE
III Entre internationalisation, réislamisation et réinvention des normes (années 1980 - 2000)

The Issue of Alcohol in Turkey during the 1980s and 1990s

النقاشات عن الكحول في تركيا ثمانينيات وتسعينيات في القرن العشرين
Les débats sur l’alcool en Turquie dans les années 1980 et 1990
Elife Biçer-Deveci
p. 179-198

Résumés

Cet article examine les débats sur la question de l’alcool en Turquie dans les années 1980 et 1990. Il s’intéresse en particulier à la manière dont une communauté scientifique internationale concernée par la santé publique a soutenu le programme d’un parti islamique conservateur. Il met en lumière comment les preuves scientifiques générées par des experts d’Europe et des États-Unis ont servi à défendre les principes religieux d’abstinence dans un contexte musulman. Ces questions seront appréhendées à travers l’étude du cas de l’association anti-alcoolique du Croissant Vert (Yeşilay Cemiyeti). Cet article montre que l’adaptation des discours scientifiques au sein d’un environnement religieux conservateur a conduit à l’imposition de règles islamiques comme normes de la vie quotidienne. Elles sont également devenues les règles les plus visibles de la réglementation sur la consommation d’alcool dans la Turquie contemporaine. L’étude éclaire la manière dont les programmes de santé publique traitant des questions de dépendance ont été façonnés selon des éléments idéologiques et religieux, selon des dynamiques sociales et politiques internes mais également par la circulation transnationale des connaissances.

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Texte intégral

Comments and note of thanks: All quotations are translated by the author of the article form Turkish into English. The article is a result of ongoing research project “The Issue of Alcohol in Turkey since 1900” financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation and Gerda Henkel Foundation. I am grateful to Benedikt Stuchtey, Monique Ligtenberg, Elena Valdameri, Alexa Stiller, Claire Blaser, Eliane Schmid, Bernhard Schär and anonyme reviewers for their critical remarks to earlier versions.

1Introduction

2In this article, I analyse discourses about alcohol use during the 1980s and 1990s in Turkey. The emphasis is on the use of the global body of knowledge by the Green Crescent (Yeşilay Cemiyeti), a non-profit organisation that focuses on public health issues. Yeşilay was founded in 1920 by an alliance of Turkish physicians and religious authorities (Biçer-Deveci, 2021). The goal of this alliance was to establish a hub for various activists and to promote a total ban on alcohol in Turkey. From its inception, Yeşilay has dominated public debates on alcohol use and all forms of addiction, and it has interacted with various international anti-alcohol organisations, including, among others, the World League against Alcoholism, the International Blue Cross and Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) (Güzel Mumyakmaz, 2020).

3Yeşilay is an ideal case to study the history of a public health organisation and the relationship between political power and religion. According to its constitution, members of the Yeşilay board of directors are elected democratically in a general assembly (Çelik et al., 2013). In its early decades, Yeşilay was led by two psychiatrists, Mazhar Osman Uzman (1884–1951) and Fahreddin Kerim Gökay (1900–1987), who had spent several years in Germany and Switzerland for study and research. In the second half of the 20th century, Yeşilay was led by retired military officers who volunteered to work for it. Selahattin Kaptanağası (1920–2005), a former artillery officer, presided over Yeşilay from 1969 to 2004. This professional shift within a non-profit organisation with a public health concern was the starting point for problematising the interaction between political power, religion and public health in debates about alcohol. In this article, I analyse this relationship through the lens of discourses about alcohol, an issue of grave importance for Yeşilay.

4To understand the extent to which a merger between religious and scientific discourses on alcohol consumption played a role in the construction of alcoholism as a vice, I examine the reports published by Yeşilay’s heaquarters (Türkiye Yeşilay Cemiyeti Genel Merkezi) and its main publication, Yeşilay – Aylık Kültür ve Sağlık Dergisi (Green Crescent – Monthly Cultural and Health Journal – Yeşilay Dergisi.) This material is available at Beyazıt Devlet Kütüphanesi, a library in Istanbul. My analysis is based on a critical historical examination of these materials, and it considers the questions of when, why, by whom and for whom they were written. Discourse analysis based on the theories of Michel Foucault is important for this purpose (Foucault, 1970). Given that one might consider all texts to be discursive acts, studying the authors of individual works is also relevant for understanding the political and ideological underpinnings of discourses on alcohol. The reports and publications produced by Yeşilay are helpful in tracing and understanding how international developments and the transnational circulation of ideas on alcoholism influenced the organisation and its views.

