Authors: Alev Scott
Coming from England, the irrepressible and slightly possessive curiosity of Turks towards outsiders and their tendency to ask what the English would stiffly call ‘personal’ questions seems impertinent, vulgar and unnecessary. The Turks, if they stopped to consider it, would probably consider their
own behaviour friendly, and moreover honest. In England, we ask these questions silently, sizing a new acquaintance up, but Turks just go ahead and ask the questions they want to ask, bypassing unnecessary preambles about the weather, dispensing with artifice.
Is this really sinister or judgemental? Turks take an interest in you, particularly if you are foreign; they want to place you, to work you out, and yes, the questions are superficial, but they are a start. When I first arrived, I was offended by the questions and thought: ‘Why does it matter how old I am or where I live? Don’t they want to know Who I Am?’ Then I realised that that was a vain hope, in both senses of the word. It is impossible to discover someone’s true personality initially, so you might as well get the basics. The real cause of offence, if one is honest, is their interest in how rich you are – money just isn’t taboo here in the way it is in England.
A great deal of Turkish interaction must be taken within context – without this mantra, a foreigner can feel beset by intrusive interrogation or unwelcome opinion. The extension of the Turks’ interest in other people’s affairs is their tendency to pass comment, without invitation or encouragement, regardless of their relationship with their interlocutor. Comments on other people’s appearance, in particular, are perfectly acceptable. If you have lost a little weight, this will be pointed out in graphic terms: ‘My God, you’re wasting away, you’re like a pencil! What’s happened?’ Or the reverse: ‘You know, you’ve put on weight, you must be very content,
maşallah.
’ In fact, once your Turkish friends are passing comment on you like this, it is a sign that you are part of the fold, so taking offence makes no sense at all.
When I worked briefly in a media office in Istanbul, I was perplexed by the contradiction of hierarchies. On one level, employees were extremely deferential to their superiors –
hanım
(‘madam’) and
bey
(‘sir’) were used even after many years of working together, and people took care not to challenge anyone in a higher position at the company. This led to a rather staid atmosphere, with orders issued majestically from on high and dutifully followed by underlings, but at the same time, the social undercurrents in the office did not quite match this professional hierarchy. The receptionist, a voluptuous lady called, to my private amusement, Fatma, was the lowest-ranking employee apart from the tea lady. With very little to do other than observe the goings-on of the office, she took great interest in her co-workers, especially their consumption of food. Once, our rather formidable editor hurried into the office eating a sandwich as she juggled BlackBerrys and stacks of files, drawing instant criticism from Fatma: ‘
Bihter hanım
, every time I see you, you’re eating! You really must think of your figure.’ Commenting on someone else’s weight in Britain, even among friends, is so taboo that I couldn’t quite believe that fat Fatma was chastising her own boss, while addressing her as ‘madam’. It perfectly summed up the singular balance between respect and closeness here, the complete opposite of the British brand of stiff informality, which involves calling someone by their first name while keeping an awkward distance from them, both socially and physically.
In so many ways, Turkish interaction is the opposite of English interaction, and the easiest way to summarise the difference is that Turks are more heartfelt in their dealings one to one. Yes, there are many intricacies of Turkish
etiquette and tradition, but fundamentally Turks are incredibly warm and display a wonderful kind of generosity, particularly to individuals. As a visitor to any but the most touristic of areas, you have a kind of exalted social position as a guest. Turks will give you not only all the food in their house, but everything at their disposal – including their house, if you need accommodation. They will spend hours of their time helping you, expecting nothing in return. You will pay for nothing. As a guest, you have to be careful to temper your admiration of anything they own, because if you are too effusive they will immediately present it to you as a gift. Their generosity is overwhelming, especially at the beginning.
