The fez was a red hat with a tassel coming out of the top. The fez became the uniform of the Ottoman bureaucrats and a symbol of Ottoman modernity. Over time the fez became seen as part of an “Oriental” cultural identity. Later, people were executed for wearing the fez and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk banned it in Turkey in 1925 as part of his modernizing reforms.
Ottoman soldiers wearing fezzes during the Greco-Turkish War (1897).
Portrait of the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II after his clothing reforms.
