Category: Culture/Art

Turkey’s middle-class women mix fashion with Islamic piety

Models in headscarves feature in magazine tapping into wealth and self-confidence of new bourgeoisie

Constanze Letsch in Istanbul

The Guardian, Tuesday 18 December 2012 19.41 GMT

Turkey muslim fashion

Young Muslim women wearing headscarves in Istanbul. Photograph: Kerim Okten/EPA

Do Coco Chanel and Islam go together? Turkey’s Âlâ, a high-fashion magazine and the first to feature models in headscarves, certainly seems to think so. After its first issue hit the newsstands in June 2011, circulation quadrupled to 40,000 in only four months.

It comes down to simple economics. Over the past decade, Turkey has enjoyed an economic boom that has benefited, as before, the secular urban elites, but also conservative supporters of the AKP governing party and former rural entrepreneurs who have enjoyed unprecedented upward mobility, leading to the formation of an Islamic, urban middle class.

This new Islamic bourgeoisie has money to spend and the opportunities to do so are increasingly diverse: luxury gated communities, boutiques, restaurants, hotels and sports clubs catering to a more pious lifestyle are springing up in urban centres.

“The AKP successfully integrated a large, formerly disregarded part of society into the consumer market,” said the anthropologist and journalist Ayse Çavdar. “In that sense, market dynamics succeeded where politics have failed: it normalised [a religiously conservative lifestyle]. A magazine like Âlâ is a product and a sign of this normalisation.”

Âlâ’s fashion editor, Büsra Erdogan, thinks that the magazine filled an important void. “It was a veritable explosion – obviously scores of conservative women had been waiting for a publication like this for a long time. Many readers told us, ‘Why did it take so long?’”

While Âlâ adheres to Islamic clothing rules – headscarves and the length of hemlines and sleeves – it does not cater exclusively to women who cover their heads, and Islamic clothing companies feature next to designer brands such as Gucci, Louboutin and Stella McCartney.

Ebru Büyükdag, Âlâ’s editor-in-chief, said the magazine was initially criticised as being Islamist by secularists, and for commercialising Islam by some pious Muslims. “But we are not handing out fatwas, and we don’t break any Islamic rules,” she said. “Why should conservative women not be allowed to wear nice clothes?”

With wealth and visibility comes a new self-confidence among conservative women. “People used to look down on women wearing the headscarf,” said 35-year-old Esra Can, owner of a beauty salon in Istanbul’s conservative Fatih neighbourhood. She opened her own business after her decision to wear the headscarf put an end to her career as a sales director in the textile industry. “I was put before the choice between my headscarf and my job,” she said.

Adile Türkmen, a beautician who had to drop out of university because of her headscarf, said she breathed a sigh of relief at the appearance of Âlâ. “It brought a sense of normality,” she said, arguing that Âlâ was a sign things had changed. “When I used to go to the opera, people stared at me like I didn’t belong. Now I go everywhere, to restaurants and rock concerts.” She laughed. “Headbanging with a headscarf? No problem!”

Esra Can agreed: “With the AKP government and through economic growth people started to look past this piece of fabric. Now people judge me by what I achieve – which is a whole lot.” Her beauty salon, nestled between brand name shops, wedding gown boutiques and fancy patisseries, draws clients – with and without headscarves – from the neighbourhood and from all over Istanbul.

Âlâ’s editor-in-chief Ebru Büyükdag underlined the importance of featuring articles on professional conservative women who have succeeded – women like Esra Can. “We want to present positive examples and role models to young women.”

She admitted that female employment in Turkey was still dismally low – only 28% of women currently participate in the workforce, less than half the European Union average. “We rally for female quotas at the workplace and for an end to the preconception that women wearing headscarves can only work in low-skilled and low-paid jobs, if at all,” she said. “Many companies still refuse to employ highly qualified women for executive positions only because they cover their heads.”

