When I moved to Istanbul, I was told that Turkey is an honour-based society. If a man follows me in the street or molests me in some way, I was to shout “Sherefsiz!” which means “Without honor!” and this would bring people running to my defence. What I came to learn is that Turkey is indeed an honour-based society, but people who are not a part of Turkish culture are not included in the Turkish concept of honour.
Take, for example, the red-headed American English teacher who was groped during a ride on a dolmush, shared taxi, and all the while she was shouting and smacking the man’s hand away, he didn’t even look at her. Not once did he turn his head to look at the woman whose leg he was feeling up. Not even when he left the taxi. Nor did anyone in the shared taxi help her. Honour my ass.
One day, during my short stint working at a local English-language newspaper I took a mini-bus out to the industrial wasteland where resided the 13-storey dark tower, The Hurriyet Medya Tower, where I worked. Driving through the back roads of Istanbul’s religious neighbourhoods, I had pang after pang of fear as I was the only woman on the bus (in a red coat no less) and long-bearded, skull-capped mullahs were getting on and off the bus. I used to live in Pakistan and even though I was young, I remember reading stories about young women who were kidnapped from buses and gang-raped, murdered, dumped by the side of the road with chilli peppers stuffed in their vaginas. My heart pounding and praying to God to please just get me through this.
Doing my very best to not think about the horrific things that Muslim men do to women. It was my stop and I stood up and said, “Inejek var.” “Please stop.” But the bus driver did not stop. He began babbling in Turkish and smiling at me in the rear-view mirror. I began pounding on the door. He kept smiling and driving. Driving and smiling. I was alone on a bus with a mad Muslim in the middle of nowhere on a Sunday. It was the situation women’s self-defence classes warn women never to get into because there simply isn’t a good way out. I began to pray and pray to God to please get me out of there in one piece. Then, for some reason, he screeched the bus to a halt and let me off. Is this what is meant by an honour-based culture? I was left with the threat of physical harm, yet “spared” at the last moment.
Yet another case in point was my husband’s position at a prominent English language institute in Istanbul. Originally he was hired as a teacher, then was quickly promoted to director of studies for the school’s Bakirkoy branch. He then became the Director of Studies for all four branches of the school. Each of these promotions came with pay rises, of course. One day, out of nowhere, they tried to renege on his contract and requested that he not only be the Director of all four branches, but he would also have to begin teaching full time as well. All for a mere raise of 50 YTL (about $25) a week. After threatening legal action, he resumed his original Bakirkoy Manager position and took the pay cut that came with it. Even so, every week his supervisors would ask him if he would be renewing his contract for next year! After all that, can you imagine the nerve? And what was worse than all of this is that he had not gotten paid on time for a single paycheque, he was getting paid 7 weeks in arrears, and each payday he had to threaten to strike in order to get paid at all. Honour. Indeed.
Turkey is a place where if your boss decided, for whatever reason, to fire you it is considered acceptable. Even without any just cause or good reason. They don’t even have to give a good reason, and if you don’t go quietly they make your life hell until you quit anyway. Honour.
Islam and Muslim culture has a bad reputation these days. I am against stereotyping, and it bothers me how easy it has been for the Bush administration to create a new propaganda image of the Muslim Terrorist. However, Islam in the world today, like any fundamentalist religion, is extremely troublesome. While in theory, Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, in practice it is not. Women are seriously oppressed and Muslim men, like most conservative and fundamentalist men, think that women who are not a part of their culture and religion are not even human. While they would hardly dare to lay a hand on a Muslim girl’s leg, whether she was in a headscarf or not, this is acceptable behaviour if the woman is not Muslim. She becomes less. She is outside honour. Honour does not apply to her any more than it does to any other heathen infidel. In fact, foreign women get it the worst. Because it is with foreign women that Muslim men can act out their repressed sexual fantasies. Be it by stroking her leg. Undressing her with their eyes. Lewd comments that they know she doesn’t understand.
People told me Istanbul was a progressive place and I will put forward that there is no such thing as a progressive Muslim country. Modern Islam is so far from the original teachings, like modern Christianity, that a progressive Islamic state is not possible.
Supposedly, Turkey is a secular state, which means that religion plays no part in their government. Yeah right. The Prime Minister’s wife can never be seen in public because she wears a headscarf and headscarves are not allowed in government buildings and functions! Like with Spain, Moorish roots are not easily lost or forgotten and sadly the modern descendants of the Ottomans and the Moors do not carry their teachings of tolerance into modern days.
*Afterward: I recently read an article in the Turkish Daily News about how a woman was grossly molested by a group of men on New Year’s Eve. The article interviews a professor from the University who specifically notes the phenomenon that I have referred to as being “outside honour” above.
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