We walk along the colorful walls and tiles. The rugs and pillows that have elaborate designs, takes us back beyond the centuries. As if the location which now hosts empty rooms, high ceilings and authentic decorations, absorbs us into its mysterious world. This is Harem… The most important section in the Ottoman Palace. We keep walking back in time along the rooms covered with mirrors within the vision of sultans and concubines having a wild sex party under the influence of aphrodisiacs in the dim light. We are in the secret lives of conjures visions of opulent surroundings filled with beautiful and sensuous naked women whose sole duty was to entertain an aging lustful sultan… The fantasies and descriptions on Harem are not limited with this. The images of nubile naked young women, hungry for sex, jealous, ambitious and ready to satisfy their master anytime, who spend their days lounging about a pool or beautifying themselves, blink their eyes. The background music is that of a woman singing in Ottoman language. The rumors explain that there was no way out to counteract different types of sexual relationships in the palace. The castrated black guards used to bring artificial penises into the harem and make love with women in the role of a lesbian. Considering the women’s sexual desires, the palace kitchen used to give the harem some vegetables in slices. When sultan needed a woman from the harem, the guard used to pick up beautiful virgins; then he will put them in line to present them to the sultan’s choice. After the sultan’s decision, the girl was prepared by an instructor and waited for the sultan as the night came. However, there is a weird sorrow in harem. The rooms are covered with wide swats in order to prevent the entry of males from outside. There is no sunshine inside… It is a darkness that makes the person feel in the doldrums. In fact, the harem was never been only a place of pleasure. Along with all these definitions, the real story lies behind the secret walls which were filled of the world’s most beautiful women competing to impress the Sultan. Gossip and intrigue reign the air along with most deceiving bloody murders. The floors were swarmed with horrors, invaders, and dune beasts. When we enter the rooms of lower class harem women, we begin to hear the sobs covered into the pale color on the walls. We then remember the rumors that ‘Suleiman the Magnificent’ ordered the execution of ‘Kadin Gülfem’ when she failed one night to appear in his bed. During one of his debauches,’ the mad Sultan Ibrahim’ ordered all his women seized during the night, stuffed in sacks, and thrown into the Bosporus. One was saved by French sailors and taken to Paris. Maybe the walls still keep the voices of those women spending their days in fear of death. It was a stage of serious contentions and the competition for hierarchy had mostly political purposes. However, the interior war inside, was mainly caused by the women’s worries for their future. Women in the palace gave 130 children to Sultan Murat III. Because Sultan Mehmet III, his eldest son, killed most of his brothers and sisters, when Sultan Murat III passed away, he only left 20 sons and 27 daughters behind. Harem is the story of women, determined not to go back to the poverty where they had come from and those who never accepted to lose. It was a stage of hundreds of women struggling to impress the Sultan’s mother and to be able to give a male child to the royal family. We know for fact that those women were not passive or just acted as please tools for sultans. We should not forget that the women were the reason for the war to last 20 years in Ottoman history. Harem women in fact were the power behind the throne. Harems played an important role in the governing of the Ottoman Empire. This most renowned period was known as the Reign of Women,’ the Kadinlar Sultanati’.. The involvement of the harem women and more specifically, the Valide Sultan (sultan’s mother or queen mother) and the sultan’s favorites (favored harem women), in state politics, diminished the power and position of the sultan. As the sultan was the head of the government (or Divan), this interference proved to be detrimental to the Ottoman State. Unlike structures of western government, where increased power often means increased public profiles, power in the Imperial Harem was linked to seclusion, as it demonstrated one's proximity to the sultan. Over the centuries of Ottoman rule, the sultans became increasingly secluded within the harem and the princes, or future rulers, stayed within its confines as well. This allowed royal women a greater ability to participate in politics. The mother queen (valide sultan) ruled the harem, with much influence over her sons, and played an important role in state affairs between rulers. The valide sultans were so powerful that the later Ottoman period has been referred to by some as “The Age of Women.” In fact, the sultan's power was demonstrated through his seclusion within the harem. Women were able to gain political and social power according to their proximity to him. During the unsteady transition to this new system, the harem reached the highest point of its political influence. Regent mothers wrote daily letters with instructions about war material, taxes and other matters of state, and continued to endow public institutions. It describes the power of women in politics and society both in the imperial harem and in the government of the Ottoman Empire. The power women possessed a role with the reigning sultan and his