Büyükdag said that magazines such as Âlâ also helped to bridge the gap between practising Muslims on one hand and secularists who are anxious about an Islamisation of Turkey on the other. “It shows that we like the same things: we like to look good, we like style, we like to eat good food. It’s a place to start.”

via Turkey’s middle-class women mix fashion with Islamic piety | World news | The Guardian.

December 20, 2012
Turkey this Christmas

From the Newspaper | Asha’ar Rehman

IT is so fascinating how phases are formed by the threading together of occurrences, one quickly following the other as if by design to build a whole.

This one began a few months ago with a novel by Elif Shafak. Forty Rules of Love came highly recommended. It was a great read. It was to mark the start of a Turkish spell.

Soon afterwards the mayor of Istanbul was greeted in Lahore by a very warm Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and the prospects of doing business here. Lahorites were promised Istanbul’s bridges complete with the trademark Istanbul buses to move them around.

All of a sudden, a school set up in partnership with the Turks was mentioned as the best available option for children. It was hailed for combining new education with the right kind of discipline.

It was an ideal choice for parents who had no escape but to ensure modern education to their children but who had a duty to guard the impressionable minds against the evils which can — which do — generally accompany education these days.

Then, if somewhat differently tasked than in Shafak’s engaging story, the venerable Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi emerged on the scene. The Maulana graced Lahore on the occasion of a conference organised in his name, to help guide the depressingly confused locals out of the quagmire they have been unable to wiggle out of on their own.

This Rumi was assigned with reconciling modernity with traditional Islam — one objective that has routinely found Pakistani remedy-seekers to court the company of the Sufis.

If this were not enough evidence of the increasing Turkish presence in the surroundings here, not too long afterwards, a friend proudly revealed he was joining a media organisation to be financed by Turkish money. Turkish buses, Turkish bridges, the much-needed Sufism in this case with a Turkish tinge to it, Turkish schools, Turkish newspaper.

Not to speak of the occasional bucking-up visits here by senior Turkish officials cast in a vital role because of their country’s important positioning in Nato and the war on terrorism and the resultant similarities between Turkey and Pakistan.

The pace at which the ‘Turkisation’ of Pakistan was taking place, the country, or at least some more developed parts of it such as Lahore, looked all set to qualify for inclusion in the European Union. There was no cause for complaint as yet. The real drama was to follow.

The preceding imports were received without too many complaints and they set the stage nicely for Bahlul, Bihter & Co to join the growing Turkish party here.

As this chronology of events indicates, Ishq-i-Mamnu was by no means the beginning of an invasion of our space — this time by a brotherly country. It was part of a steady expansion, a part whose potential was first brought out when the culture reporter suddenly asked to go to Istanbul, to interview Bihter, he readily confessed.

The full impact was realised when some newspapers condemned the content of Mamnu as being alien to Pakistani culture and when local showbiz people objected to the Pakistani channels’ rush to buy the Turkish plays for screening here following Mamnu’s huge success.

The argument against the import of foreign plays that could hurt local interests is similar to the one where certain Pakistani manufacturers are asking for a protection regime before trade with India is opened. This is a point relevant to all areas — bridges etc — where the Pakistani brand is available but is being overlooked in favour of the foreign in the name of quality.

Yet, this is a whole package where users cannot pick and choose. The borders are set to dissolve between friendly countries faster than between two old hostile neighbours. Unless the reasons are as acrimonious as the ones cited by Difa-i-Pakistan Council to hold an anti-India march in Lahore on Sunday, the business or the cultural argument cannot quite stall imports.

This has already been proven by the screening of Indian films in Pakistan after pressure from Pakistani distributors and cinema owners. This came about in the face of patriotic protests by local filmmakers who sometimes tried to block outside competitors by resorting to branding their fare as obscene and unfit for consumption here.

This is a dangerous line for performers to take, especially in a country where art, regardless of its source, can so easily be scandalised.