5The issues of Yeşilay Dergisi published from 1980 to 2000 contain articles on various topics related to health, such as advice for ensuring healthy nutrition and information on the negative effects that consuming alcohol, drugs and tobacco has on individual health. Topics are also related to children’s education and Islamic moral education. Various cartoons serve to point out Yeşilay’s views on drinking, smoking and drug use. For its cultural components, the journal publishes poems celebrating nationalism and military virtues. Sections from the press (Basından Yayınlar) include summaries of news circulating in various daily newspapers; they describe traffic accidents, violence and criminality as a consequence of loss of self-control through drunkenness. From among the journal’s 240 issues, I selected articles and cartoons with an explicit reference to international bodies of knowledge and to Islam.

6The pre-selected material demonstrates that Yeşilay was the most active recipient of the scientific facts and concepts provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Turkey, and it mediates this knowledge for the Turkish-speaking public. It translates reports and produces abridged versions in simpler language to communicate evidence about the harmful effects of drinking. However, its role is not limited to unmediated translation or providing a simple summary; rather, it takes on a concrete meaning in the context of Turkey. It fosters specific notions about gender roles, nationhood and lifestyles based on conservative ideologies making use of Islamic principles. Yeşilay has played a significant role in connecting scientific knowledge about alcohol use with Islamic understandings of morality and in mediating between international anti-alcohol organisations and local religious conservative groups.

7Narratives about female bodies, motherhood and deviant female behaviours significantly dominate the contents of the articles and cartoons about drinking. I analyse these narratives to show that the adaption of scientific discourses within a conservative religious setting has caused Islamic prescripts to be leveraged as norms for daily life, which have thus become more visible in the practice and regulation of drinking in present-day Turkey. I show the overlaps between scientific and religious discourses by examining the following questions: How was scientific knowledge, generated by experts mainly from Europe and the United States (US), appropriated and used to uphold religious principles of abstinence in a Muslim context? To what extent are these discourses related to constructions of the female body?

8In addition to mediating international bodies of knowledge related to alcohol use and addiction problems, the significant role of Yeşilay in Turkey is also defined in relation to its connection to the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health. Since 1943, the Ministry of Education has allowed Yeşilay to organise in schools events and activities around issues of alcohol use and addiction every year during the first week of March. This week continues to be celebrated as Yeşilay Haftası and it is used to reach out to students and their parents to educate them about the harmful effects of addictive substances. Thus, over the years, Yeşilay has aimed to reach a broad population in its campaigns. The links to the Ministry of Health are in the form of regular information exchanges and campaigns for health and youth that are organised in cooperation with the Ministry.

9Yeşilay has not yet attracted attention from scholars studying the contemporary history of Turkey, although recently, a few articles and book contributions have focused on the founding years of Yeşilay (Biçer-Deveci, 2021; Evered and Evered, 2016). I situate the organisation within the transnational phenomenon of the temperance movement and process of the medicalisation of alcoholism during the early 20th century. The literature has investigated this latter phenomenon in the context of European countries and the US (Schrad, 2010; Tyrrell, 2008). It has highlighted that medicalisation took place through the interaction of scientific experts with religiously-inspired associations with a political agenda (Kamenov, 2020; Spöring, 2014). In the second half of the 20th century, anti-alcohol campaigns developed into “addiction prevention campaigns” under the lead of the WHO. The scholarship on various regions in Europe and the US emphasises the relevance of this era for understanding contemporary alcohol policies. Historians have noted a revival of the temperance movement, in which the WHO plays a central role in defining standards for alcohol regulation policies, designing addiction prevention campaigns and developing public health institutions (Spode, 2010; Brandt and Rozin, 1997). As the social scientist Irmgard Eisenbach-Stangl argues, the campaign for addiction prevention in the second half of the 20th century generally should be seen as a political act that inserted alcohol into the agenda of public health policy (Eisenbach-Stangl, 2004).

10Within the historiography on contemporary Turkey, the study on Yeşilay presented in this article is unique as the organisation’s reports and publications have not yet been investigated. Thus, this study contributes to the historiographic insights on interactions between the military, religion and public health. Scholars have observed radical changes in the economic, political and social structures in Turkey triggered by the military coup that occurred in 1980. One of these changes is the empowerment of civil social movements with programmes addressing issues such as women’s emancipation and workers’ rights, promoting the development of democracy in the 1980s and 1990s (Al-Rebholz, 2014). Parallel to this process, scholars have also studied the revival of the Islamic political movement (Başkan, 2010). With the introduction of a liberal market system in Turkey, a Muslim middle class emerged along with political parties with a conservative Islamic agenda, such as Anavatan Partisi (the Motherland Party) and Refah Partisi (the Welfare Party). Nilüfer Göle (2004) has highlighted that the visibility of Islam in the Turkish public sphere increased at the turn of 21st century, and this was made possible by the liberal market system offering goods and leisure spaces in compliance with Islamic principles of abstinence.

