The struggle against tuberculosis at the turn of the 19th century introduced a set of daily hygiene practices which eventually penetrated into the domestic space. The “hygienic-dietetic regimen,” based on sunlight, fresh air, a healthy diet, and sterile environments was transferred from sanatoria to households and became the ultimate prescription for preventing infectious diseases and improving physical and spiritual well-being. Likewise in 1930s Turkey, sunlight came to be referred to as “the cheapest medicine” coupled with a power to destroy the disease-causing germs as well as the "intangible microbes of melancholy." Dwellings with inadequate ventilation and natural lighting, hence the kafes [lattices covering the windows of traditional timber houses] and heavy curtains were claimed as pathogens; and were accused of causing fatigue and tuberculosis. The kafes became a public health issue and were banned by local authorities, presenting a case where hygiene discourses served as mechanisms for cultural control.

Articles featured in periodicals, public health publications, and women’s advice literature essentially related the kafes to concerns about disease. These claims on the health dangers of kafes were furthermore appended with a lauding of the regime’s clothing reforms and women’s emancipation. Early Republican ideologues also stigmatized kafes for creating a visually bad image due to its employment in Orientalist depictions. This paper, therefore, analyzes the banning of kafes as a twofold process: a reflection of interwar concerns over the medical links between dwellings and the well-being of their inhabitants, and an architectural extension of contemporary criticism of the Ottoman past.