Orhan Pamuk

Expressed it much better than I ever could have:

In my books I have described in some detail how this basic fact evoked a Checkovian sense of provinciality, and how, by another route, it led to my questioning my authenticity. I know from experience that the great majority of people on this earth live with these same feelings, and that many suffer from an even deeper sense of insufficiency, lack of security and sense of degradation, than I do. Yes, the greatest dilemmas facing humanity are still landlessness, homelessness, and hunger ... But today our televisions and newspapers tell us about these fundamental problems more quickly and more simply than literature can ever do. What literature needs most to tell and investigate today are humanity's basic fears: the fear of being left outside, and the fear of counting for nothing, and the feelings of worthlessness that come with such fears; the collective humiliations, vulnerabilities, slights, grievances, sensitivities, and imagined insults, and the nationalist boasts and inflations that are their next of kind ... Whenever I am confronted by such sentiments, and by the irrational, overstated language in which they are usually expressed, I know they touch on a darkness inside me. We have often witnessed peoples, societies and nations outside the Western world – and I can identify with them easily – succumbing to fears that sometimes lead them to commit stupidities, all because of their fears of humiliation and their sensitivities. I also know that in the West – a world with which I can identify with the same ease – nations and peoples taking an excessive pride in their wealth, and in their having brought us the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Modernism, have, from time to time, succumbed to a self-satisfaction that is almost as stupid.

For the full text of his Nobel acceptance speech, see here.

Raki

Ok, I know I promised a post about Muslims' tendency to protest against perceived insults, but I will save that rather depressing topic for another post. 'Tis the season, after all, and I think more festive posts are in order.

In case you are headed to Turkey or Istanbul for the holidays like me, you might want to learn more about an aspect of Turkish culture that does not get enough respect. I am talking about our national alcoholic beverage of choice, raki, and the raki culture.

First, for those who are entirely unfamiliar for Turkey, a few general tidbits: Turkey is predominantly Muslim, but produces large quantities of alcohol for domestic consumption. The alcoholic beverage sector used to be a state monopoly (with the exception of beer and wine) but this has changed in the last decade or so. Now private firms, foreign and domestic, are free to compete in this sector. Just to give you an idea of the size of the market, the domestic production of alcoholic beverages in the first 9 months of 2006 was 795.3 million litres. Most of this is beer: 743 million 83.2 thousand litres. However, the second on the list is not wine, but raki: 24 million 870.7 thousand litres. Wine comes third with about 20 million. Now consider that Turkey's population is about 70 million (including children and people who do not drink alcohol).

Anyway, leaving aside beer, raki is clearly the drink of choice for most Turks. What is raki you might ask? It is an anise flavored hard liquor distilled from grapes (45%). It is remarkably similar to the Greek ouzo. There are different varieties of raki, depending on whether it was distilled from dry grapes or fresh grapes and how it was barrelled and so on. However, if you are a newby, you probably won't be able to tell the difference. Most Turks still stick with what used to be the state brand: Yeni Raki, and that is what you will find even in the most remote corners of the country.

Raki has its own culture and drinking etiquette. First of all, it is not a stand alone drink, an aperatif or an after dinner drink. It should be consumed sitting down and not mixed with other drinks. Raki has its own table (raki masasi). Or, I should say, if there is raki, there should be a table, and on that table there should be little plates of food (meze) that accompany the raki.

The point of drinking raki is not getting drunk. The point rather is to get to a state of mild inebriation so that the conversation around the table will flow more smoothly and freely. Everything can be and should be discussed around a raki table: politics, religion, philosophy, literature, sports etc. If it is a successful evening, people will sing old melancholic songs at some point.

The way to drink raki is in tall skinny glass. You pour in the raki first (1/3), then dilute it with water (1/3), at which point it will turn cloudy, and add ice (1/3). Another tall skinny glass is filled only with water. Because the goal is not getting drunk but maintaining a state of mild tipsiness for the duration of the evening , which should ideally last many hours, you drink raki very slowly. There is no magic formula but you should be taking a sip about every 3-4 bites food and chasing your sips with water every now and then.

