The Comeback of Extremists in Turkey
PoliGazette’s Michael van der Galiën reports from Istanbul, Turkey.
ISTANBUL, TURKEY – When I visited the former capital of the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul, last year, I noticed more women wear a headscarf here than in Turkey’s second city, Izmir.
Additionally, I was greatly impressed by the size of Istanbul. For Dutch standards, Izmir is gigantic with its four million inhabitants. Istanbul, however, is so big that the Dutch nor English language have words to describe the feeling a Dutchman gets when he walks in Istanbul for the first time. The amount of people – from all races, classes, religions, backgrounds – is breathtaking. People and cars are everywhere. Crossing the street is an adventure; it could literally be your death if you do not run. One gets the impression that all 15 million inhabitants of the city want to get to work at the same time.
As said, that was not the only difference I noticed between the two cities. Izmir is truly a secular city. One sees almost no women wearing a headscarf. The women in Izmir are emancipated and modern.
In Istanbul the situation was different back in 2007. One did, of course, not see any burqas, for Turks tend to greatly dislike those customs, but headscarves were everywhere. Where only 5% or so of the female population of Izmir covers her head, it is not hard to imagine this number to be somewhere around 50% in Istanbul.
This year the situation in Istanbul has become worse. The step from a secular (Baku, Azerbaijan) city in a Moslem country to a religious city in a different Moslem country was gigantic. In Baku, like in Izmir, you can see just about no woman cover herself. In Istanbul, however, the situation has not merely remained the same, it has become worse.
One gets the impression that the political power of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, is transforming this city in rather rapidly. Whenever I walk to a shop, even if it is only 500 meters (yards) away I can see at least one, mostly more, women completely dressed in black (something I did not see – often – last year). All too often the only thing you see is the women’s eyes. The rest is covered.
Many of these women are not Turks. They are mostly from Iran. Television in Iran is strictly censured. There is no chance whatsoever of Iranian women seeing things the religious leaders of that country do not want them to see. They mostly do not import TV shows. Many of the shows they do import, however, are from fellow Moslem countries. Especially Turkish TV shows are, I have been told, fairly popular in Iran.
Since Iranian men have to work and women often stay at home, or at least enjoy watching said shows, they get acquainted with Turkey, and especially with Istanbul. Most Turkish TV shows take place in this major city. They become curious and want to see it with their own eyes.
So, they convince their husband to book a trip to Istanbul, put their burqas in their suitcases, get in a plane and… before you know, you see them walking here.
Those women are not, however, the only ones dressed completely in black. Increasingly more Turkish women cover themselves completely as well. They talk like Turks, they walk like Turks… but they are dressed like Iranians and Saudis. They radically change the landscape; unlike the other Turkish women they are not laughing, nor talking loudly with each other. They are silent and follow their husband. They look at women who do not dress like them with an arrogance hard to imagine; one has to see the look to understand just how ‘dirty’ it is.
And so, the landscape in Istanbul is changing. One wonders whether it has reached an extreme and will become less in the coming years, whether it will remain the same or, and this is what I fear, it will become worse.
3,5 % of Turkish women weared the local equivalent of the tchador in 2002, and only 1 % in 2006.
If you go to the quarter of Fatih, you see a majority of women with the headscarf. The terminus of the bus lines from Anatolia to Istanbul is in Fatih: that’s why this quarter is peopled by internal immigrants, from villages of central and eastern Anatolia, and frequently conservative.
But if you go in the Istiklal Caddesi, Karaköy, Beyoglu… You can see less women with headscarf than in some streets of Paris!
If you go in other quarters, like Sultanahmet, you see around 50-60% of women without headscarf. More important: it is extremly frequent to see small groups of friends, where a part of women is without headsarf, and the other part is without.
Discover Turkey starting from Izmir is probably not the best way for understand this country. It is like discover France of the 1960’s starting from Toulouse.
Did you see the Atatürk’s Mausolee in Ankara? I have seen it. The most interesting is perhaps not the monument, but… the visitors. There is both female kemalists, who seem violently anticlerical, and women with headscarf, who go probably in the mosquee every weeks or almost…
In France, the other great laic Republic, this kind of scenes are simply unbelievable, and only the complete secularization of the great majority of population allowed the real reconciliation, the end of general reluctance between secular and catholics.
Strange, A peice of clothing shatters people from west who we think believe in individual liberty and freedom..Kudos to women who take pride in their culture and have the guts to stand up against the filth of the so called liberal culture that looks down upon them..Having said that responsibility also comes to Turk and other Muslim men to dress modestly like their women.
