Erdogan's Wife Was Wrong: Ottoman Harems Were About Slavery, Not Education

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's wife Emine Erdogan's comment that harems provided women with education are not true, Turkish historian Ayşe Hür told Sputnik Turkiye.

"Do not forget that it was closely associated with the institution of concubines, who were slaves, part of the system of slavery prevalent in that period of the Ottomans. Behind closed doors, many human dramas played out in the sultan's harem," Hür told Sputnik Turkiye.

He added that few to no documents survive from the era of the Ottoman harem between the 15th and 17th centuries. As women in the harem were illiterate, most information about about the harem comes from Western travelers, who, being men, could not be seen as objective sources on the experiences of women.

"Because the women living in the harem did not have a sufficient level of education, none of them left behind their memories in written form," Hür told Sputnik Turkiye.

Hür added that women's education in the harem was most actly limited to knowing how to act in the sultan's presence, how to raise children, and play musical instruments for leisure.

"In my view, the truth is somewhere in the middle. The harem was neither a school nor a hotbed of depravity. We can say with certainty that the harem had no special, systematic and broad education system,"  Hür told Sputnik Turkiye.