In the old days only men used to drink raki and it was the wives' duty to set up a proper raki table home at home complete with several mezes. Nowadays both men and women participate in this culture, at least in the Western part of the country. The restaurants that deliver raki tables are called meyhanes (similar to the Greek ouzeri). Istanbul has a very vibrant meyhane culture and offers a wide variety of choice. There are streets of meyhanes: most tourists are familiar with Kumkapi. Another one that is more frequented by Turks is Nevizade, which is a side street off of Istiklal. An excellent meyhane located in Nevizade is Boncuk, which specializes in Armenian mezes along with the more traditional Istanbul classics. Another one is Imroz, which has a Greek flavor.

If you are into eating and drinking, I recommend that you try to partake in this culture in Istanbul. But if you are going to do it, you should try to do it right. Eating at a meyhane is not about romance. It is about conversation. And while the food is usually excellent, it is not about the food either. The food is there to accompany the raki, which is the lubricant for conversation. It is pretty poor form to go to a meyhane and try to drink something else besides raki (The Greeks have retzina-pine gum flavored cheap white wine-which is the only thing that might be somewhat acceptable as a substitute, but that is not available in Turkey anyway). If you do not want to drink raki or alcohol, drink water. Others might disagree on this, but I think it is an insult to raki to drink something else at the raki table (Not that anybody will say anything to you-it is just a matter of etiquette). The mezes are in the middle of the table and are there to be shared. It is also poor form to go to a meyhane and order your own plate of food. And the meal is not to be rushed. It should last several hours at least. First: cold mezes, second: hot mezes, third: main course (if there is still room), fourth: desert/fruit, fifth: Turkish coffee. This is how it should be done.

Oh, a final note: if you've never tasted raki before, chances are you will hate it when you try it for the first time. However, if you follow my instructions and consume it the way it is supposed to be consumed, by the end of the evening, it will have grown on you. I guarantee it. Best of luck and Serefe!

His Holiness

So, as might you have heard, the Pope is in Turkey. And boy, must he regret what he said earlier about Islam being a violent religion. Because Pope Benedict XVI has been acting really out of character since he stepped foot in the country.

First, he said that Islam is a peaceful religion, composed of logic and reason.

Second, he said he wants to see Turkey and the EU together.

Third, when he was leading the mass in Virgin Mary's chapel in Ephesus, he started it out with a Turkish sentence.

Fourth, he waved the Turkish flag after the mass.

Fifth, he said he likes and respects Turks.

Finally, he has been smiling all the time.

This is all very bizarre. I think what happened is that the Vatican was so afraid something might happen to the Pope in Turkey that they did not send the real Pope. They sent a clone or someone who looks like him. But they haven't fooled me at all. The constant smiling and the flag waving has given it away.

In all seriousness, what is going on? The purpose of this visit was not to placate Muslims but to forge stronger ties with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (Istanbul). Is it because of the protests over his earlier remarks? Up until this point he has been generally critical of Islam and has opposed Turkey's EU membership. Did he have a change of heart? Or is he making nice just to get through the trip?

All of this makes me think that an analysis of Muslims' proclivity to protest any kind of perceived insult from the West is in order. That will be my next post.

Animal Rights II

My previous post has prompted Ivan from the EHDKD blog to leave a nice comment. This is a blog maintained by some dedicated animals rights activists in Turkey who are documenting the abuse and the neglect that goes on in some municipal shelters. Furthermore, they are trying to hold the Istanbul municipality and the contractor in the neuter/release project (AIG) accountable for some really egregious behavior. If you care about animals, please check out this blog.

Animal Rights

About a year ago, I happened to be watching Animal Cops (a show I do not watch frequently because it is too upsetting). The episode was set in Detroit, and at one point two animal cops entered a seemingly abondoned house to find two dogs living in the dark and filthy basement. It turned out that the previous occupant of the house was now homeless, but was still bringing scraps of food to these dogs every now and then. The dogs were completely accustomed to living in the dark, in filth, and were not at all socialized to human contact. They only relied on each other. Anyway, the cops managed to rescue these dogs and brought them to the shelter. So far so good, right? Well, for some reason what happened next really struck a nerve with me. It was decided that the dogs were too wild to be adopted and they were both put to sleep, i.e. killed.

