Abstract
In the national literature, there are numerous academic studies concerning the appointment of women in public office in the Late Ottoman Period started with the sectors of health in 1843 and education in 1873 and that this extended to the other sectors in years. However, documents in the Ottoman Archives of Presidency of the Republic of Turkey Directorate of State Archives show that the employment of women in the field of security (1851) took place before their employment in the field of education. Again, it is understood from mutual correspondence in the same archives, dated 1912, between Istanbul Police Directorate and the Ministry of Internal Affairs that there had been some attempts to benefit from women in official intelligence posts much before office posts within the Ministry of Postal and Telegram Services (1913/1914) and Ministry of Finance (1914). The fact that the employment of women in official intelligence posts was brought forward at an earlier date like 1912 and that a directive concerning “istihbarat memurlarının keyfiyet tayin ve istihdam ve azli (appointment, employment and dismissal of intelligence officials)” was written also as a legal base to this employment is valuable in terms of shedding light to women’s working life as well as turning intelligence activities into a doctrine and indicating the Turkish intelligence knowledge. In this article written for the purposes of scrutinizing an issue not much publicly known such as the attempt to employ women in official intelligence posts in the Late Ottoman Period and contributing to filling a gap in the literature, “historical method” is used as a method and “archive research” and “literature review” are used as data collection techniques.