11In the following section, I analyse the report Yeşilay published in 1983 on alcohol and beer. This report was a reaction to the report from the beer company Efes Pilsen, published in the same year, which claimed that beer drinking had benefits for a individual health and the national economy. The report from Yeşilay records anti-alcohol discourses as supported by the organisation’s board of directors. The analysis is located within the context of economic and political structures in Turkey. After this section, I present an analysis of the role of scientific and religious discourses in the construction of the female body.

Beer, the Door Opener to Alcoholism

12In 1983, Yeşilay’s president Selahattin Kaptanağası published a 77-page report on beer and alcoholism (Bira ve Alkolizm Raporu) as a supplement to the organisation’s journal. In his preface, Kaptanağası named 106 scientists who contributed to the dossier, which contains Yeşilay’s goals and activities (1983a, p.5). Kaptanağası (1983a) defined the purpose of the report in a presentation of scientific views about the harmful effects of drinking beer. He emphasised the idea that beer tempts young people to consume other drugs. According to Kaptanağası, the report should also inform the public about how alcohol companies benefit from alcoholism, and how people’s health and families are negatively impacted.

13Kaptanağası (1983a) used military jargon to describe the issue of alcoholism. When he started to work for Yeşilay in 1964, he had already pursued a career as a military officer. In 1969, he became the president of Yeşilay and served in that capacity until 2004.1 He wrote several monographs, as well as essays and articles that were published in Yeşilay’s journal, on addiction problems among youth. In the report on beer and alcoholism, he names alcoholism as one of the most important “social problems” (en önemli sosyal meselelerinden biri) in Turkey (Kaptanağası, 1983b, p. 5). He does not define alcoholism, but refers to all forms of behaviours related to drinking and statistics describing an increase of alcohol consumption in Turkey without referring to the source of information. According to him, the increase of alcohol consumption in Turkey is about 350% whereas in Netherlands, which is the country with the highest rate of alcohol consumption within the European Economic Community, there is an increase of 276% (Kaptanağası, 1983b, p. 5). Kaptanağası blames public ignorance about this “social problem”, which he claimed that foreign enemies (dış düşmanlar) would use as a weapon in the Cold War (soğuk harb silahı) (Kaptanağası, 1983b, p. 6).

14The report also refers to the Turkish military regime. According to Yeşilay’s board of directors, the military coup of 1980 marked the beginning of a new era in the fight against alcoholism:

Before 12 September [the day of the junta], we did not receive a response from the institutions in charge to our letters about the pandemic of alcoholism and drug use which threats humanity, and particularly our youth, a pandemic which has become the biggest catastrophe of the century and in history (Türkiye Yeşilay Cemiyeti Genel Merkezi, 1983, p. 9).

15According to the report, paragraph 58 added to the constitution after the 1980 coup, which prescribed to the government the protection of young people from social problems such as alcoholism, drugs, and gambling etc is important as it led to a new position in government, the Undersecretary for the Fight against Intoxicants (Uyuşturucu Maddelerle Mücadele Müsteşarlığı) (Türkiye Yeşilay Cemiyeti Genel Merkezi, 1983, p. 9).

16The coup that took place on the 12th of September 1980 established a military regime in Turkey which ruled for three years. In addition to Kaptanağası, another former military officer, Necati Özfatura (1930–2019) served as a board member and secretary general of Yeşilay. Özfatura became president of Yeşilay in 2004. Both Kaptanağası and Özfatura published essays and monographs on addiction problems from their viewpoint of right-wing conservatism combined with religiosity, racist eugenics and nationalism. The ideology they supported is defined in the literature as neo-republicanism (Başkan, 2010, p. 168). The military coup was at its core the representative of this ideology which reduced the society to the component parts of mosque, family and military barracks. The leadership of the Green Crescent had also ideological link with the government which has followed the military coup in 1984. The government was under the lead of the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi [ANAP]), which was a conservative party with a neoliberal economic program (Heper, 1990; Arat and Pamuk, 2019, p. 55–56). The economic liberalisation under the new government enabled religious groups, which have been economically marginalised within the structures of national economy, to participate in the global economic market. Eventually, the religiously conservative business community started to take a greater share of the country’s economic growth, which also led to the development of new consumption patterns oriented towards Islamic principles such as alcohol-free leisure spaces. At the time, this religious group followed a moderate discourse on Islam to avoid conflict with the still-powerful secular elite and was politically represented by the ANAP (Başkan, 2010, p. 168).