And yet, sometimes, Turks’ lack of civic spirit is astounding. They seem to have very little regard for other people in the public sense – they will ignore red lights, queue-jump, or build a hideous building on a prominent hill, spoiling the view for everyone else (the view from their house will be great). It is one of the most puzzling contradictions about Turks: they can be totally selfless with individuals and totally selfish in a public domain. It’s almost as if they do not recognise a nameless public as composed of people; they only really acknowledge a face, a name and a personality standing in front of them. It is the same thing with prejudice towards minorities – a Turk might tell you that they hate Kurds, for example, but if a Kurd knocked on their door they would be welcomed in and treated with the same boundless generosity all guests are shown. Traversing Istanbul traffic, one must be careful not to be mown down, because Turkish drivers spare no thought for other drivers or pedestrians – we are all obstacles in their way. Yet I will never forget the time I fell
over on a steep hill in Istanbul, grazing my foot – within a few seconds I was surrounded by a crowd of concerned faces, outstretched hands offering me handkerchiefs and worried voices debating the whereabouts of the nearest pharmacy. I had been suddenly transformed into an individual in trouble, the focus of everyone’s attention and offers of help.
It is almost the opposite in England. The English are instilled with a strong sense of civic responsibility, binning rubbish, queuing and driving in an orderly manner, well-behaved parts in the well-oiled machine of public life. When it comes to one-to-one interaction, however, it all gets rather embarrassing, and no one looks anyone else in the eye unless absolutely necessary. Knock on a door in your street and the likelihood is that a suspicious voice will ask your business through the intercom, notwithstanding the ‘Welcome’ mat underneath your feet.
In both countries, there is of course a big difference between the friendliness of people in big cities and in smaller communities, the latter being much warmer. Nevertheless, Londoners and Istanbullus live in comparable environments, and Istanbullus, while considered terribly stuck-up and cold by other Turks, are considerably warmer than Londoners. Having lived in both cities, I find myself making an effort to keep up with my Istanbul neighbours in little ways, like trying to have food stocked for unexpected guests. I didn’t give that a second thought in London.
The downside of city life here is the ‘survival of the fittest’ code on roads and public transport. One-way streets exist only in name, pedestrian crossings are apparently invisible, red lights optional. There is little respect for any ‘system’, police
are seen to be corrupt (lazy and bribable), so anything goes – it is all about taking your chances and cutting across another car before he cuts across you. Brits are appalled when they try to so much as cross a road here because in Britain, traffic laws are not only upheld but valued, and the sense of order this gives public life extends to things like bus queues. No one will arrest you for jumping a British queue, but you will incur universal disapproval because it is simply
not
the done thing. Turkey is in many ways lawless, but it is more human, more vital.
During the occupation of Gezi, the Turkish norms I had got used to were blown completely out of the water by the most powerful displays of civic responsibility I have ever seen, in Turkey or anywhere else. Something important was at stake, and Turkish citizens rose magnificently to the challenge. They not only queued, they formed human chains to carry crates of food and water from donation points to distribution tents. The survival of the fittest mentality was transformed into co-operation and solidarity, as people organised themselves to cope with the flood of donations that were received throughout the day and the injured people who needed treatment at the makeshift medical centre in Gezi Park. All the warmth and generosity usually reserved for individuals was poured into a crowd of people in a way that was quite humbling to watch.
Coming from the stiff, rather impersonal civility of England, the intensity and intricacy of Turkish interaction was initially disconcerting. Early on, I decided that the general maxim of ‘take within context’ was key to coping with the unexpected challenges of living here. The area to which I
have most struggled to apply this is sexual politics. Turkey has an undeniably macho culture, both in business and within social circles, and working out the choreography of gender roleplay can be exhausting. For all the efforts made by Atatürk to raise the social position and importance of women, his legal reforms were not matched by change in underlying social attitudes to any great degree. Lingering old-fashioned expectations of male and female behaviour mar the supposed equality of the sexes with hidden and pernicious traps for the uninitiated. In many ways Turkish society is Middle Eastern and no matter how theoretically liberal the family, how independent-minded the woman or broad-minded the man, there are certain expectations that must be met.
