23 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 E. Biçer-Deveci, P. Bourmaud (eds.), Alcohol in the Maghreb and the Middle East since the Nineteenth Century, St Antony’s Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84001-3_2 Turkey’s Prohibition in 1920: Modernising an Islamic Law Elife Biçer-Deveci INTRODUCTION On 5 March 1920, the organisation Hilâl-i Ahdar (the Green Crescent) was founded in Istanbul by religious authorities and physicians to fght against alcoholism in Turkish society. Among its founding members was the psychiatrist Professor Mazhar Osman (1884–1951), who became the president of the organisation and published on the anti-alcohol struggles in Turkey (Osman 1933). In his book, he describes conditions in Istanbul during the Armistice era (1918–1923), which—according to him—deter- mined the foundation of Hilâl-i Ahdar. E. Biçer-Deveci (*) Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland e-mail: elife.bicer@unibe.ch The study in this chapter has been funded by the Early Postdoc.Mobility Fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Draft of the chapter has been discussed with scholars at the Forum Transregional Studies Berlin in November 4, 2019. I am very thankful for all comments and discussion. A special thank goes to Dr Nicolas Elias for his critical reading of the chapter.