17The tone and content of the report clearly reflects Yeşilay’s attitude towards the military junta following the coup of 12 September 1980 and its ideology. With a retired military officer leading the organisation, the report, and indeed the entire journal, took on a military cadence, invoking the language of war and defence of the nation. The report even declared that the regime had taken a big step towards “true independence” (gerçek kurtuluş) by introducing the Undersecretariat to Combat Narcotic Substances (Uyuşturucu Maddelerle Mücadele Müsteşarlığı) (Kaptanağası, 1983b, p. 9).

18Kaptanağası did not define who the enemy of the Turkish nation was; rather, he addressed his critiques to Efes Pilsen, and the report it had published about the benefits of beer for individual health, prevention of alcoholism and economic growth. Efes Pilsen is one of the largest breweries that produces and markets beer in Turkey. Until 1969, beer production and marketing were managed under the state monopoly, TEKEL (Tütün, Tütün Mamulleri, Tuz ve Alkol İşletmeleri A.Ş. Genel Müderlüğü). The Turkish state first liberalised the beer market and then went on to declassify beer as an alcoholic drink in 1974 (Miller and Demirel, 1988). Companies such as Efes Pilsen and Tuborg, as well as state brands, benefited from the 1974 deregulation, which made beer available in every shop and for people of every age, even children. Yeşilay viewed this decision of the State Council as the reason for the increase in alcoholism in Turkey, to the point that it had become “very dangerous[,] and the most significant social problem” in the country (Kaptanağası, 1983a, p.5).

19Efes Pilsen was very well-known for its successful advertising, which aimed to capture the zeitgeist and bring beer closer to its consumers (Evered and Evered, 2020, p. 98–99). Efes Pilsen also took full advantage of the opportunities presented by state television, Türkiye Radyo Television Kurumu – Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), using it as a platform for specific advertising purposes (Evered and Evered, 2020, p. 99-100).

20Figure 1 shows how Efes Pilsen made use of gender roles in a tactical way in its advertising strategy: six young women clothed and coiffed in similar way with the same smile referred in the sales campaign to a pack of Efes Pilsen beer, with its six bottles. The advertisement illustrates the use of gender stereotypes by companies to appeal its consumers. In the case of Efes Pilsen, women are depicted as decorates for each bottle, where is in another advertisement men are pictured as authoritative and active (Figure 2). Research literature has largely discussed using of gender stereotypes in advertising and referred to the both negative and positive effects on consumers (for a discussion of current research see Grau, Zotos, 2016). Indeed the depiction of women as consumers in the Figure 1 reflected changing status of women in urban spaces and the shift in attitudes towards their economic emancipation and expectations about traditional codes of behaviour, including clothing and male companionship. The fact that this changing also affected drinking behaviours of female members is recorded in the 1979 WHO report for many countries in Europe and US (Regional Office for Europe, 1979). Against this background, the Figure 1 can be interpreted as cultivating perceptions and beliefs of beer consumers provoking reactionary statements from the board of directors at Yeşilay (for social effects of advertising see Kim et al, 2014).

Figure 1: Advertisement of Efes Pilsen.

Figure 1: Advertisement of Efes Pilsen.

© source: Cumhuriyet, 25 August 1972

Figure 2: Advertisement of Efes Pilsen in 1972 : Efes Pilsen’li bir dünya.  İştah açıcı – Sıhhat kaynağı – Neşe kaynağı. Kalitesini dünyaya kabul ettiren hakiki bira [A world with Efes Pilsen. The apetitizer, the source for health, the source for entertainment. The real bira which made its quality known to the world]

Figure 2: Advertisement of Efes Pilsen in 1972 : Efes Pilsen’li bir dünya.  İştah açıcı – Sıhhat kaynağı – Neşe kaynağı. Kalitesini dünyaya kabul ettiren hakiki bira [A world with Efes Pilsen. The apetitizer, the source for health, the source for entertainment. The real bira which made its quality known to the world]

© source: <https://www.oguztopoglu.com/​2015/​08/​efes-pilsen-bira-1972-nostaljik-eski.html>