The serious side of this affects women’s rights, education and autonomy; I address these in the next chapter. What I have found both amusing and exasperating is that, even in the cosmopolitan, liberal circles of Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara, where women are apparently as independent as men and old-fashioned stereotypes are looked upon with scorn, there are so many ways in which archaic mores cling on far less obviously but more tenaciously than a headscarf. Relationships follow strict rules. Both men and women must behave in a certain way, at least in public. There is, of course, an element of this in every society – I am not claiming that anywhere is sexually apolitical. But I have found it much more formulated in Turkey than in the UK.
Sometimes the stereotypes are right under your nose. Mandatory identity cards in Turkey are issued at birth and are blue for male citizens and pinky-orange for female – a relatively harmless but aggravating instance of thoughtless
gender typecasting, putting the Turkish authorities on a par with the designers of Mothercare products. No doubt it was decided by some bureaucrat that it would be a cute differentiation, and books for Turkish children are colour-coded similarly by equally thoughtful publishers.
The most troubling thing for me has been the way Turkish women seem to accept this stereotyping without demur. The quintessential middle-class, urban Turkish woman has a depressingly uniform brand of femininity. Her ladylike conduct is – to the best of her ability – above reproach, as is her groomed exterior, which usually involves immaculate hair and shiny high heels. She is polite and strangely anodyne, rarely expressing controversial views – it is almost as though she is nervous of showing any personality, lest that spoil her perfect feminine veneer. She must also know, consciously or subconsciously, that most Turkish men prefer to go unchallenged. She tends to adopt a little girl’s voice, especially in male company. A Turkish friend of mine from London is fluent in both English and Turkish, and when she speaks the latter her voice is noticeably higher, as though she has inhaled from a small helium balloon. I was very struck by this the first time I heard her speaking Turkish, thinking how odd it was that she sounded more natural in English than in her mother tongue. Somehow, rightly or wrongly, Turkish women have decided that men like them to act like little girls, and they are playing that part as best they can. The result, unfortunately, is a brigade of infantile Stepford Wives who have been, ironically, stripped of their femininity in the very act of trying to out-feminise each other.
Interestingly, the older Turkish ladies I have met have been
really fun. They are considerably more opinionated and, frankly, engaging than the women my age. They are usually elegant but not over-groomed, more likely to make bold jokes or outrageous statements, and are generally more relaxed. I think this must be because the pressure of competing to attract men has passed, and they can be themselves. There is a tiny elderly lady who lives in the apartment below me. She is terribly sweet, like a frail sparrow, but on Saturday and Sunday evenings, without fail, there will be a single empty beer bottle outside her door, a cheering sign that she allows herself a naughty treat in her old age. Young Turkish ladies of the type I have been describing never drink beer.
It might be that young, unmarried Turkish women are just less relaxed than their older counterparts, but it might also be a sign of the times. In today’s Turkey, as in China and Japan, there has been a huge surge of professional women in cities, who aspire to marrying successful, wealthy men of the same or higher social status. There are simply not enough of these men, so competition is fierce. They have Western aspirations to have a career and find a worthy match, but Turks are fundamentally conservative and Turkish women are expected to get married and have children without too much hanging around after university. They are pulled both ways and are, I think, unhappy in their new, undefined roles.
By contrast, women from rural areas are decidedly more gutsy than the city girls I have described above, usually because they are married off in their teens and are already managing a family by their early twenties, as well as working outdoors. In doing all this, they develop tough personalities, and I was particularly struck by the directness of the women
in the Black Sea area. Perhaps it is precisely to differentiate themselves from these kinds of women that the middle-class city girls take such pains to cultivate their princess act – they are emphasising the fact that they must be cherished and polished, not put to work in the fields.
Never have I felt more like a tomboy than in Istanbul. Confusingly, I am also, by virtue of my Britishness, rather exotic. I do not act like a Turkish woman of my equivalent socio-economic bracket, so Turkish women are often suspicious of me. They are equally suspicious of any Turkish women who do not behave like them.