Abstract :
Kayseri has been an important city throughout history, due to its location at a crossroads of trade and transportation. At the start of the 19th century the need for public security increased in parallel with the city’s population growth maintained to increase its commercial mobility. In the same century the Ottoman state conducted structural reforms in government institutions through entering into the process of change and conversion, with one of these reforms being the administrative reform. Within this context, the disorganised structure for providing security in the cities was abolished and a centralized structure was established. The reforms which were brought into force first in capital city, İstanbul, came into effect later in the provinces. In this study, the Law Enforcement Agency which was founded as a result of these administrative reforms and the course of building police stations in Kayseri, one of the provincial cities, is introduced. In consequence of research conducted at the Directorate of Ottoman Archives it was determined that there were police stations in Kayseri. At the end of the review of the literature and the field survey, it was clearly understood that these police stations had not survived to the present day and are even unknown to researchers. In the archive documents there is some data concerning the socio-economic structure in addition to information concerning where and why these police stations were needed and how many officers worked in them. The documents concerning the detailed estimate and the market price table clearly show the building process of these police stations. Based upon archive documentation the restitution plan has been drawn of the police stations planned to be constructed as a typical project in Kayseri. From this restitution plan it was understood that in comparison to those in İstanbul, the police stations of Kayseri were functional, small and undecorated buildings.
NaturalLanguageKeyword :
Ottoman , Law Enforcement Agency , Kayseri , Police Stations , Archive Documents