As Turkey insists on playing a teacher in all these areas, its imports and influence in Pakistan are set to increase and this will only augment a presence that has always been there.

The Regional Cooperation Development that grouped Pakistan, Iran and Turkey was overtaken by the promise and resourcefulness of the Middle Eastern model. The acronym lost its relevance when the RCD folded in 1979, aged 15, but Turkey continued to be looked upon in Pakistan as a prime source that could at least inspire certain modifications here if not outright reform.

Mustafa Kamal Ataturk was forever at hand to fuel political discussions in a Pakistan badly and always in need of a saviour. That saviour was presented to us latest in Gen Pervez Musharraf, only soon into his term, the general and his image-builders found the comparison incompatible with their realities, leaving plenty of room for Maulana Rumi to try and reconcile two opposing Pakistans with an effort more than a decade later.

Turkey as a legacy of Ataturk has always engaged the Pakistanis. Groups of wise men have always advised the people of this country to adopt the Turkish model of giving the military a constitutional role in the government. That route politicians here have found hard to break and they have broken it at their peril.

Principally and effectively the Turkish power-sharing rule sustains the government in Islamabad even when Istanbul itself has moved to empower the politicians. This is one Turkey that has left Turkey but remains in Pakistan.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

December 18, 2012
Elif Batuman: A Women’s Theatre in Rural Turkey : The New Yorker

ABSTRACT: LETTER FROM ARSLANKÖY about the Arslanköy Women’s Theatre Group, an all-female theatre group, based in rural Turkey, which is writing and performing plays. Ümmiye Koçak, who is now in her mid-fifties, was a forty-four-year-old farmworker with a primary-school education when she caught the theatre bug from a school play that a local school principal, Hüseyin Arslanköylü, had staged the previous year. Ümmiye had never seen a play before, and it seeped into her thoughts. For a long time, she had been puzzling over the situation of village women and the many roles they had to play. In the fields, they worked like men; in villas, they became housekeepers; at home, they were wives and mothers. In 2000, with other women from her village, Arslanköy, she formed the Arslanköy Women’s Theatre Group. The group met every night at the school, after the women had worked ten- or twelve-hour days on farms. Their first production, a contemporary Turkish play called “Stone Almonds,” sold out a theatre in the provincial capital of Mersin, and was written up in the national press. They were invited to Istanbul, to be on TV; none of the women had ever been on an intercity bus before. In 2003, the women collaborated on a play called “Woman’s Outcry,” based on their own difficult life experiences, which included kidnapping, forced marriage, and domestic abuse. They performed the play in Arslanköy, in front of their husbands and village officials. A documentary about “Woman’s Outcry” became an international success, winning prizes at the Trieste and Tribeca festivals; Ümmiye travelled abroad for the first time, attending galas in Spain. In 2009, she played the title role in her own adaptation of “Hamlet.” This spring, she finished shooting her first screenplay, about a downtrodden mother and daughter who herd goats in the Taurus Mountains. It can be difficult to grasp just how remarkable these achievements are. In the nineteen-twenties and thirties, Atatürk’s secularizing reforms put Turkey at the vanguard of feminism. Turkish women got the vote in 1934, before women in Italy and France. Atatürk’s daughter was a combat pilot. But in rural Turkey the new secular constitution had little effect on the old patriarchal culture, and women’s lives continued much as they always had. Today, some Turkish women are C.E.O.s, best-selling novelists, Olympic gold medalists, and Constitutional Court judges. Other Turkish women—hundreds of thousands of them—are rape victims or child brides. An estimated thirty per cent of rural Turkish women haven’t completed elementary school, and forty-seven per cent have been beaten or raped by their husbands. Writer meets with Ümmiye Koçak and women who act in her new theatre group, and travels with them while they stage productions in rural Turkey. Describes Koçak’s life, and her development as a writer; recounts the history of the theatre group, describing many of the plays they have staged. Describes a women’s outreach program in a remote village, at which Koçak’s group stages a play, and the backstage atmosphere at one of their performances. Describes in detail the arduous process of filming “Wool Doll,” Koçak’s first film, which began in the winter, when Arslanköy is buried under ten feet of snow. Mentions the various positions which Turkey’s conservative Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has taken against abortion rights.

via Elif Batuman: A Women’s Theatre in Rural Turkey : The New Yorker.