21For Kaptanağası, the most direct provocative act by Efes Pilsen was its publication of an 11-page report “Benefits of the Beer in the Reduction of Alcohol Consumption in Turkey” (Tür-kiye’de Alkol Tüketiminin Azaltılmasında Biranın Yararları), in 1983. In this report, Efes Pilsen described the health benefits of beer and the reduction of alcohol consumption in Turkey, arguing that beer was the best drink to replace hard alcoholic beverages, such as raki, vodka, gin, etc. (Efes Pilsen Bira ve Malt Fabrikaları Grub Koordinatörlüğü, 1983). This argument was in response to comments made by the fourth State Five-Year Plan for Development (Dördüncü Beş Yıllık Kalkınma Planı) on the alcohol industry. This plan stated that alcohol consumption had not decreased among the population despite the state’s attempts to steer consumers towards non-alcoholic and mildly alcoholic beverages to protect public health. Instead, the development plan noted that there had been an increase in alcohol consumption (T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı, 1979) and featured a call by the state in the face of a global increase in alcohol consumption similar to that reported in WHO publications in the 1970s (Moser, 1980). In 1979, the WHO general assembly had passed a resolution that defined alcohol-related issues as a major public health problem and urged member states to take appropriate measures to reduce drinking. As a member of the WHO, the Turkish government added the reduction of alcohol consumption as a goal in its Five-Year Plan for Development 1979.

22Kaptanağası accused Efes Pilsen of contributing to an alleged 350% increase in alcohol consumption in Turkey over the previous 10 years through its “ruthless” advertising strategy on state-owned television and radio. He compared Turkey with the Netherlands, which, he stated, had a 276% growth in alcohol consumption, the highest among the countries of the European Economic Community (Kaptanağası, 1983a, pp. 17-18). Fifteen years earlier, the international medical literature had called Turkey “the country which is immune to alcohol” (alkollü içkiye karsi bağışıklığı olan ülke) but, according to Kaptanağası, the youth of Turkey had been derailed from becoming “moral” citizens by beer advertisements on public television and radio (Kaptanağası, 1983a, p. 30).

23When the military regime tasked the parliament with forming a new government, the ANAP, under the leadership of Prime Minister Turgut Özal, raised alcohol as one of the first issues to be regulated, in order to protect young people from abusing it. On 8 June 1984, the parliament passed a new law reclassifying beer as an alcoholic beverage, thus regulating beer-related advertisements on state-owned radio and television as well as its sale and consumption (Miller and Demirel, 1988). Yeşilay felt that its demand to re-classify beer as an alcoholic beverage had found resonance in the new government. In line with the new religious-conservative ruling party, the board of Yeşilay focused more on religious principles and on the (male) citizen’s responsibility to eschew intoxicants as well as all forms of sexual activity that were not directed towards reproduction. This discourse framed all forms of deviant behaviours, such as drinking and homosexuality, as the weapons of the “other side” in the Cold War.

“Alcohol is the mother of all misdeeds”

24Yeşilay often referred to phrases and scientific statistics from the WHO to support its position on the harmful effects of alcohol consumption. In its reports and publications, beer is presented as a danger to young people, which the authors always envisioned as young men eligible for military service. Alcohol was also presented as a threat to the female body, which was a crucial theme in multiple ways in various essays and publications. More specifically, the female reproductive organs were often the focus of anti-alcohol discourses that framed them as being especially affected by drinking, thereby causing a state of degeneration amongst the whole nation. The report on beer and alcoholism reprinted an article frequently published in Yeşilay’s journal. This article tried to present itself as a scientific tract on damage to the foetus caused by drinking:

Although harmful substances can affect the child in the mother’s womb, alcohol, syphilitic germs and lead poison (sic) pierce the membrane and reach the child directly. Also, through the blood of the mother, alcohol reaches the foetus. The infection of venereal diseases, such as syphilis and gonorrhoea, usually happen during a state of drunkenness. A medical scientist confirmed that out of 1500 syphilitics 1200 have been infected when they were drunk. (…) Women who drink alcohol, have deformation in the ovarian system and the number of miscarriages increases. That there is an important link between infertility and alcohol can be explained scientifically (Özfatura, 1983, pp. 49-50).

25The author of the quotation uses the words ‘alcohol’ and ‘drunkenness’ in every sentence, making them the cause for all kinds of obstructions to women’s fertility. The article only describes the effects of consuming alcohol on the female body; the effects of drinking on the fertility of male bodies is not mentioned. The language used in the article suggests that the author has summarised—or claims to summarise—the available medical literature, as it is rife with medical jargon.

26That said, the article is also representative of the various essays in the report that cited scientists, who are not named, but did not describe any specific research. Therefore, Yeşilay’s claim that it disseminated scientific views is questionable, as it reads more like a propagandist paper promoting its specific ideology.