It is this sort of thing that worries me about what will happen when and if Turkey catches up with Western norms of animal (pet) management. And this is what I want to talk to you about today.

Obviously, the situation in Turkey for animals we deem as pets -cats and dogs- is not ideal. I have no statistics, but I would venture to guess that fewer households have pets in Turkey compared to Western Europe and the US. Cats are definitely more common as pets. Dogs have been used as watchdogs and shepherd dogs in rural areas for a long time, but their entry to homes has been mostly limited to westernized and urban centers. There is a certain notion in Islam that dogs are unclean. So you won't find a dog living in the home of a practicing Muslim person (Muslim prayers require meticulous cleanliness). However, more and more secular city Turks have come to think of dogs as companions (and some as status symbols) so the numbers are increasing.

On the other hand, strays are very common, both in rural and urban areas. Stray dog packs have been an issue in Istanbul throughout history. In the beginning of 20th century, the Ottoman Sultan had all the dogs in the city rounded up and dumped on a nearby island. This story makes me wince every time I hear of it.

Nowadays though, I often observe a symbiotic kind of relationship between the city and the strays. Take a walk early morning or late evening, and you will see butchers, shopkeepers, housewives putting out plates of food and scraps for the neighborhoods' cats and dogs. You see old, rugged working class guys get a smile on their face when they see the neighborhood dog or cat show up in front of their store. It is as if these "pets" are communally owned. When our neighborhood dog Zagor was hit by a car, the patrons of the actors' cafe he used to hang out by all chipped in for his surgery and rehabilitation costs.

As things stand, most municipalities in Turkey do not have the resources to fund animal shelters. (Here's a notable exception [Only in Turkish unfortunately, but pictures speak louder than words-This is a no kill shelter]). What they do instead is to capture stray dogs, neuter/spay them, and release them back. A tag in the ear will tell you that the dog has been through this process.

I am of two minds on this issue. On the one hand, life on the streets is not easy, especially for dogs. It is difficult to find food, and chances of getting hit by a car are high. When it rains or snows, I often think of how miserable it must be for the street animals. On the other hand, I feel like this kind of approach gives these animals a fighting chance to live. Most of them would be put to sleep if Turkish municipalities had more money and could adopt the Western approach to animal management.

An interesting and unintended consequence of this difference between Turkey's and the West's approach to animals can be observed on the streets of Bodrum. Bodrum is a resort town on the Aegean coast of Turkey, especially popular with British tourists. For awhile now British tourists have been renting or buying long-term vacation homes there. When we were in Bodrum two years ago we observed that most of the street dogs there were not of the regular varieties of mutt you see in Istanbul, but were actually breeds: poodles, terriers and what have you. We were surprised by this so we asked around. What we were told was that some British tourists had been leaving their pets behind at the end of the vacation with the idea that these dogs might survive on their own in Bodrum (which I guess is preferable to the alternative of dropping them off at the pound back in the U.K.).

I wish people everywhere were more responsible with their pets. And if you ever decide to get a pet companion, please do not pay for one from a pet store. Save one from the shelter. If you really wanted to be charitable, you could adopt a friendly street dog or cat from Turkey. Our vet in Istanbul was running a program where he was placing friendly abondoned pets in German homes.

For the moment, I am selfishly happy that dogs and cats are part of the urban landscape in Istanbul. When I am in the US, I have to make do with squirrels.

Another Possible Explanation

My smart husband has put together the above graphic as another possible explanation of Turkey's lack of popularity - it is simply very misunderstood. I am not sure which explanation is more depressing.

National Brand Index

OK-I did some research and I was actually able to download some reports from the National Brand Index website.

It turns out that things are not as bad as I thought for Turkey. Here's what one of the reports says about Turkey:

The struggling brands in our list are Turkey and Russia. Turkey’s overall low score, however, is mainly the result of it failing to achieve high scores in any category (and arguably this is partly because so few people have any direct experience of the country, its people or products, and spend relatively little time thinking about it), whereas Russia’s is the result of extremely low scores in several crucial categories. Looking at the data, Turkey appears to be more of a ‘blank canvas’, a country about which most people have few opinions; on the other hand, almost everybody has an opinion about Russia, and it is likely to be a poor one.

