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dominated societal institution,” has had an important role in the development of the nursing
profession. 6 Yet nursing education in military structures in Turkey was not systematized until 1972.
Since then, systematic nursing education at different levels has been provided by five different
institutions, established one after another to meet the nursing demands of military hospitals, and all
of which have functioned in affiliation with the Gülhane Military Academy of Medicine in Ankara, the
capital of the modern Turkish Republic and one of the primary targets of rural migrants. Despite
offering different levels of education, all of these military nursing schools have provided hospitalbased
training and were long supposed to have provided relatively more modern, disciplined, and
qualified education.
Nursing emerged in the nineteenth century under war conditions as an “anonymous and
altruistic” public service job requiring the dedication and commitment of women. 7 Yet Jane Schultz
claims that nursing has usually been downplayed or ignored by military historians “because of
women’s institutional invisibility (women were non‐combatants and volunteers, so few official
records document their travel in military circles) and because of a perception that only men make,
fight, and matter in wars.” 8
Although historians acknowledge the benevolence that nurses perform in the
fulfilment of their medical duties, they are beginning to understand that the extension of
medical care occurs within a political, social, and cultural context that gives it meaning.
Nurses heal, certainly, but they do so as agents of nations, militaries, and organizations
that extend services as part of a larger political ideology. 9
Nurses, “the majority of whom are women, are the largest single force” in the health care system,
but they “do not have control within the system; rather they are controlled by it.” 10 Although nursing
practices comprise an indispensable part of health care and healing, nurses interviewed for this
research reported clear dissatisfaction with their position in hospitals. There are several reasons for
this, including inter‐ and intra‐professional hierarchies based on educational, patriarchal, medical,
and military regulations that affect bureaucratic‐administrative structures, all of which intertwine to
influence the destiny of nursing, still characterized as a “quasi‐professional job.” The number of
nurses, including midwives, in public service in Turkey today is estimated to be around 150,000.
Nurses comprise a rather large workforce, yet they face the problem of visibility – for some, even in
their work environments – and have almost no representation in the political and social arena, and
there are chronic problems related to their education, social status, and employment. Despite their
huge number, nurses do not have much influence over their working conditions which are mostly
determined from the top, by political or medical authorities.
As in many parts of the world, nurses in Turkey have had diverse educational backgrounds. Until
the 1970s, it was unexceptional for a woman to take a few months’ training in order to become a
nurse. Aside from several short‐term courses organized prior to the 1970s, various institutions
provided secondary school or high school nursing diplomas. Since 1955 there has also been
university‐level nursing education which offers two‐year associate degree and four‐year bachelor’s
degree programs. The Gülhane Academy also educated and employed high‐ranking army officers as
nurses. During my fieldwork, I did not meet any still‐employed nurses who got their diploma through
limited‐period nursing courses, but it was possible to find women of different generations who had
been trained at all different levels of schools, both military and non‐military, working in various
nursing positions.
Instability in nursing education – the varying levels of education offered by different institutions –
seems to have paved the way for irreparable consequences in terms of segmentation and
stratification within the profession. Status conflicts based on educational hierarchy, together with
age hierarchy – which is associated with generational conflict – in both military and non‐military
hospitals have long been one of the prominent problems that nurses have to deal with. It seems that
each new generation believes itself to be better equipped with more modern educational
perspectives and claims superiority over others who were trained earlier or in other schools. Nurses