Women and Commercial Exhibitions in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Republican Turkey

This article explores the variegated roles of women in the male-dominated world of commercial exhibitions in the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic. Based on archival documents, exhibition catalogs, and local periodicals, it argues that the formation and organization of exhibitions were not completely determined by men only, and women were actively involved in exhibitions. The exhibitions became one of the channels through which women gained admittance to the public sphere during the transition from the empire to the nation-state in Turkey.