December 17, 2012
APA – Turkey withdraws from Eurovision Song Contest 2013 in Sweden

Baku. Ulker Rashidgizi-APA. Turkey will not be represented at the «Eurovision song contest 2013″ to be held next year in Sweden.

Eurovision fans were confused after TRT had stated that they may consider withdrawal in 2013. Then, everyone calmed down when TRT started to put lots of effort trying to decide which artist should represent Turkey in Malmö. However, today it’s been officially announced that, Turkey will not take part in the 2013 edition of Eurovision Song Contest.

After Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Bosnia & Herzegovina withdrew (and Cyprus first announced to do so, but later changed its mind), TRT also announced that Turkey will not participate in next year’s contest.

In August 2012, Director General at TRT said that Turkey was considering withdrawal in 2013. However, this was not taken much seriously among the public, as TRT started to organize meetings with an “Advisory Board” which gathered music proffessionals in order to discuss, who would be the right participant for Turkey. Last week, some rumours spred out that the meetings with the 2013 representative were close to an end, and the name would be announced very soon. Today, both the media and the fans were shocked by the withdrawal of Turkey.

Unlike the other withdrawn countries, Turkey’s reason is not financial. TRT stated that, this is a reaction to the injustice of the competition, like a “boycott”. In the explanation they made, TRT claimed that the contest was unfair due to the latest rule in the voting system; the 50-50 combination of jury voting and televoting. It is thought that the involvement of jury had a downstream effect on Turkey’s points. The broadcaster also finds the “big 5 direct qualifiers” unfair.

Turkey will most likely participate in the 2014 contest, as TRT told that they’ll take the opinions of Advisory Board into consideration to develop a strategy for the next years, and hopefully end up with better and more effective conclusions.

Many Turkish Eurovision fans are however thinking the withdrawel has mostly to do with the latest rule change making the producer decide the running order of the participating songs. Something that can have a big influence on the winner.

Turkey has been in the contest since 1975, and they were active except for the years 1976, 1977,1979, and 1994. They won for the first time in 2003, with the song Everyway That I Can by Sertab Erener, their only victory until now.

In 2012, Turkey was represented with the song Love Me Back by Can Bonomo, which finished the contest at a respectable 7th place.

via APA – Turkey withdraws from Eurovision Song Contest 2013 in Sweden.

December 16, 2012
Istanbul’s heritage: Under attack | The Economist

How mosques and other new buildings may damage one of Europe’s finest cities

Dec 1st 2012 | ISTANBUL | from the print edition

Old sight under new threats

TURKEY’S first Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, came to power in 1996 vowing to put a mosque in Istanbul’s main square. In the heart of the old European quarter, Taksim Square, with its monument of Ataturk and his revolutionaries, remains a symbol of the secular republic. Mr Erbakan was ousted a year later.

Now a successor, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is making his former mentor’s dream come true. Secularists have taken to the streets in protest at what they call the Islamists’ “revenge” against the republic. Yet the bulldozers have moved in. Hundreds of trees are to be felled to make room for a replica of the Ottoman army barracks demolished by Ataturk’s successor, Ismet Inonu. The city’s mayor, Kadir Topbas, who comes from Mr Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development (AK) party, insists that the complex will house art galleries and cafés, but secularists say this is just window-dressing for the new mosque.

