The new year unveiled

[robinturner]

A very uneventful New Year's Eve. We'd planned to just go to the Bistro (our local Senior Common Room / dive) but found that they were doing admission by ticket, and tickets were 25.000.000 lira (about $15, which is a fair amount of dosh here) for as much as you could drink. This works out at the price of about a dozen beers, which is much more than most people's capacity, so we felt it was a bit of a ripoff and stayed home watching crappy New Year shows on TV. Some good music, lots of bad music and shots of people trying desperately to enjoy themselves and forget what a lousy year 2001 was.

One good part was a bit of the Tarkan concert - totally over the top decor and lighting effects, and of course Tarkan's wonderfully egotistical stage presence. For non-Turkish readers, I should point out that Tarkan is a pop star possessed of passable musical talent, devilish good looks and a horde of screaming teenage groupies. The funny thing was the pre-show controversy about Mezdeke, a trio of belly dancers who were making a guest appearance. Mezdeke are famous for appearing veiled (though with other parts of their bodies decidedly unveiled). Apparently this was because they started their dancing career while keeping their day jobs as civil servants, so didn't want their moonlighting to be recognised. Anyway, some people thought that since this concert was to be broadcast internationally, the appearance of veiled women would be damaging to Turkey's image. The problem was eventually solved by the clever device of the ladies wearing Venetian-style masks, so now we've seen the top half of their faces and the bottom half, but only someone with a very good visual memory or excellent graphics software could put the two halves together.

Does anyone out there these days seriously think that Turkish women wear veils? And of those who do, how many could actually point to Turkey on a map?

Comments

[ex-fauxpas266.livejournal.com]

Haha! I had totally forgotten about Tarkan.

When I was maybe 12 or 13 years old, I had a Turkish pen pal, and she would rave about some pop star named Tarkan. At least that name sounds REALLY familiar -- has he been around for at least 10 years?

[solri.livejournal.com]

Yep, it's that Tarkan, unless she meant the film character, who was the hero of a series of hilarious low-budget historical films in the 1970s. The latter Tarkan was a Hun (who Turks insist incorrectly in regarding as Turks) who rode around meeting (and usually killing) people of different nationalities and historical periods. Raised anachronism to a high art.

[alexgal.livejournal.com]

From what my (Turkish) boyfriend tells me, what started with Ataturk's secularization/westernization movement (and despite all the great things it brought along) in some sense seems to resemble a form of cultural oppression. Banning the fez, women's headdresses, discouraging men from growing beards (unlike other countries of the Muslim world), prohibiting praying in boarding schools or in the army etc seems to me not only an act of obliteration of cultural heritage but also a violation of some fundamental human rights.

In any case, your mention of how it was thought that veiled women would hurt Turkey's image internationally, reminded me of this rationale.

[hyperina.livejournal.com]

what an excellent name!

I shall name each of my first three children TARKAN

[solri.livejournal.com]

It's a very tricky question. Banning the fez is a case in point. The fez was actually introduced during the tanzimat (reform) period in Ottoman days to replace the turban. There was just as much furore then as there was when Ataturk banned the fez. As for banning the veil, I remember a quote from Ataturk saying that he didn't ban the veil, he would just protect women who wanted to unveil, and in any case there was nothing wrong with ugly women wearing veils. Sexist, but effective.

These days restrictions on dress seem ridiculous, but you have to remember how politicised the whole thing was then. Even now it's still a political issue in some ways, but that's largely because many of the old laws are still in place - probably if they were removed the whole thing would fizzle out, but you couldn't have said that in the 1930's. There again, how many countries have no restrictions on what people are allowed to wear or not wear?

As for banning prayers in schools, doesn't that apply in America as well?