potential successor. Women, who gained power within the harem, also gained political power in the empire, which contradicts western myths that believe harems to be purely sexual and that women had no power. The mother of the sultan was the head of the royal household, the mothers of prince held power as well. With the use of concubines for reproduction, women were able to rise in status and could even possess “considerable authority” over young princes, if they had given birth to a son. Before the rule of ‘Suleiman the Magnificent’ in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries took effect, concubines were only allowed to give birth to one son and, therefore, gained power once their sexual role had ended. After they had given birth to a prince, a royal mother would devote herself to trying to secure her son as the successor to the sultan. For a prince, his mother was his greatest ally and the individual most likely to help him become the next in line to become sultan. At the age of sixteen, princes reached an age of maturity where they were sent to watch over and govern provinces in the empire. A prince's mother would follow the prince to the province to protect and guide their son. For some 130 years, the women of the Ottoman royal harem enjoyed extraordinary political influence. This unusual period during the 16th and 17th centuries – when powerful women exercised all royal prerogatives but one: leading Ottoman armies into battle – is popularly known as the ‘sultanate of women'. Four women stand out in this story, whose sons went on to occupy the Ottoman throne: Breaking a three hundred year tradition, ‘Suleiman the Magnificent’ married ‘Hurrem Sultan’, a former concubine. Having gained great affection from’ Suleiman’, she became the first concubine to be freed and legally married. Suleiman and Hurrem broke many traditions of the treatment of harem women. Not only did she become the first concubine to be married, she also bore five sons, breaking the rule that Sultan’s women could only have one son, and also stayed at the palace when her sons left for their provincial posts. Hurrem gained the title ‘Haseki’, the sultan's favorite concubine, which was the second most powerful position in the harem behind the queen mother (valide sultan) . Hurrem's growing power changed the family politics in the government. During the reign of her son, Mehmed III (1595-1603),Sultan Safiye's great power as mother queen (valide sultan) marked the beginning of the “Reign of Women” in the Ottoman Dynasty, a period of almost 100 years during which women were arguably the most powerful members of the royal palace. Kosem Maypeyker Sultan, Ahmed ‘s widow, was the next valide during her son's reign, which began in 1623. She was then killed by her daughter-in-law, Hatice Turhan Sultan, who then came to power. When Sultan Hurrem was so impressed by Nurbanu, she provided her marriage to her son Prince Selim. In the following years, with the deaths of Selims’ all other brothers, Selim came in power of the empire. When their son Murat became the Sultan after the death of his father Sultan Selim, Nurbanu continued her life as the mother queen ((valide sultan) and after Hurrem’s reign, she ruled the country for long years. After Suleiman's death, the sultans no longer led their armies in campaign or in battle, retiring instead to the womb of the harem. They detached themselves from world affairs and spent most of their time in the company of women. This royal seclusion greatly diminished their ability to govern, and in varying degrees, sultanas began wielding influence over state officials, with bribery and patronage supplanting promotion on the basis of merit. A succession of child sultans and mentally deranged ones after Mehmed III's death in 1603 made women the power behind the throne. While we walk towards the end of harem, the hazy vision of all the women salute us. The women, who shared the same harem for centuries without even meeting each other, lived lives in luxury with servants, cooks and tailors who made clothes for them with the best fabric brought from Paris. The women passed through these authentic and dark rooms were maybe the most passionate ones in the world’s history. They were fortunate enough in comparison with others outside. They had the chance to be the woman or the mother of the great sultan. Were they really happy I wonder? As we complete our tour in harem, we come across a painting of a beautiful woman, Sultan Rafia . Her deep dark eyes would be the most beautiful and painful eyes you can ever see. Her life story had striking likeness with the state of the empire’s last days. Rafia, the Sultan’s daughter, was sick and fighting with a cutthroat sickness. In the meantime, the Ottoman Empire’s death was expected shortly in the Western world. The Empire was sick as well. Rafia’s fate intercepted with the country’s fate. Her painful words in the journal that was later found in her drawer, had probably written in the last days of her life. ‘My father spent the night with her favorite Serfinaz, on the night we buried my mother. They might think that we live a life like a fairytale. They never know that happiness never lived here in the palace. They never know the desperation to share your man with other women and the pain of visualizing him on the pillows where other women’s curls span.’ Sultan Rafia, who lived in the last period of the Empire died because of the cruel disease she had caught. As we stepped outside, her silent scream was still rebounding in the harem’s corridors. BM
