PodcastBeyoğlu Municipality bins archives of Turkey’s ‘queen of brothels'
Whilst cleaning Istanbul’s notorious Zürafa Street, known for its once-thriving brothels, the Municipality of Beyoğlu binned the archives of iconic madam Matild Manukyan. Manukyan, who died in 2001, was better known for the brothels she owned that earned her the nickname “brothel queen.”
Duvar English
Since the onset of the pandemic, the brothels on Zürafa Street in Istanbul’s neighborhood of Galata were shut down and became a refuge for the homeless.
The brothels were broken into and the belongings of the sex workers were looted while some of the archives served as fuel for the homeless who sought to light fires.
The Municipality of Beyoğlu included Zürafa Street in the Turkish Ministry of Culture’s Beyoğlu Culture Road Project, which aims to safeguard cultural heritage sites in the district of Beyoğlu.
The heirs of Matild Manukyan - a Turkish-Armenian madam who amassed a fortune owning brothels and was once Turkey’s highest taxpayer - still own most of the apartments on Zürafa Street and approved the Beyoğlu Culture Road Project initiative.
At the behest of Beyoğlu Municipality Mayor Haydar Ali, restoration works were launched on Zürafa Street. Mankuyan’s heirs, Dora Çilingir, İlda Çilingir and Edvin Çilingir approved the initiative and pledged to cover the renovation costs.
Yet teams dispatched by the Municipality of Beyoğlu have started collecting garbage on Zürafa Street and binned a registry book belonging to Matild Manukyan, the daily Hürriyet reported.
The book featured the names, ages and hometowns of the prostitutes who worked for Manukyan in the 1980s. It also revealed that Manukyan paid the sex workers salaries ranging between 10,000 and 17,000 Turkish liras.