So the more tourists visit Turkey, the more the national brand score should improve. If it does not, then we are doing something wrong.

Misunderstood

One of the news items that caught my eye today was the recently released National Brand Index survey results. Apparently this is a world wide survey which asks respondents to rank countries in different categories such as tourism, exports, people, culture and heritage etc. Israel apparently has the worst national brand image by a long shot. Turkey came second to last (although I could not find a breakdown of scoring in each category, so I don't know if Turkey did better in individual categories or not). Here's the general image category rankings (as reported in the Turkish Press):

1 - Great Britain	19 - China
2 - Germany	20 - Russia
3 - Italy	21 - Brazil
4 - Canada	22 - Hungary
5 - Switzerland	23 - Argentina
6 - France	24 - Singapore
7 - Sweden	25 - India
8 - Japan	26 - Mexico
9 - USA	27 - S. Korea
10 - Australia	28 - Czech Republic
11 - Spain	29 - Egypt
12 - Holland	30 - Poland
13 - Denmark	31 - Malaysia
14 - Norway	32 - S. Africa
15 - New Zealand	33 - Estonia
16 - Belgium	34 - Indonesia
17 - Portugal	35 - Turkey
18 - Ireland	36 - Israel

I am most curious about the methodology of the survey. I wish I could find out which countries the respondents were from and how the 36 countries were selected (for instance why was Greece left off this list? What happened to the Eastern European countries?)

It is interesting to compare this list to tourism statistics (from Wikipedia):

Rank(2004)	Nation	Millions of tourists in 2003	Millions of tourists in 2004	Change 03-04
1st	France	75.0	75.1	+0.1%
2nd	Spain	52.5	53.6	+3.4%
3rd	United States	40.4	46.1	+11.8%
4th	China	33.0	41.8	+26.7%
5th	Italy	39.6	37.1	-6.4%
6th	U.K.	24.8	27.7	12.3%
7th	Hong Kong (China)	15.5	21.8	40.4%
8th	Mexico	18.7	20.6	+10.5%
9th	Germany	18.4	20.1	+9.5%
10th	Austria	19.1	19.4	+1.5%
11th	Canada	17.5	19.2	+9.2%
12th	Turkey	13.3	16.8	+26.1%

I have to mull over this for awhile. Meanwhile I am open to suggestions that account for the discrepancy between these rankings.

To Drink or Not to Drink

Let's lighten up the mood a little without straying completely off the subject. I want to tell you about a municipal ordinance that has been getting a lot of attention in Turkey lately.

Here's the background: Uskudar is a municipality on the Asian side of the Istanbul metropolitan area. The municipality has access to the Bosphorous. The current municipal government is controlled by the AK party (the same party that has control of the national government). As you might know, even though this party is now pretty mainstream and slightly right of the center, most of the party founders were in an Islamic political movement. There are still elements in the party who are very religious (Think of the Republican Party and the Religious Right). In any case, there are some secular Turks who will not take anything this party does at face value and constantly suspect the party members of harboring a secret agenda to impose Shar'ia rule in Turkey.

Here's what happened: The Uskudar municipality recently passed an ordinance forbidding open containers in public. What this means is that you can no longer drink your beer in a public park in Uskudar while taking in the view of the Bosphorous. If you do, you might be fined.

Deniz Som, a columnist for the leftist-Kemalist newspaper Cumhuriyet, and Bedri Baykam, a famous painter and staunch defender of Kemalism, declared that this was just a ploy in the great strategy to inch Turkey ever closer to religious rule. They organized a protest and showed up in Uskudar with 500 supporters. In order to protest the ordinance, everybody imbibed wine while facing the sign "No public drinking allowed." Bedri Baykam claimed that the "Enlightened, democrat, secular people of Turkey will not stand by and allow their drinking to be curtailed" and added that Turkey will never return to the Middle Ages and Islamic Rule.

The Uskudar municipality was not impressed. They said that there were designated places for drinking and there was no need to drink in parks. They are planning to stick with the ordinance.

