The Sinop Prison according to the Ottoman Archives

Abstract

Essentially, imprisonment and its implementations were not a common form of punishment in the Ottoman Empire in the beginning; however, later, especially after the Tanzimat Era, imprisonment was adopted as an effective means of punishment. After the 19th century, imprisonment was an option for all types of crimes. The laws passed during the Tanzimat Era in the Ottoman Empire included imprisonment as one of the main forms of punishment and it was executed effectively.

With the spread of imprisonment, the new prisons were opened in different parts of the country. Consequently, the Ottoman Empire used fortresses and prison cells as places of punishment, and those who were sentenced to confinement in a fortress would be sent to different fortress-prisons around the country. Since the beginning of the 19th century, one of the most noticeable fortress-prisons in the Ottoman Empire has been the Sinop Castle Prison. Since the early 20th century as well, the Sinop Prison captures the attention as one of the places in which political prisoners have been serving their sentence. There are several documents in the archival records about the Sinop Castle which maintained its importance as a prison and a detention center during the Republican era as well. In this study some facts based on the archival documents about the prison will be presented.