The head scarf is not cultural, unless you are a Bedouin Arab from before the prophet Mohammad’s time. It has nothing to do with Islam, it is completely based off of theological extremist schools and dictators/rulers/kings/sheikhs and other despotic rulers who wish to control women through obedience, dress code, and to make them believe in things that are simply not true of the religion, in order to mass control.
Read some sociology, and then read some stuff about democracy and freedom, and you’ll understand how liberating it is for woman to take off their headscarves.
That piece of clothing, sir, is a symbol of oppression.
Lucrèce,
It is illusionary to speak of reconciliation between Kemalists and Islamists in Turkey, especially after the last two years’ events. Actually I believe that either society will secularise, or the state will be islamised.
Let me reiterate Jonathon’s statement, there is aboslutely nothing Turkish about the hijab or the black ninja outfits.
And as for your judgment of others based on your interpretation of the religion, that is entirely un-islamic. If you knew the true Koran Ahmad, you would know that.
The hijab and the black outfits are Arab and Iranian imports.
Excellent analysis by the way, Michael.
In Ankara I noticed something different, that headscarfs were DOWN from early 2000s compared to 2008. I may be wrong though.
Do you think it’s political completely? Or perhaps the standards of living being raised may affect percentages of women with head scarves or not. Or is it a religious movement sparked by Iranian Revolution decades ago.
Where to next MichaelvdG? Any other visits?
It is illusionary to speak of reconciliation between Kemalists and Islamists in Turkey
You are certainly right about the elites, but certainly wrong about the great majority of the population.
or the state will be islamised.
And what about the new chief of General Staff? Or about the new rector of Antalya university? Islamists, perhaps?
The head scarf is not cultural, unless you are a Bedouin Arab from before the prophet Mohammad’s time.
I did not know that Ukraine was a Muslim country…
A nice article Michael, showing the trends in İstanbul.
As much as I hate the situation, unfortunately more and more people in İstanbul change their way of thinking, shutting themselves to realities.
Lucrece has pointed out the places where you may see more devoted or estreme people than the others like Fatih and say Ulus, Levent, Mecidiyeköy, Beşiktaş, Kadıköy are not like that at all.
Still headscarf is not the issue here. Just because you are wearing a headscarf does not mean that you are not modern or moderate hence the runner from Bahreiyn in Pekin 2008 but the problem here is that the outfits are politicized like symbols of one system or another and people think that just because they have these types of outfits or make their wives wear these types of outfits turn them into more religious people without even considering or questioning what they are actually doing.
Michael, Izmir is trying to hold on despite all the pressure, but don’t be so certain about that city either!!! We’ll see what happens in the local elections because AKP wants the "gavur" (i.e. non-Muslim) city badly and will do anything, anything necessary to get it. They are succeeding in certain areas and are penetrating into the "impenetrable" ones.
Izmir has been a city-state dating back to 5000 years and I believe that’s why there’s a strange feeling of "locality" to the city. Definitely feels like you’ve stepped outside of today’s Turkey sometimes, but you have that around the rest of Agean too. The least dependent on Ankara (or even Istanbul), the better.
"Headscarf is not Turkish" yes, it may be not be in a very remote history but it is Muslim and it represents piety and yes, pious people exist and they want to exist and let you exist too.Perhaps you need a lesson to understand that there is a difference between religion and nationhood. You want to give more emphasis to nationhood while those on the other side of the divide want to give more emphasis on religion and both are divisive on their own ways.I have been in many countries of Asia and Africa and people dont raise hue and cry on seeing x number of women in headscarves.Its their lives let them live in peace and dont impose the materialist culture on them.
I do not believe that an item of clothing can create or cause a woman to be more modest or pious. It is what is inside their hearts that will determine that. I have known a number of women who cover their heads and quite frankly, I have witnessed unvirtuous behaviours such as jealousy, envy, anger and arrogance emanate from these women.
This entire headscarf issue is a sad statement of men’s superiority over women. I have seen men wearing shorts and a t-shirt on a hot summer day walking with a woman who is covered in black from head to toe. This is not only demeaning and insulting, it is frightening. To see such disrespect towards a woman is not what the Qur’an teaches. It is the interpretations of men that teach this brand of Islam. This new wave of Turkish, headscarf wearing women is an infection of the recent Iranian and Arab cultures. Ataturk believed that a country can only progress if both men and women have equality. He adopted a number of women and educated them to be equal to men. The headscarf conceals a woman’s identity and her individuality. It is a way of removing any power she may have by erasing her identity in a social world. We can all go within to find our relationship with God and the universe if we so choose to, especially if we are not recognized by others and are left in solitude because we are hidden behind a scarf, or a gown that removes any vestige of identity. But it is the rare human being that can be pious, modest, just and virtuous in a crowd of people in the open sky without hiding who they really are…that is the truly evolved human being. To force such rigid rules on another human being shows ignorance. To allow a woman to truly choose how she wishes to dress is the act of a man who is secure in his masculinity and is not fearful of another man looking at his wife or sister or daughter in an admiring or lustful way. I have noticed that men who dictate a dress code to the women in their lives are the men who are most insecure and ignorant of human graces. Would a five year old little girl really choose to cover her head on playground?