I think this tempest in a teapot is really illustrative of how confused and complicated even trivial issues have become in Turkey. The protesters equate the "right" to drink alcohol in public with being enlightened, secular, democratic, Western and modern. I wonder whether they know that most local governments in the US have laws banning open alcohol containers in public. I think some European countries do as well. Heck-there are dry counties all over the US. I cannot imagine the reaction if any municipality in Turkey declared itself dry. It would be seen as a sure sign that religious rule has arrived.

You could make a compelling argument from a public health and safety point of view that public intoxication is not a good idea. At the same time, the protesters are probably right in that this municipality is probably against all kind of drinking and are only banning what they legally can.

I think at the end, it should not matter what the motives of the municipality are. Their actions are circumscribed by the established [Western] norms of public safety. This is a good thing, and I think a sign that Turkish democracy has come a long way, and not really a reason to panic.

And as far as the protesters go, I personally cannot think of a more fun way to protest anything. So good for them, too.

So this story, however ridiculous in some aspects, brings a smile to my face. I'll drink to that tonight on my balcony...

Hot waters

I am already in hot waters for my previous post. An anonymous commenter has left a long and vitriolic response, accusing me of, among other things,having a simple understanding of the Middle East, harboring 1920s nostalgia, and also shallowly hierarchizing the region.

I respectfully disagree with all such characterizations of my views. First, I cannot understand how I could be accused of having a simple view when the main point of my post was to call for a more nuanced understanding of the region and the headscarf issue. I never said headscarves are good, or the Middle East needs no debate. On the contrary, all I did was to point out that people in the region have been debating this issue for awhile now. There was a push, starting in the 1920s, throughout the region, to get rid of headscarves in the name of modernity. In some places this led to a backlash (Iran), in other places it more or less stuck (Turkey). Yet in another places like Egypt, while there has not been an exact backlash, there has been a resurgence of women covering up. So you might have situations where the mother was not covered when she was young and the daughter now is.

What I object to are the presentations of the issue as if Islam and the Muslim World are stagnant and static entities that are only now having to face challenges, however meek, about the headscarf issue. That is not true. If we want reform in the region (and I think my anonymous commenter and I agree on this issue), we have to understand why the first attempts of reform failed in most cases and what caused the backlash. This is not 1920s nostalgia.

Also, far from hierarchizing the region, the point I was trying to make was that Turkey has to compromise some individual liberties in order to get (religiously observant) women to take off their headscarves. So simply applauding people who say things we like is not going to accomplish much. Even if they were serious, accomplishing the goal of fewer headscarves takes more than talk. Getting there might at times conflict with the goal of fostering more liberalization and democracy. That is all I was saying. I think at the end it comes down to what your priorities are.

Just in case it was not clear, I do not cover my head, neither does my mother, nor my grandmother. As a secular Turk, I have benefited from the system in Turkey. That does not preclude me, however, from trying to understand the point of view of those who have made other choices.

As for the challenge issued by the anonymous poster, I think the answer to that question depends on how one defines the status quo. I might say more on that later.

The Dog that Did Not Bark

One column that I check out pretty regularly is Salon's Broadsheet which covers women's news. Normally, I agree with most of their analyses, but a recent item about Muslim women and veils got me frustrated. I was frustrated not because of the sentiment expressed, but because of the complete omission of any references to Turkey (which was a predominantly Muslim country last time I checked).

Let me give you few choice quotes:

You have to admire this guy's guts: In a country where an estimated 80 percent of women wear veils, Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni publicly called the veil regressive this week.

Hosni's stand is refreshingly controversial and exactly the type of internal criticism and debate that the Muslim world sorely needs. But don't expect any kind of rigorous debate just yet.

OK, maybe what this guy was doing was impressive in Egypt. However, to generalize that this is some kind of a first in the "Muslim World" just shows how ignorant even well-meaning feminists can be. Leaders in Muslim countries, such as Ataturk or even the Shah, were calling the veil "regressive" all the way back in the 1920s.

We know what happened in Iran, but even today it would be news in Turkey if a politician openly said the veil is not regressive, not the other way around. There are certainly politicians who think that the veil is a good thing, most notably the Prime Minister Erdogan (His wife wears a headscarf). But he would not dare to come out and say anything that could be construed as encouraging women to wear the veil. The greatest obstacle in his presidential bid is the fact that his wife wears a headscarf.