27The relationship between drinking and the changing status of women is reflected in the various articles in the journal describing women becoming alcoholics by consuming beer. For instance, the physician Yalçın Özer (biographical information not found), contributed an article in March 1982 about beer being an alcoholic beverage with many detrimental health effects. The trigger for this article was a news story item in Hürriyet on 17 January 1982 that showed a picture of a group of women drinking beer with the caption, “In summer and in winter, we sip (yudumluyoruz) [it] as an alcoholic drink and as a soft drink [and] become beer drinkers (biracı: beer lovers)” (Özer, 1982, p. 4) (Figure 3). The journal reprinted this picture, adding a caption saying, “Bira Alkolizm’in Kanlı Oltasıdır , which can literarally be translated as “beer is the bloody fishing pole of alcoholism” (metaphorically, he means that beer drinking makes people alcoholics and refers to the increase of alcohol consumption).

Figure 3: Biracı Olduk

Figure 3: Biracı Olduk

© Source: Yeşilay. Aylık Sağlık ve Kültür Dergisi, volume 580, March 1982, p. 4.

28This increase according to him Özer had reached a dangerous level (BIRA SALGINI TEHLIKELI BIR NOKTAYA ULASMISTIR [highlighted in the original source]). He repeated a phrase, which was used frequently in several essays, claiming that Turkey had shifted from being known 15 years earlier as a country with “alcohol immunity” to being a country with one of the highest rates of alcohol consumption (Özer, 1982, p. 34). He also claims that all the beer factories in Turkey, including Efes Pilsen, Tuborg, Tekel, Erciyas, Ege and Güney Bira, could not produce enough beer to meet the increase in demand. Özer (1982) emphasised the growth of alcohol consumption among women in particular:

In the news of the A.A. [Alcoholics Anonymous] section in Izmir, the psychiatrist Bekir Grebene states: “The fashion of alcoholic beverages which is already a part of our daily life, also motivates women to drink. The consumption of a small amount of little [alcoholic] appetisers causes, after a certain time, a habit of drinking and women unavoidably get used to alcohol” and he points out that consequently the number of addicts is increasing among women; 50% of children born to alcoholics are stillbirths, while the majority of the rest form a big hump on the back of society with various psychological and physical defects due to consumption (Özer, 1982, p. 34).

29Here, Özer (1982) referred to A.A. and the psychiatrist connected to it as the unquestionable authority about the meaning of the statistics that were presented. The adverb ‘unavoidably’, following the noun, ‘women’, indicates an understanding of women as being passive and thus susceptible to the influence of social trends. The clipping from Hürriyet is also seen within the context of the changing status of women in Turkish society and their newly-achieved freedom of being able to occupy spaces that, traditionally, had only been accessible to men. The larger caption below the picture highlights this point: “Ladies freely enter beer houses in cities” (Figure 3). For Özer (1982), this is a degenerative development for Turkish society, as he notes when referring to the offspring of female alcoholics. According to Özer (1982), they are a ‘hump’ (kambur) on society’s back. This rhetoric is based on eugenic concepts from the late 19th century, which also targeted the female body and its reproductive functions to advocate for alcohol prohibition.

30In addition to the articles mentioned above, Yeşilay’s journal regularly reported on criminal acts and violence fuelled by alcohol. A saying of the Prophet Mohammad taken from a hadith, “Alcohol is the mother of all misdeeds” (içki bütün kötülüklerin anasıdır), was used in almost every issue of the journal (Alkan, 1990). The cartoon in Figure 4, which also appeared in many issues, illustrates this phrase. Alcohol, the ‘mother’, gives birth to all kinds of criminals, who are labelled in the cartoon as ‘murderer’, ‘liar’, ‘cheat’, ‘adulterer’, ‘thief’ and ‘villain’. The criminals are all male children, and the cartoon shows the explicit gender bias surrounding drinking.

Figure 4: İçkinin Doğurdukları.

Figure 4: İçkinin Doğurdukları.