If these headscarf wearing women truly believe in God, when all is said and done, do they really believe that God will look at what is on their heads or what is in their hearts?
And those who fight the loudest for the woman’s "freedom" to wear the veil happen to be men…
Hatun, agreed 100%. Well said. The biggest hurdle is the education system that is being under full attack from AKP. Particularly in the last couple of years, there have been extensive changes in schools’ cirriculum contents that purposely and ideologicaly underscore Ataturk’s role in Turkish quest of becoming a civilized nation. They are raising the next generation Islamists. We witness daily erosions on the secularist principles in every aspects of Turkish daily life. Hence, it is not surprising to see more women wearing ninja-costumes as AKP years go by. It is the natural outcome of a systematic inclusion of anti-secularism into Turkish society.<br>
Michael , I had the same observation as you had when I visited Istanbul this year. To add on that, these black-satans are very rich, when there is a luxurous hotel or a shop, I guarantee you that many of them can be found nearby.
The funny thing is to see Islamists and pinky-liberals (libosh) using personal freedom as a means to support inheritly non-democratic Islamist idelogy. In essence, Islamists’ dream life style removes gender equality, freedom of speech (remind you the death threats for cartoonists and novelists), modern justice system. So, if an ideology renounce key democratic principles, then democracy has every right to shut it down. This is indeed the crux of the turban issue. If you wear a turban that means that you are anti-democratic and you do not have any rights to whine about any freedom. Their plan is simple: use or abuse democratic tolerance until you get the upper hand then have no mercy to anyone…
Combining a non-democratic ideology with Islam shows that you know nothing about Qoran or Islam JudasPriest.
As much as I agree with you about AK Party and their approach to Ataturk, these people using and abusing Islam as an excuse as they see fit to implement their own non-democratic ruling over Turkey is one thing, calling Islam a non-democratic ideology is another.
Cherry picking from Qoran or interpreting Qoran as they see fit is what caused todays world’s understanding of Islam because as Hatun also mentioned, men used partial so called Islamic applications to justify the force they used on women and indeed this showed nothing but their ignorance.
As for AK Party leading, despite all these non-democratic applications we see with our own eyes everyday from forcing Kanalturk to shut down to Ergenekon, people keep voting for them which is even the most scary thing about Turkey I guess.
There are some secret AK Party supporters even from the business world and when you confront these men, they will tell you that they had not voted for AK Party.
As I put in some of my posts some time ago, AK Party may well had been elected in a democratic fashion but how they are ruling is far from being democratic. So yes, they are using democracy very well to turn Turkey into what they want. But the thing is elemantary school or secondary school students do not vote, we vote and despite all their efforts to change the education system, we can do something to prevent it meanwhile.
However as I said before, that is the scary part, Turkey is not doing much to change this, more and more people shutting themselves to realities every day or at least the efforts of the ones trying to do something is unfortunately insufficient.
Elif I hate to have an argument with you. I’d be cautious to judge someone on my side to have known nothing about the holy(! ) books and Islam. Nevertheless, I’d like to respond and I hope you’d wholly take it on its argumentative value. I know that I serve no purpose to denigrate secular believers.
Two things: my point is to islamist extremists as is the subject of the discussion. Second, the one reason why Islam is more inclined to extremism is due to its 600 years of lagging Christianity which if you think of it, it takes hundreds of years, the enlightment era, and transition periods for its believers to dilute so to speak and perhaps to ‘adapt’ the religion into the social structure of today’s modern societies. And Islam is in its infancy at best for its believer generations to evolve the religion concept in their minds and make it fit with the modern social terms.
Second reason is the language of Islam and in a way of all Judeo-faiths. They truly have no mercy to people having their own opinion. "If you dont belive in one god and its messengers, you’ll be burned in hell" type of messages have certainly no tolerance to non-believers. Having said that I’ll certainly be burned in hell. This is undeniably a non-democratic statement. I dont want o pick and choose but a holy book is expected to be perfect. Well, the truth is nothing is holy and nothing is perfect. All it matters is how one perceives one faith and practices it the way he/she likes, say for self-comfort, meditation or to serve some other purpose or reason that admittedly I have no grasp of.