Some fret that such outbursts will bolster Mr Erdogan’s pious base. The real concern should be that the project was rammed through with “zero” public debate, argues Betul Tanbay, a member of the Taksim platform, a lobby group. Korhan Gumus, an architect, says that one effect of the project will be to trap motorists in long tunnels full of toxic fumes. Another is that neither revellers nor demonstrators will be able to mass around the square.

Much of this is in keeping with Mr Erdogan’s growing propensity to meddle with Turkey’s social and cultural fabric. His calls to criminalise adultery and abortion have been shelved. But his orders for the destruction of giant statues of an Armenian and a Turk in Kars were carried out. This week he called for legal action against a television series that depicts Suleiman the Magnificent as a seducer more than a warrior. Mr Erdogan complained that “30 years of his life was spent in the saddle, not in a palace as you see in TV shows”.

Until recently, Mr Erdogan was hailed as Istanbul’s saviour. After being elected mayor in 1994 on Mr Erbakan’s ticket, he sought to help the poor and relieved the city of 12m-plus from chronic drought, mountains of refuse and rampant crime. This boosted Mr Erdogan’s career but also drew the ire of the army, who egged on prosecutors to strip him of his mayoral seat, ban him from politics and send him to jail for reciting a nationalist poem.

Yet even Mr Erdogan’s staunchest supporters are doubtful about his plan to build a giant mosque on Istanbul’s tallest hill, Camlica, on the Asian side of the city (close to his Istanbul home). Again, ordinary citizens have had no say on the mosque, which will house up to 30,000 worshippers and, with six minarets, dominate the city skyline. “Mosques need to have congregations,” notes Mahmut Toptas, a popular imam. Few will scale the hill, a rare green space, to get there. Ducane Cundioglu, a columnist for the Islamist-leaning daily Yeni Safak, calls the mosque “a nightmare that will descend on Istanbul”. A design competition yielded no winner, so the job was awarded to the runners-up, two female architects.

UNESCO may rescind Istanbul’s world heritage status and move it to “endangered” because it is building a suspension bridge across the Golden Horn. The bridge’s masts obscure the silhouette of the 16th-century Suleymaniye mosque, a masterpiece by the Ottoman architect Sinan. Skyscrapers have already blighted the silhouette of Sultanahmet, the Blue Mosque. The city has pushed out old encampments of gypsies, transvestites and minorities. In the words of Ms Tanbay, Istanbul “is being robbed of its soul”.

via Istanbul’s heritage: Under attack | The Economist.

December 14, 2012
Turkey’s last Armenian schools

Turkey’s last Armenian schools

Turkey has never banned the Armenian schools that teach the community’s language and culture. But its support is marginal and the schools, like the language, are losing their place

by Aziz Oguz

“Don’t close the door,” Mari Nalcı, who has been head of the Tarmanças school for 25 years, told me as I went into her office; she seemed not to trust me. Armenians in Turkey are cautious, especially when you ask questions about education.

“The problem of security for schools has become very important, especially since Hrant Dink was assassinated,” Garo Paylan, an Armenian schools representative, had told me. The murder of this well-known Armenian journalist by a Turkish nationalist in 2007 revived old fears (1). Mari Nalcı’s school bristles with CCTV cameras; there are bars on the windows and a security man, Attila Sen, at the door. Sen is friendly, but as intransigent as a prison guard: nobody gets in without an appointment. “We’ve never had a problem,” he said, “but some local people are suspicious of the school. Fortunately, prejudices disappear when they get to know us.”

The school is in Ortaköy, near the Bosphorus Bridge that links Istanbul’s two halves. Ortaköy used to be one of the most cosmopolitan districts of the Ottoman Empire’s capital, and was home to many Jews, Greeks and Armenians. There are two mosques, four Christian churches and two synagogues. Today Kurds have replaced the Armenians, and only a few Armenian families remain. The school’s 500 pupils are ferried here by minibus from all over the city.

There are 16 Armenian schools in Turkey, five of them secondary schools, with around 3,000 pupils in all. They are all in Istanbul, where most of Turkey’s 60,000 Armenians live. The only admission requirement is that pupils must have at least one parent of Armenian origin.

