by Alev Scott
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.
My ex-flatmate Selin is, to all intents and purposes, a European woman, and more cosmopolitan than most. She is a single thirty-something entrepreneur who dates whoever takes her fancy, travels extensively all over the world and lives in the flat she bought by herself a few years ago in downtown Istanbul. Being a Turk born and bred, she also knows how to cook traditional dishes, how to modify her register and personal news when speaking to elderly family members, how to bargain with a tailor for best results, and more or less how to avoid becoming the subject of gossip. The last is particularly difficult. However much the qualities of independence are supposedly cherished by the ‘progressive’ classes in Turkey, I have found that women like Selin are generally treated with suspicion, especially by other, less free-spirited women. The gender gap is wider than most people care to admit, and Selin-types are thought to fall disconcertingly somewhere in the middle, with their decidedly masculine quality of self-sufficiency. Selin is perfectly aware of this and I know she sometimes feels torn between her background and her inclinations, however exuberantly carefree her lifestyle demonstrates her to be.
This sounds like a very bleak picture, but it is changing. It was only about ten years ago that people started living separately from their parents before marriage, for example – and very few do, even now. The restrictions of living with one’s parents have obvious ramifications on the kind of independent adulthood young people can experience before settling into marriage, setting people like Selin apart. I am not considered a Turk in this respect and seem to be exempt from the same kind of judgement, which is mainly a relief, although it can be disconcerting to feel I am operating outside the realms of local social mores.
Nihal is another atypical friend of mine, whom I do not count as fully Turkish. She is half French, grew up in Paris and moved to Istanbul when she was twenty-two. We agree that it is difficult to have Turkish female friends, and she recently confided to me that, apart from me, all her female friends in Istanbul are lesbians. Two of them are, moreover, transsexuals. ‘I have a freak show of friends,’ she jokes. Apparently, one of the transsexuals likes Nihal because she treats her like a proper girl, not a sexually confused man. Of course, these are quite unusual examples, but it is telling that socially marginalised people feel much more comfortable with someone who is basically French than with a Turkish girl.
Far more entertaining than the middle-class Turkish female stereotype is the male equivalent: Macho Man. While being, of course, extremely manly, he is highly strung, dependent on his mother and vain. He will readily tell you that he is on a diet or considering a new tattoo. In Turkey there are generally fewer stigmas surrounding the subject of personal presentation, and men are not afraid of vanity. This strikes me as an offshoot of the Middle Eastern propensity towards open displays of prosperity, wealth and, by extension, good looks. In Europe, vulgarity and overt personal displays are considered unseemly, whereas in the Middle East there is a much more straightforward attitude to personal advertisement.
Furthermore, what is deemed ‘manly’ is totally different in these two regions – European men like to differentiate themselves from women when it comes to personal care. Less is more, and Franz or Fred won’t necessarily feel comfortable advertising the amount of time or money they spend on their appearance. Turkish men, by contrast, do not consider it unmasculine to care about their looks; their masculine identity is secure if they are earning money and successful with women. If a Turkish man can spend money on a new suit, or a personal trainer, or an expensive scent, it means he has money to burn and that is the ultimate proof of success. He is the epitome of the L’Oréal slogan: ‘Because I’m worth it!’
Gender stereotypes are one thing in Turkey, but the general attitudes to sex – or the potential for sex – are more unsettling. For example, it is culturally accepted that men cheat, and that women do not. If one suggests to a Turkish philanderer or kelebek (butterfly) that his wife might be doing exactly the same thing as him, he is offended and incredulous. This is not an attitude unique to Turkey, but it goes noticeably unchallenged here.
The L’Oréal poster boys are jealously guarded. Unmarried women are a threat, especially foreign women. When introduced to a couple, you have to take particular care to court the female contingent for a decent amount of time to show your good intentions, effectively ignoring the male until such time as you are deemed to be safe. It is tantamount to flirting with this woman as her partner looks on, because what you are d
oing is exaggerating your friendliness to the woman to make up for any attention subsequently paid to the man: a bizarre trial period of unbalanced, sexually tense diplomacy, which is not a promising start, I think, to any friendship. The whole exercise is very tiring and I tend to avoid the hassle by making friends with single men, thereby adding to my wanton foreign persona.