Fortunately, the majority of world’s Judeo-Islamic believers are peaceful secular people. However, there are also those who want to transcribe it word by word, and take it as a pretext to apply it for everything. Then we have serious problems. So these believers who we call extremists, they say that you can not have it both ways, i.e., a secular Moslem is not a true Moslem. There is the ruler, the holy book and hadids etc, and, if you dont live your life accordingly, you are not a true believer. You loose the argument when you say holy book dont mention it this way. Clearly, interpretations play a big role in understanding what it says. However, there are passages that have no democratic value no gender equality, etc. It is somewhat self conflicting since you may find some lines that put women in front of men, but very few. As I said it can not be perfect.
There are believers of Islam faith who happily live in secular lives and I love them. I dont want to denigrate their faith, all I am saying that it is a thin rope and the abusers go all the way to the means of practicing it the way how the life has been back in Mohammed’s time. My, perhaps somewhat unproportional reaction was to this backwardness and the worry that I feel when I see all these covered women massing the streets of Istanbul and Ankara.
It would be interesting, and probably useful to the debate, to know to what extent the increase the Michael sees in headscarves is due to an increased number of women from elsewhere in Turkey moving to Istanbul and bringing their headscarf with them, vs. women who used to go without now adopting the headscarf. Until we know that, any conclusions will be more a matter of validating existing opinion than reasoning from actual facts.
JudasPriest, thanks for the explanations. I am not judging you, at least I do not think that I have the right to judge anyone, I am just saying, considering Islam a non-democratic ideology is wrong and if you say this or defend this it means you have not read the Qoran. To me, I was making a factual statement. Having a reasonable argument or debate with someone is something that I will never hate by the way.
I hear what you are saying but when it comes to believing and non-believing it is something else. Saying that the ones who do not believe in any holy religion will burn in hell has no relevance to what type of ideology Islam advocates to its believers.
The origin of all holy religions is an unknown and is mystic at the same time. We believe in something we have never seen with our own eyes and this may also be considered as ignorance or else for others but with this starting point of believing in one religion, it would not be any surprise to anyone that these holy religions will make a differentiation between believers and non-believers. This is not just for Islam but for all holy religions. As you put it, nothing is perfect and I respect anyone with their beliefs irrespective of the fact that they believe in God or not.
But when it comes to what Islam is to its believers, we are talking about how it should be applied among believers and this is where people have a tendecy to abuse and misinterpret.
Islam being strict in the sense that it has some preserved values is totally abused by these people.
Headscarf issue, Qoran is specific on how you should be praying before God but there is not a statement about women needing to wear headscarfs (or in today’s world ninja-outfits) in their day to day lives. Unfortunately, some men who wants to interpret Qoran as they see fit, twist this praying application and want their wives to wear headscarfs all the time which is far from what Qoran is telling.
There are a lot of other examples like this and yes there may be some areas of conflict, but these conflicts should not be used to abuse Qoran or twist Islamic applications.
But as you put it, backwardness is what Turkey will suffer from if nothing is done to prevent these extremists.
Wj, you can see both types from my experience in Istanbul but it would be difficult to assess which one is causing the change in Istanbul. Nonetheless, ruling party’s approach to the due issues is not helpful and is encouraging both. To me, the two have the same destructive effect on Istanbul.
Well, in the short term, the effect may be the same. But one has people moving towards a more religious approach to life, while the other has people moving to where they may come in contact with broader horizons and eventually feel less need to cling to particular symbols, no matter how strong their faith remains. Which means the long term effects would tend to be exactly opposite.
Or after moving to İstanbul and coming contact with broader horizons, this will make them affect the lifestyles in İstanbul instead of them feeling less need to attaching themselves to particular symbols depending on how strong their attachment is, you can never know…
To be honest, it depends on which area of Istanbul you go to. This year I stayed for a couple of days at my friend’s apartment in Etiler, which happens to be one of Istanbul’s richer districts and also happens to be right next to Bebek an even richer district, and almost all of the women I saw in both areas didn’t cover their heads.
If, however, you go to poorer or borderline-middle class areas (some of these can be touristic), it’s a completely different scenario. I’ve been to Istanbul so many times and when I went to Istanbul this year I was so shocked as to how many women were covering their heads. It is worth noting, however, that I saw all of these women in the poorer areas. This is because the AKP’s main support base is the urban poor, who are generally more traditional and religious because the majority of them have migrated to the city from villages.
Izmir is different. From my own experience, I would consider Izmir to be at least a middle-class city. I assume that that is why Izmir is the only major province in the entire country that is locally ruled by the secularist CHP: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Turkey2007JulyElectionComposite.png