ABSTRACT

The prostitute is a recurring figure in Turkish cinema. Archetypal tales of the fallen woman emerged in Turkish cinema as early as 1917 with Mehmet Rauf’s Pençe. The protagonists of this film are prostitutes, but information about why they have taken this path is withheld. If anything, these characters are femmes fatales who betray their husbands purely for the sake of sexual pleasure. Even though their profession is not prostitution, because they betray their husbands, they are referred to in the film as ‘whores’. In 1922, Muhsin. Ertuğrul’s İstanbul’da Bir Facia-i Aşk (A Love Tragedy in İstanbul) had a Russian actress performing as a prostitute. During the 1940s in Şehvet Kurbanı (The Victim of Lust) (Muhsin Ertuğrul, 1940), Cahide Sonku played a prostitute. In 1958, Atıf Yılmaz’s Bir Şoförün Gizli Defteri (The Secret Diary of a Driver) similarly had a prostitute character. As Özgüç points out, little had changed between the 1940s and 1970s in the representation of prostitutes:

They were copies of each other. No one really made a film on prostitution. Generally, these characters were not believable, dead motifs, because neither the actresses nor the directors had an idea about prostitution in reality. This is also why they were not convincing. All was artificial and superficial. Besides, strict censorship was in place. 1