These schools date back to the Ottoman Empire, when every community was responsible for organising its own education system and there were thousands of Armenian schools. After the Armenian genocide of 1915-16, in which one to 1 to 1.5 million people perished (nearly two-thirds of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population), and later massacres and exoduses, there are relatively few Armenians in Turkey, and just these 16 schools.

A hybrid system

The Turkish republic created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 did not challenge the existence of community schools but set up a hybrid system: the Armenian schools were placed under state control without being made public institutions. The ministry of education appointed a Turkish deputy principal for each school. Teachers employed by the state gave lessons in Turkish language, history and geography, while other subjects where taught in Armenian by teachers paid by the schools’ foundations.

In 1974, when Turkey intervened militarily in Cyprus, the state took measures against its Christian communities. “Until then, the state funded schools, even if very modestly, under the terms of the Lausanne treaty [signed in 1923 with the European powers]. But after 1974 that aid ceased. The state doesn’t trust us,” said Paylan. All the schools are therefore linked to foundations. If they have endowments, the interest can be used to fund education; otherwise they rely on charity from their community. Parents don’t pay regular fees for education; if financial contributions are required, they vary according to family income.

The mission of these schools is to keep language and culture alive. But there are two major obstacles: the Turkish state and time. Armenian is not taught anywhere else in Turkey. There are no university courses in Armenian language or culture. Turkey doesn’t train any teachers of Armenian. Teachers are chosen by the school foundation and must be approved by the ministry of education. They learn Armenian at home and perfect their knowledge of the language through personal study outside of any academic framework.

Mari Kalayacı became a teacher by chance. She had a business management degree, but couldn’t find a job, and was advised to change careers. She has taught Armenian for seven years, two of them in Ortaköy, and admits that without this job she would not know her mother tongue so well: “I learned a huge amount when I began teaching. And I’m still learning.” Her pupils’ receptiveness varies. “Armenian is a difficult language. Some of them have no trouble with it, but others really struggle.” Pupils at the Ortaköy school speak Turkish among themselves most of the time. “They live in Turkey. It’s natural that they should speak Turkish,” said Nalcı. The Turkish education system does not make learning Armenian easy: “In high school, some of my friends didn’t go to Armenian classes. There was no penalty,” said Murat Gozoglu, who was educated in Armenian schools. The important entrance exams for high school and university are all taken in Turkish.

Not all Armenian parents send their children to a community school. And those who do attend may not stay the course — most switch after primary school or junior high. “Armenian schools, especially the secondary schools, don’t have the highest reputation. Sometimes they are seen as a fallback. Parents would rather send their children to an English, French or German school,” said Nora Mildanoglu. She went to an Armenian primary school before the English-speaking Robert College, one of Istanbul’s most prestigious high schools.

Attitudes have changed in Turkey, which has opened up to minorities, who now find it easier to assert their identities. “Now I’m not afraid to speak Armenian in public,” said Kalayacı. “When I was little I would never call my mother mama. I’d say anne [in Turkish] so that no one knew we were Christians.” Yet the Armenian language and culture are gradually disappearing in Turkey. “Armenian is spoken very little in family homes today. There is no longer a popular Armenian culture,” said Paylan. “Children are just taught the basics so that they can get by in everyday situations.”

Sarkis Seropyan, cofounder of Agos, the Armenian community’s main newspaper, is not surprised. “Few Armenians in Turkey speak the language. The proof is that most articles in Agos are in Turkish.” Only four pages out of 24 are in Armenian. “Otherwise no one would buy the paper.”

The Armenian community has realised that the schools alone cannot revive the language. But under the last major education reform, this spring, the teaching of Armenian was ruled out in state schools. The Armenians will have to make do with the current system.

Source : https://mondediplo.com/2012/12/16armenia

December 14, 2012