“The Love for Young Men Shifted to Girls”: Cevdet Pasha’s Account of Istanbul’s Sexual Culture in the Mid-19th Century
How the Crimean War and the foreign gaze changed the romantic customs of the Ottoman elite.
LGBT History of Turkey
Same-sex love in Ottoman literature, bathhouses, and palace life. How Turkey moved from relative tolerance to contemporary repression.
The Same-Sex Attraction of 15th-Century Turkish Official and Poet Ahmed Pasha to a Sultan's Page
How a scandal at the court of Mehmed II destroyed the career of an Ottoman Empire vizier.
Three Ottoman Homosexual Miniatures from the Manuscript of Atâyî's Poems
An 18th-century Ottoman manuscript: how love between men was judged, mocked, and celebrated in the empire.
Was Atatürk Gay or Bisexual?
What memoirs, biographies, and British intelligence reports say about the sexuality of Turkey's founder.
Homoerotic Themes in Taşlıcalı Yahya Bey’s Ottoman Poem “Shah and the Beggar”
A rare example of 16th-century Turkish literature in which a man falls in love with another man.
The Homosexuality of Sultan Mehmed II
Sources on the possible same-sex relationships of the Ottoman sultan who conquered Constantinople.