62

This paper focuses on Max Bonnafous’ research on suicides in Istanbul between 1916 and 1926 and the formation of the social sciences in Turkey. Max Bonnafous’ survey suggested that there was a marked increase in suicides after 1922, especially among young Muslim women. Bonnafous claimed that these young women had committed suicide anomique, due to the “undeniable impact” of recent social changes that had been brought about by the new regime. His findings and interpretation led to a heated debate in the latter half of the 1920s, since the new political regime with its militant secularism and patriarchal gender regime was deeply offended that this societal contradiction was the sole reason he found for societal despair. Turkey’s state-led “scientific elite” fiercely attacked Bonnafous’ sociological interpretations of suicides and preferred a purely psychological and individual explanation. Not only was Max Bonnafous sent away from the University of Istanbul, but also any Durkheimian interpretation of suicides had to wait for several decades to be discussed in Turkish academia. By focusing on this particular case, this paper delineates the limits of academic freedom in the face of the authoritarianism of a one-party state.