© Source: Yeşilay. Aylık Sağlık ve Kültür Dergisi, Volume 676, March 1990, p. 23

31The reports in Yeşilay’s journals on criminal acts resulting from drinking were compiled from various daily newspapers. For instance, under the title, Alkol Haberleri (literally translated as ‘alcohol news’), one might read about women who killed their drinking husbands, traffic accidents, or drunken men who started a fight and ended up committing homicide (Basından, 1990a, 1990b, 1989a). Although this kind of news typically appeared in a very brief paragraph, Yeşilay usually gave more prominence to letters from women reporting their violent actions against their drinking husbands. One such letter is reproduced below:

I have two daughters, aged 18 and 14. My husband was drinking since the day of our marriage. In the beginning he drank on his own and did not harm us. But as the years passed, he used to return home very drunk and began beating us. He was not aware of what he was doing. We could not rest at home. No place on my body remained unbeaten and free of bruises. I, as well as my children, had enough of being beaten. One day, my eldest daughter was not able to bear [this situation] anymore and attempted suicide. But her father beat her yet again. Finally, I left to save my children. But leaving did not solve our problems. My husband attacked our house again and broke the windows. I went crazy, I was so blinded by anger, I was forced into killing him. Now, I am in prison. (…) Fatma Avcıoğlu, Mugla Sabah (9.7.90). ([Front Page], 1990, p.1).

32The author of the letter describes a degenerative process that her husband underwent due to drinking. This description serves as a concrete example of the science-based arguments of the various authors of the essays published in Yeşilay’s journal. The drama is intensified by describing how the protagonist finds herself entirely on her own in the confrontation with domestic violence. The state and associated institutions such as police and emergency medical services, which should have intervened in this drama, are absent until the woman is sent to prison. The woman’s violent act is presented as being driven by moral outrage.

33In the section Alkol Haberleri, there are also reports of women divorcing their drunkard husbands; these reports refer to motherhood as the most important role for humanity which can only be carried by women. One article about family life formulates motherhood as the most holy concept in the world (dünyanın en kutsal kavramı) (Ail eve Yuvamız, 1990, p. 20). Accordingly, ‘virtues’ related to motherhood are emphasised. This is shown in the following news item reprinted by Yeşilay from the daily newspaper Bugün (Today):

She is not a woman, but patience itself (sabır taşı)

Gülşen Aslan relates that her husband has been addicted to alcohol and to gambling for 14 years, and that she has finally decided to divorce him. At the divorce hearing, she allegedly said: “We have lost everything because of this illness. I am depressed to see my children unhappy every day. It is now up to me to create a peaceful family atmosphere”. Bugün, 16.05.90. (Basından Haberler, 1990, p. 24).

34Here, the virtue of patience, also associated with motherhood, is highlighted in the headline. The right of a woman to divorce her husband due to his misbehaviour is emphasised and used to discredit drinkers. Again, women are represented solely in their role as wives. The Yeşilay journal similarly published an article in 1989 stating that 80% of women who divorced their husbands cited alcohol as the main reason. According to this article, alcohol was responsible for the never-ending conflicts within the family as well as financial problems (Basından, 1989b).

35The right of women to divorce their husbands because of drinking is asserted within Islamic law and has existed in Islamic states, such as Iran, for many centuries (Cooke, 2020, pp. 483-484). Statistics about women divorcing their husbands presented in a journal such as that published by Yeşilay were an obvious attempt at manipulation. One of the main authors of the journal in 1980s and 1990s was Alparslan Özyazıcı, a physician who is also interested in Islamic perspectives on medicine. In addition to the numerous articles he has written for the Yeşilay journal, he wrote for the journals of the Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı (Directorate of Religious Affairs). In an article on alcoholic beverages, Özyazıcı (1990) emphasised “scientific” evidence:

Time passes and the Quran rejuvenates itself

The birth of Islam occurred more than 1400 years ago. This length of time has not impaired the commands of Quran; on the contrary, the developing sciences and knowledge testify that the commands and prohibitions of Quran are the most beneficial instructions for mankind. Here the ban on alcohol by religion is only one of them. Alcoholic beverages, which are banned by religion, are understood by science as being as harmful as poison for the human body. (…) So, one American professor of medicine, who is studying this issue [harmful effects of alcohol], demonstrated that damage to brain cells starts with the first cup of an alcoholic drink. (…).THE EXCELLENCE IS SUCH THAT EVEN ENEMIES CAN AFFIRM IT (highlighted in the original). (Özyazıcı, 1990, p. 10).