I don't think that the Muslim world really needs a new debate on this issue - the debate over headscarves, for what it's worth, has been going on for almost 100 years if not more. And while it is easy for American feminists to sit back and pat themselves on the back for taking what seems to be the correct position on this issue ("Veils are bad"), the actual debate on the ground is much more complicated. For instance, while in Egypt women might be intimidated into wearing a headscarf, women in Turkey have to take off their headscarves if they want to attend the university or work in a hospital. If they do not, the law prohibits their access to these activities. Maybe the Broadsheet writer would like to ponder how this law creates a double standard between religious women and men. Religious men do not have any visible markers. And if we are keeping women with headscarves out of the university because we think they are oppressed, are we not also enabling this oppression by limiting their access to education?

Many women in Turkey choose not to wear the headscarf to begin with - in fact a recent survey found that the number of women who choose to wear a headscarf is down by 8%. In the Muslim World, Turkey probably has the fewest number of women who wear a headscarf. But we did not get there by people wishing that veils would go away. If this is your goal, you have to back it up with laws and compromise some individual liberties along the way. It is not so easy being feminist or a democrat in the Muslim World - often your choices are between damned if you do and damned if you don't. The headscarf issue is immensely debatable, but it is not at all as black and white as this Broadsheet writer thinks.

I hate it when people who joined the conversation late think that they have it all figured out. Do not mistake the simplicity in your understanding of history and the region with the reality on the ground.

The Bottomless Pit of Absurdity

Breaking News! A [nationalist] engineering firm in Turkey, Erke Erke A.S., has [supposedly] invented a machine that requires no energy input, but produces limitless energy [yeah right]. This piece of junk-I am sorry, brilliant invention-, which is called Erke Donergeci ("Energy Loop"), "works" on the principle of the inertia of matter. It was introduced to the Turkish community yesterday in a press conference that was attended by journalists and retired generals.

(Here's a sample link from the Turkish press covering this momentous day: http://www.milliyet.com.tr/2006/11/23/son/soneko10.asp)

The CEO of Erke Erke A.S. claimed that this invention would end wars and save the environment. He also noted that there was nothing in scientific literature that could explain how the machine worked.

Unfortunately, journalists were not allowed glimpse at this miraculous find. The patent is pending and the company is afraid their idea might be stolen!

I am speechless. Words fail me.

The Taser Incident and Race

I assume that if you are living in the United States you must have heard of the Taser Incident at UCLA. If you are not, you can start here or here.

Basically, what happened was that an Iranian-American student at UCLA, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, was handcuffed and tased repeatedly when he failed to produce his student ID card during an ID check at the university library. I agree with those who think the police overstepped their authority.

When the news initially broke, there was nary a mention of Tabatabainejad's Iranian background. However, this fact has become more and more prominent in later developments, as you can see from the second link above. Muslim student organizations were at the forefront of the demonstrations. In the comments section of that news piece, people claim that Tabatabainejad was targeted because he was "brown" and that he was resisting because he also thought so himself. He supposedly urged the police officers to ask Caucasian students to produce IDs as well, and did not appreciate being singled out.

Now, I don't know anything about the people involved in this incident, but an Iranian-American claiming that he is "brown", if true, would strike me as a very interesting development. I've never met any Iranians (and this is especially true for the Iranians one encounters in the US) who show any sense of identification with the "brown" community. To the contrary, they strongly identify as white (Iranian=Aryan).

This is not to say that Tabatabainejad did not identify himself as brown or that he was not targeted because of his ethnicity. I do not know what happened there. Yet all of this makes me think, once again, of how race is so strongly socially constructed. Race is supposedly about physical appearance, yet it is really about class and religion and culture. And not even those as they are measured objectively, but rather by our perceptions and stereotypes around those categories.

Here we have a person, who I would guess (and I apologize if I am wrong), could be French if one were to go by looks, who probably comes from a family who fled Iran after the Islamic revolution, who probably is relatively affluent and probably not particularly religious. Yet because of 9/11 he is now identifying and/or being identified as an Other.

