On March 9, Turkey’s first lady, Emine Erdogan, attended an event called “Mothers of Ottoman sultans who left a legacy on our history,” organized by the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization in Ankara. After naming a few prominent valide sultans — the title of the legal mother of the sultan — from the Ottoman era, Erdogan said, “Valide sultans have been pioneers of their generation and examples to our mothers.” Challenging the Orientalist portrayal of the harem as a place where ambitious women battled with the power of their sexuality, Erdogan praised the harem, saying, “For the members of the Ottoman family, the harem was a school. It was a center of education, where women were prepared for life and organized volunteer activities. This household was led by the valide sultans.”
As Erdogan’s speech highlighted, the harem is an intriguing concept to contemporary audiences. The word’s original meaning, “forbidden or sacred,” was applied to the female members of the family. In societies where men and women are segregated, women have their own quarters, the harem. In the Ottoman palace, it would be the quarters where all the slave girls, concubines, eunuchs and the sultan’s female relatives resided. The kind of education provided to residents of the harem depended on the leader and the era in question. Yet it is known that the main role of the young females who were brought in as slaves was to please the sultan and have male babies, providing them the possibility of one day becoming valide sultan, the woman who rules the court.
