by Alev Scott
Having only ever been spoken to in Turkish by my grandmother in early childhood, I was amazed to discover the usage of epithets and modes of address in a context outside the home. Canım, for example, literally means ‘my soul’ and was, I thought, extremely affectionate. So it is, but I quickly discovered that one applies it to anyone who isn’t actually your boss or father-in-law – to customers in a taxi, friends, strangers in the street, lovers or animals. I have decided that it is equivalent to ‘my dear’, although it still, somehow, retains its heightened significance for loved ones. That is one of the beauties of Turkish: the freedom you are granted to invest as much as you want into a language that is, fundamentally, laced with passion and affection.
Having addressed my big sister as abla throughout my life, I understood it to mean ‘big sister’. And so it does – but you can also apply it to any female, about the same age or older than yourself, whom you happen to encounter in an informal setting. I am abla to anonymous strangers, or the rather confusing ablacığım (pronounced ‘abla-jum’) – literally ‘my little big sister’, used affectionately. To friends I am Alevciğim (‘darling Alev’), and in a formal setting I am ‘Alev hanım’ which cannot be satisfactorily translated into English but is equivalent to individualising ‘madam’ – ‘Madam Alev’, which is quite nice, if one doesn’t think of brothel owners. Alev, or any first name used by itself sounds rather bare and blank. Turks like to create a kind of relationship, whether formal or informal, with everyone they meet, and they do this initially through tokens of language before an established, mutual understanding is reached. Adding either an affectionate suffix or a respectful title to someone’s name shows the speaker’s good intentions, come what may, and establishes a vague power balance within which Turks feel more secure.
When I started travelling around Turkey, I discovered that, while Istanbul is a glorious mix of Turks from all over the place, there is a kind of cohesive, relaxed vernacular here which one does not always find elsewhere, especially not in more traditional or rural communities. For example, in Kayseri, a very conservative city in the middle of the Anatolian plain, I was no longer abla and my boyfriend was no longer abi (‘big brother’, or ‘mate’). Instead, he became hocam (‘my teacher’ – traditionally a teacher of the Koran) and I was yenge (literally ‘wife of my brother’). The latter conveyed respect to me – it would be politely assumed that we were married – while suggesting a brotherly camaraderie between the taxi driver and my boyfriend, although not as relaxed as abi. Hocam, likewise, is more a term of respect than a literal form of address. It is, significantly, not really applied to women, and the only time I have been addressed as hoca was when I was actually a teacher at the Bosphorus University. In Ankara, the capital city, hoca is often used, not because people are necessarily conservative but because it is a student town. Students ironically call each other hoca, ‘teacher’, and it has spread and mingled with the traditional, Anatolian use of the term.
Turkish is the linguistic equivalent of a crazy fruit salad, with Turkic roots, a great deal of Arabic vocabulary both ‘Turkified’ and lifted directly, many Persian words and quite a considerable body of French. These French words were transliterated to suit the Latinised form of Turkish that was introduced by Atatürk in 1928, in place of the Arabic-Persian script. Over the past century, certain words and modes of expression have come in and out of currency, reflecting shifts in Turkish society. Aside from my taxi driver impersonations, my mother was also shocked by the amount of Arabic vocabulary I use, words like maalesef (‘unfortunately’) or selam (a standard Arabic greeting). Sağ ol (‘thank you’) is not an Arabic phrase but it is a good example of an old-fashioned expression now very much in vogue. Its direct French-Turkish counterpart – mersi – is now fairly rare, and only really used by people above the age of thirty or so, and of a relatively privileged background. My mother, her vocabulary frozen in time from when she left Turkey in the seventies, uses mersi not because it was particularly chic to do so, but because it was normal; only peasants said sağ ol at that time, she says. This expression, meaning literally ‘be healthy’, was associated, at least in my mother’s circles, with backward, rural Anatolians who had more in common with their Middle Eastern neighbours than the more Western-facing, self-styled ‘progressive’ Turks. The latter sprinkled their speech with the French that retained kudos as the former language of the late Ottoman noblesse and the formal language of banking and bureaucracy. Thus, a formerly civilised, urbane word has become slightly passé and pretentious, while Arabic equivalents are both populist and popular. This has a lot to do with the huge rural migration to cities that has been taking place over the last thirty years in particular, meaning that the divide between snooty city types and the rustic masses has largely been worn away, and the latter’s parlance has prevailed.
The mass migration of the last few decades has had important social consequences in Turkey. There are many more young people in cities competing for jobs and spouses, more office-centred jobs as people move away from agricultural employment, and interesting clashes between the inherent machismo of Turkish society and attempts at sexual equality in the workplace as women struggle up through the viscous grime of ingrained patriarchy. There is also a big patchwork of people displaced by choice, as it were: about half a million people move to Istanbul alone every year, and many of them have come from the East or Black Sea regions.
Turks are always interested in origins. Most big-city dwellers these days are originally from elsewhere, so people are always curious to place each other. The question which comes even before ‘What’s your name?’ is Memleketiniz neresi? – ‘Where is your hometown?’ While Turks are very patriotic on a pan-Turkish scale, they are also deeply devoted to the particular area where they were born, or where either parent was born. Finding out that a stranger comes from anywhere in a hundred-mile radius of one’s own hometown is a cause for huge celebration on first meeting. Any geographical connection, no matter how arbitrary, is something of a triumph in this enormous, scrambled country, and the ‘neighbour’ is seized on almost like a long-lost relative – probably a sign that Turks feel fundamentally more comfortable in a smaller community than the modern super-communities in urban areas today.
Although migration is now the norm, Turkish language reflects a time when people stuck with the community into which they were born. The word yabancı is derived from yaban (wilderness) and means both ‘stranger’ and ‘foreigner’/‘non-local’. It reflects a village-like sense of community in which only immediate friends and relations were familiar, and anyone new to the area was big news (this is still the case in many rural parts of Turkey). Other terms like yurt dışında also reflect this – the phrase literally translates as ‘outside the area of the tent’, so would have originally been used to mean anywhere outside the immediate family homestead in the Turkic nomadic regions. Now it means, simply, ‘abroad’ – anywhere from Greece to the Gambia. Originally, yabancı was most frequently used in the ‘non-local’ sense, but it increasingly applies to people from distant countries as more and more tourists come to Turkey. As not only a non-local, but indeed a Genuine Foreigner living in Turkey, I normally provoke a Turkish Inquisition on first meeting. There are several questions that I expect to be asked: How old are you? Are you married? Where do you live – but where exactly? What do you do? Is that well paid?
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; t
hey 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 po
sition 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.