Observing this phenomenon is tricky in itself, because there is a danger that the observation itself sounds like a judgment on being Brown or an Other. Growing up in Turkey, I did not think much about race, but if someone asked me I would have identified as white. I think most Turks would. Yet since coming to the States, I have been called exotic (I assure you there is nothing remotely exotic about my looks) and friends have commented, jokingly, on the coolness factor of hanging out with a nonwhite person. If confonted with such a comment, there is an urge there to say "But I am white" and having someone else decide what race I am feels like a denial of my own judgment and experience. On the other hand, any kind of protest makes it sound as if there is something wrong with not being white, which there is not. So one keeps quiet and tries to rejoice in the fact that one is not completely blind to these power dynamics.

My internet history

Considering how much time I spend on the internet, I have been relatively timid about posting comments. For instance, I have been reading the Lonely Planet's forum on the Middle East for at least three years if not more. My first posting to the forum, however, was less than a year ago. What brought me out of my shell finally was my growing frustration with what I call the "dreaded single white female question." You see, there are some women, who will a) consider traveling to a country without reading a page of information about that country and b) think that their whiteness and blondness make them an irresistable target of attention in a country like Turkey.

It is true that blondes in Turkey are relatively rare (think of Italy and Greece), so many Turkish men claim a fascination with blondes. This has something to do with Turkey's saturation with Western ideals of beauty - in fact, while the West has arguably taken a turn for a more multicultural norm, [Westernized] Turks remain more Catholic than the Pope. [More on this topic later]. A second component of the issue is that many women from former Soviet Republics have come to Turkey in the last two decades to look for work, sometimes as nurses and housekeepers, but often as prostitutes, unfortunately. Most of them are also blonde. This has led to the development of the "Natasha stereotype." I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for a young Russian or Ukrainian woman to navigate the streets of Turkey - because many will assume she is a prostitute even if she is not.

Having made all these caveats about how being a foreign blonde might lead to unwanted attention from some men in Turkey, I still get really mad at the question (because it is not appreciation of the above nuances but rather a question of bias), especially if it comes with the equally dreaded "should I wear a headscarf" inquiry. This is why I composed the following reply and posted it on the Lonely Planet webpage:

As a long time lurker, I am posting for the first time because I want to say something about the often asked question about the safety traveling in the Middle East as a single blonde female. And maybe offer some tips. I apologize now for the long post.

First some background that is relevant to the topic: I am Turkish, and I am blonde. Not Scandavian blonde, but a natural blonde nonetheless. Maybe for that reason, but more likely because I have lived abroad for a long time and something about my general demeanor has changed as a result, I am often mistaken for a tourist when I take my foreign friends to Sultanahmet. In my daily life I wear regular "Western" attire-the same things I wore when I lived in the US (and also before I went abroad). I do not change the way I dress when I visit touristic areas, with the possible exception of choosing more comfortable shoes.

I mention all of this because disregarding occasional stare, I do not really get harassed in Istanbul. Just two weeks ago, I took a female friend, who is from the US (and is very blonde) to the Sultanahmet region. We walked around several days without any trouble on that front. Of course there were a few botched attempts at carpet sales (dropped the moment they realize I am Turkish) but no unwanted attention of the sexually harassing kind.

I do not want to trivialize the experience of anybody who has visited Istanbul and suffered this kind of experience. But the discrepancy between my own experience and some female visitors has made me wonder what I was doing differently (as a Turkish woman) that fended off these kind of advances. Because it has nothing to do with how you look.

Here is what I came up with:

1) Do not make conversation if strange men approach you. Do not even respond. 2) Do not smile around as you are walking down the street. 3) If you are walking down the street and people are trying to talk to you, just ignore them. Look straight ahead and pretend and act like they do not exist.

Basically as a woman, act stand-offish and aloof. This doesn't mean you cannot look around, but you should control your own gaze. If you are looking around, and your eye meets the eye of some eager guy, immediately look elsewhere to signal you are not interested. In Turkish culture, holding eye contact is a signal of potential interest. It is the first move. There is even a slang word for it ("kesmek").