The rules of love in this country are intricate and stressful both for courter and courtee. Men will not give up and women will play all the games in the book. It is exhausting for all concerned. When a relationship is finally achieved, it has the qualities of a legal document drawn up by the senior partners of Slaughter and May. Unrelenting jealousy is taken as read; in fact, most Turks would probably be seriously affronted by an unconcerned partner, and immediately suspect foul play. If the couple are not together at the same social gathering, modern technology comes to their aid: constant messages from ‘Aşkım’ (‘My Love’) pop up on the BlackBerry, the real name of the sender lost in the mists of sentimentality of their interminable courtship. When they are together, silence and boredom reign. It is almost as if the girlfriend or boyfriend is a possession, something which must be safeguarded like a hard-won Hermès handbag, but not enjoyed once gained.
I was once in a club at an advanced hour of the night, music raging and dancers raving. It was a small, crowded space, and I soon noticed a boy and a girl sitting on the sidelines. They were watching the dancing in bored silence, like onlookers at an awkward school prom. I realised that they were a couple but didn’t want to dance with each other for some reason. She could not dance with anyone else because he would get jealous, and he could not dance for the reciprocal reason. It was deadlock. Uncharitable though it sounds, sometimes it seems as though the only thing Turkish couples have in common is jealousy.
The world over, powerful women in business have the reputation of being uncommonly ferocious, having fought their way to the top of a male-heavy world. In Turkey, this is particularly true because not only are they fighting the statistics of a predominantly male workforce but also a much more inherently macho environment than their Western equivalents. Just as we are appalled watching Mad Men, or other television programmes which capture the atmosphere of dated, sexist working environments, so am I when observing Turkish office politics.
When I worked as an English coach for bankers in Istanbul, I was astonished by the difference between the men and women with whom I worked. While their levels of English were more or less the same, the men chattered blithely away, grammatical errors aplenty, while the women sat in silence and had to be invited by me to speak. This of course meant that the men got more practice and spoke more fluently, even if their errors continued (they rarely listened to corrections). The women spoke haltingly, using impressive vocabulary but seldom. It was obvious that they were not nearly as confident or as used to voicing their opinions as their male colleagues, which irritated me no end and provoked me into unceremoniously silencing the men on a regular basis.
There is, as far as I know, no gender gap in salaries for equivalent jobs in Turkey, and many businesses are making an effort to promote female employees to counteract the current discrepancy between the sexes in top positions. This is an important example of the improvements being made in Turkey at the moment. Unfortunately, there is an apparently immovable dinosaur of a problem in the form of old-fashioned sexual dynamics. Women seem very happy to conform to their unthreatening, meek stereotype, and do very little to quash the expectations that they would rather go off and have a family instead of fighting the competition for their superior’s job.
Out of the chrysalis of this unpromising situation come a few Thatcheresque dragonflies who simply flatten the opposition en route to top positions at big companies and even heads of region for internationals. A friend of mine working for McKinsey came from London to Istanbul to interview for a job at a Turkish computer gaming firm. Confidently expecting that her dazzling CV and precocious position at McKinsey would count for something, she was unpleasantly surprised by her interrogation at the hands of the female CEO of the Turkish computer company.
‘What can you offer us? You can’t even speak Turkish. Do you understand the Turkish market? Explain yourself.’
As my friend related this, I had in my mind’s eye an image of a cross between the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland and Miss Trunchbull from Matilda. This lady does, in fact, have a reputation for being unpleasant, but I can think of at least a couple of other Turkish she-dragons in top jobs who have the same aggressive manner. Whether or not she was such a bully in the playground, she has either developed this personality over time to cope with the pressure of outperforming male competition, or her natural aggression has made it possible for her to succeed on what is otherwise too brutal a playing field. It is probably a mixture of both.
The upshot of it was that my friend was intimidated and put off by this CEO and went back to London with a new appreciation for the working environment she had previously taken for granted. If she had been interviewed by a male CEO, she would most likely be working in Istanbul today, but she might also have felt isolated from a clique of female colleagues. When office politics become harder to negotiate than the job itself, you know there is a problem.
