"Beat & Release": A Photo Album of Istanbul's "Most Wanted" Criminals From the 1920s

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(Hürriyet Newspaper, 7 August 2024)

       Some pretty tough-looking guys and gals back then. 

An album with photographs of criminals "Wanted" by the Istanbul police 

in the 1920s has been found.  The photos are those of the most vicious

criminals of those days, with their names written below in Ottoman 

script, along with the file number related to their crime. 

Back then, there were no GBT (drugs and alcohol tests), fingerprints or 

DNA tests, so photographs were the best way to nab a suspect.  One of

the albums was found in a "sahaf" (old bookshop).   These "Wanted"

albums continued to be used by Istanbul police in the Republican 

period.  Some of the men in the album resemble Thomas Shelby from 

the BBC series "Peaky Blinders", while the women look like the

village girl Ünzile and Greek women. 

In the Wild West, a bad guy got his own poster, without having to

share the "spotlight" in an album.