36Özyazıcı (1990) refers to US-Americans in his use of the noun, enemies. This word is a rhetorical flourish that did not reflect the actual peaceful relationship between the US and Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s. In using this word, Özyazıcı (1990) returns to an old concept dating back to anti-alcohol activism in Turkey during the First World War. One of the leading activists of this period was a physician, Milaslı Ismail Hakkı, who sought evidence of Islamic universality in science. Milaslı used the term in his public speech at the founding of Hilal-i Ahdar, formerly Yeşilay Cemiyeti, to refer to Christian ‘enemies’ poisoning Turkish soldiers on the war front. He was referring specifically to the Triple Entente Powers and the Christian population in Turkey, whereas Özyazıcı referred to the USA. Özyazıcı also described the failure of prohibition in the US in 1933. According to Özyazıcı (1990), the reason for the failure was that Americans were weak on the issue of alcohol:

[O]ne American professor explains this phenomenon in the following way: Muhammad banned alcohol through the mediation of the Quran and so protected huge masses of human beings from the harms of alcohol. This result is not achieved in enlightened America in the 20th century despite of all kinds of propaganda and scientific progress. (Özyazıcı, 1990, p. 38).

37The professor referred to here is Julius Hirsch (1892–1962), a German professor in social hygiene at the University of Heidelberg, wrongly named as an American by Özyazıcı. Under the Nazi regime, Hirsch emigrated to Istanbul in 1933 where he was a professor at the Institute for Hygiene of the University of Istanbul until 1948 (Weder, 2000). The publication to which Özyazıcı refers is the Hıfzıssıhha Ders Kitabı (Textbook on Hygiene), which was released in two volumes, one in 1938 and another in 1940. The apparent mistake in which Özyazıcı calls Hirsch an American indicates that the excerpt may be a reproduction from a Yeşilay publication in the late 1930s. It is reproduced here as a manipulative way to stress the argument on the universality of the Islamic doctrine.

Conclusion

38This article examines the interaction between the global body of scientific knowledge, religion and public health concerns through the case of Yeşilay, a non-profit organisation in Turkey. This study shows that an organisation concerned with public health and a programme dealing with issues such as alcoholism and drug addiction is not necessarily free from ideological and religious elements. On the contrary, Yeşilay must be defined as an organisation through which representatives of the ruling elite act against developments that question or threaten their dominance. One such development explicitly addressed in this study is the changing status of women in society, which was perceived as a danger to the entire Turkish society. Another threat was seen to come from companies, such as Efes Pilsen, that sell products associated with entertainment. The moral values of the ruling elite are questioned on the basis of its alcohol consumption, particularly in venues such as pubs, football clubs, etc. Within the discourse of Yeşilay, drinking alcohol serves as the source of all ‘vices’.

39At the turn of the 21st century, Yeşilay is closer than ever to the government under the leadership of Islamic-conservative Justice and Development Party, as its initiatives and activities are aligned with the image that the new government wants to cultivate. It is actively supported by the government in its efforts to establish chapters in a large number of Muslim countries across Central Asia, North Africa and the Balkans. The concrete activities of Yeşilay in these countries and the extent to which they operate through the framework of political propaganda needs further investigation; however, that is not within the scope of this article. This fact makes a study on the association between political power and religious ideology much more relevant for future research.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1: Advertisement of Efes Pilsen.
Crédits © source: Cumhuriyet, 25 August 1972
URL http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/docannexe/image/18018/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 258k
Titre Figure 2: Advertisement of Efes Pilsen in 1972 : Efes Pilsen’li bir dünya.  İştah açıcı – Sıhhat kaynağı – Neşe kaynağı. Kalitesini dünyaya kabul ettiren hakiki bira [A world with Efes Pilsen. The apetitizer, the source for health, the source for entertainment. The real bira which made its quality known to the world]
Crédits © source: <https://www.oguztopoglu.com/​2015/​08/​efes-pilsen-bira-1972-nostaljik-eski.html>
URL http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/docannexe/image/18018/img-2.png
Fichier image/png, 1,3M
Titre Figure 3: Biracı Olduk
Crédits © Source: Yeşilay. Aylık Sağlık ve Kültür Dergisi, volume 580, March 1982, p. 4.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/docannexe/image/18018/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 756k
Titre Figure 4: İçkinin Doğurdukları.
Crédits © Source: Yeşilay. Aylık Sağlık ve Kültür Dergisi, Volume 676, March 1990, p. 23
URL http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/docannexe/image/18018/img-4.png
Fichier image/png, 807k
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Elife Biçer-Deveci, « The Issue of Alcohol in Turkey during the 1980s and 1990s »Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 151 | 2022, 179-198.

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Elife Biçer-Deveci, « The Issue of Alcohol in Turkey during the 1980s and 1990s »Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée [En ligne], 151 | 2022, mis en ligne le 22 septembre 2022, consulté le 19 avril 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/18018 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/remmm.18018

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Elife Biçer-Deveci

Institute for History, Chair History of Modern World, ETH Zurich, Suisse; elife.bicer[at]unibe.ch

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