Istanbul is a very cosmopolitan city. Most tourists unfortunately never leave the tourist ghetto of Sultanahmet. In other parts of Istanbul, Taksim for instance, nobody hardly gives anybody a second look regardless of what language they speak or what they wear. Being in Sultanahmet potentially multiplies the number of these kind of incidents for two reasons. First, everybody in Sultanahmet who is not a tourist is trying to sell something to tourists. So they are predisposed to give you attention you do not want, sexual or otherwise. Second, most people who work in tourism, especially on the street level, are not from Istanbul and are recent immigrants or they are not that well educated or both. Why does this matter? Because that means that they are not yet fully socialized into the norms that control relationships between sexes in the West and in the urban centers of Turkey such as Istanbul.

Because it is a developing country and not all regions change at the same pace, groups with different cultural norms have to coexist in Turkey. In Istanbul, members of these groups have to interact on a daily basis. So take some guy who has just arrived from Eastern Turkey. Where he is coming from women and men do not interact. They do not have casual conversations as friends. For him, a woman talking to him or smiling at him or holding eye-contact with him means she must be interested.

What women who ask the dreaded question of single blonde female do not realize is that there are millions of Turkish women in Turkey who go about their daily business, alone, not wearing a burqa (carsaf) or a headscarf, who may or may not be blonde, who may or may not be wearing miniskirts etc. We have to interact with the guy described above as well. We make sure that he does not misread our actions by making it absolutely clear that he has no chance. He ceases to exist the moment he enters our personal space. The only interaction we have is for business transactions (initiated by us).

If you try this approach you will find it is more effective than cursing or shouting etc. Because if you act standoffish from the very beginning he will respect that. He is culturally programmed to. These guys have two kinds of categories of women they respect (the unsexualized mother/aunt and the chaste girl). If you cannot pull off the matron act, you have to be the chaste, standoffish, cold girl. Again, this has nothing to do with clothing or hair color.

I also have to say that I find it incredibly insulting if somebody asks "I am a single blonde female traveling to the Middle East, what should I do?" and somebody responds "Oh, respect their culture, wear a head scarf and all will be fine." This is like advising a woman who is planning to travel to the US to get breast implants because it is "their culture". I do not have anything against Muslim women who choose to wear a headscarf, but to advise tourists to do so in the name of respecting "culture" gives too much deference and power to a particular group within that culture who do not represent everybody (in the case of Turkey, they definitely do not represent even the majority of women).

Once again, sorry for the long rant. I cannot speak for other countries, but I hope my post clarifies some things with regards to traveling to Turkey as a woman.

And, my post was well-received. Someone encouraged me to put it on the Turkey Travel Planner website as well. And over time, I have received excellent feedback on this post. I'd like to think that its inclusion in the Lonely Planet Middle East FAQs has something to do with the decrease in the number of people posting this inane question.

So, in a way that post has paved the way for this blog.

First Post

In my first years in the United States, I spent a lot of time reading the Vanity Fair, as well as watching the True Hollywood Story on E! whenever I came accross one. I still watch a fair amount of TV, and spend at least an hour everyday reading blogs-mostly political or academic, but sometimes gossipy as well. Some people would describe this as a waste of time. What I find is that without these seemingly low-brow exercises my connection to my adopted country would be tenuous at best. I was not in the United States during the Clarence Thomas nomination proceedings, but I get the references to Anita Hill. That's just one example, but people underestimate how much of our ongoing conversations are built on references to past events-both high-brow and trivial. Pop culture, political scandals, Shakespeare or Biblical references could all be signposts and shortcuts that help move an exchange along.

Of course, even the most phillistine among us have it easy when it comes to the United States. I grew up in Turkey, but that had not stopped me from watching Charles in Charge and all of the original Star Wars movies; I had heard of O.J. Simpson and Gary Hart before I stepped foot in the US. Delving into the background of conversations in another country is much harder.

What I intend to do in this blog is to create a source for Turkey expats, visitors, scholars and observers by commenting on the public discourse in Turkey. It is not going to be travel blog or a news blog-although I might include travel tips or news every now and then. What I hope to do instead is to analyze and translate Turkey to foreigners, and in doing that, I will hopefully come to understand it better myself.