4
Women Undercover
Visitors to Turkey are often confused by seeing covered and uncovered women socialising together. They ask questions like: ‘Don’t they despise each other?’ ‘Isn’t it awkward?’ ‘Doesn’t the headscarf-wearing woman look at the bare-headed girl and think: you’re going to hell?’ ‘Surely the uncovered girl thinks the covered one is backward?’
If this were the case, they wouldn’t be friends. There are definitely some religious women who wouldn’t choose to associate with nonreligious women, and vice versa, but the happy reality is that friendships like this do exist. It says a lot about our Islamophobic preconceptions that we expect them not to; in London as in Istanbul, I can be friends with a Jew or a communist, and we can find something in common beyond religious or political beliefs. I take these visitors’ incredulity as a sign that they see the headscarf as a kind of blinker, physically representing a mental blockage, an inability to recognise other people as worthy of trust or even interaction. Turks share a great deal beyond religion, if this is indeed a divisive subject: the ostensibly nonreligious Turkish woman might be a sincere believer who does not see the need to wear the headscarf; the headscarf-wearer might wear it from habit, but have private doubts or questions about Islam. Perhaps they are engaged in a passionate theological discussion, perhaps not.
Headscarves are a hugely emotionally charged subject, variously taken as symbols of repression, freedom, feminism and chauvinism depending on individual viewpoint. I particularly object to the use of headscarves as a political tool, or a vehicle for social pressure, on either side of the debate. My personal feelings on the subject were tested shortly after I moved to Turkey.
In the bitter January of my arrival, I was walking along a shopping street with my scarf pulled up over my head to keep warm – I have done this since my teen years in London, and it simply didn’t occur to me to stop doing so in Istanbul. As I walked with my friend past the outdoor table of a café, one of those seated, a lady in a headscarf, looked and nodded at me in a subtle but unmistakable gesture of recognition and sisterhood. My Turkish companion, an uncovered girl, got no such look. I cannot quite explain why this was so unsettling – partly, of course, because it was unexpected and unmerited; this lady had totally mistaken me for someone religious and akin to herself in her beliefs. It was also that my friend was ignored in what otherwise might have been a straightforwardly friendly gesture that really bothered me. Most of all, the realisation hit home that, even in this most Western-seeming part of the country, a habit that I had formed for practical reasons in a secular country had suddenly taken on a religious and cultural significance. The lady’s recognition had been a form of congratulation, an acceptance into some kind of club – I felt
like a fraud while resenting her mislabelling. While I had been prepared to modify my dress to fit in with conservative expectations (covering up in religious areas, basically), I had not expected the opposite problem – that covering up for practical reasons would be automatically taken for religious intent. Hitting the covered nail on the head has turned out to be surprisingly difficult; for instance, when scrupulously dressing in my baggiest trousers and cardigans in the south-east of Turkey, where plenty of women wear fetchingly fitted outfits while keeping the mandatory headscarf, I stood out both as a yabancı and a terrible dresser.
One of the most ridiculous contradictions of the Middle East is the habit of pushing the limits of what is sartorially permissible for a woman, while keeping within the confines of superficial conservatism. I noticed this most in Lebanon, where women are often covered but at the same time exercise considerable freedom to show off both their body and a flashy fashion sense. I have seen many a young Arab girl dramatically made up and wearing an outfit that can only be described as provocative, despite the fact that she is also wearing a headscarf and no flesh is showing. The clingiest of long-sleeved nylon tops, cinched-in belt, spray-on jeans and tottering diamanté heels are – to a Western eye at least – at odds with a headscarf, though this is always colourful and usually matches either the clingy top or eye-shadow colour. The whole effect is bizarrely paradoxical and quite mesmerising.
Interestingly, I do not see this as often in Turkey, where covered girls seem to be conservative in both intention and dress, and do not seem to be fighting their covered state. I think this might be because there is a broader spectrum of Islamic expression in Turkey, in that many women who do not wear headscarves are still accepted as Muslim. In other Middle Eastern countries there is a stricter cultural code, where Islam is synonymous with certain rules (like keeping covered as a woman). In Turkey, you can be both an uncovered woman and a Muslim, and that is one of its great strengths. However, secular Turks increasingly worry that the country is headed towards a more Middle Eastern mindset in which everything is black and white: no headscarf, no Muslim credibility.