A geopolitics of drinking: Debating the place of alcohol in early republican Turkey

• We engage with political geographies of everyday life, contributing to a progressive geopolitics of the Middle East.
• We identify and analyze the geopolitical debate over alcohol prohibition in early republican Turkey.
• Though sponsored by Islamists, prohibition also had strong support from secular advocates of public health.
• This 1920s struggle over the place of drinking informs today's political geography scholarship on both prohibition/regulation and headscarves/veiling.

Following contemporary shifts in geopolitical scholarship that interrogate perspectives on identity, culture, and everyday life, this article confronts contestations over the place of alcohol in early republican Turkey. Debated today in terms that mirror the headscarf question, our study establishes a basis for scrutinizing this topic by focusing on the nation-state's first deliberations over prohibition, transpiring in the first session of the Grand National Assembly. Like the current push to intensify regulation of alcohol, 1920s prohibitionism brought together an array of narratives that included but also exceeded Islamism. In particular, progressive public health advocates provided crucial support for the narrow passage of a prohibition law that lasted until Kemalists consolidated their rule. Amid this discourse, competing players interpreted differently the ongoing American prohibition experience and deployed conflicting narratives to bolster their positions. Relying upon proceedings from the early parliament and other primary sources, this article about the place of alcohol contributes both to analyses of ongoing affairs within Turkey and to progressive geopolitical engagements with matters of governance and public space, regulation and prohibition, public health, and secular-religious rivalries.