Turkish Awakening (11 page)

As is generally the case not only in Turkey but the world over, when extremes of society rub against each other, tolerance is stretched and ultimately snaps. I have already mentioned Galata as an area which has suffered a rapid gentrification in recent years, leaving traditional locals out of sync with the growing influx of modernity and its free and easy ways. There is an empty house just off Galata Square that was used until a few years ago for the monthly meetings of the LGBT Mothers' Support Group of Beyoğlu. In much the same spirit as Alcoholics Anonymous, the mothers of lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender people met secretly to help each other through the stress of their children's chosen path in life. Not for long – the crazed xenophobe who so ruthlessly persecuted Andrew Boord's tenants was soon on the scene with a bevy of homophobic followers, hurling abuse and missiles at the house until the poor mothers called the police. When the police arrived, they made no move to arrest this violent gang but instead demanded to see the rent agreement for the flat and requested the mothers to leave.

While disgusting, this incident was, at least, relatively isolated. Much more worrying are situations like the one in Avcılar, a far-flung suburb of Istanbul filled with what in Turkish are known as
gecekondu
houses (literally ‘built in the night') – ramshackle but, by now, well-established slums. Because Avcılar is so far out and hitherto unpopular as a neighbourhood, it gradually became home to a large number of transvestite prostitutes – the area was cheap and no one bothered them. This all changed in recent years with the city-wide rise in property prices, the general seeping of Istanbul's resident population further and further from the centre, and the dawning realisation among Avcılar landlords that they could charge a lot more for their properties if they got rid of the unsavoury transvestite population. In the autumn of 2012 this spurred a landlord-led anti-transvestite movement, joined by homophobic locals, but vociferously opposed by the transvestites themselves, LGBT activists and, impressively, a good number of fair-minded Istanbullus with no particular concern about the area but a conviction that the evictions were not just.

It is depressing that the root cause of this movement appears to be money – everyone got on reasonably well before prospective rent prices changed – but not nearly as depressing as it would be if the movement had been solely driven by prejudice from the start. As is evident in Tarlabaşı, there is a certain amount of tolerance for the homosexual and transgender community in Turkey, but it would be too much to hope for blanket acceptance; there will always be a few bigots everywhere, in Western countries as well as in Middle Eastern. To match the Avcılar scenarios of this world, there
are cheering cases like that of the support for Halil İbrahim Dinçdağ, a gay football referee who has been consistently cheered on by fans during his legal battle against the Turkish Football Federation for dropping him on the grounds of his sexual orientation (a charge they deny).

Beyoğlu is, as I mentioned, a hunting ground for prostitutes of all variations of gender and sexual appearance. However, there is another interesting scene in a neighbouring area called Aksaray, which is full of a very idiosyncratic kind of establishment called a
pavyon.
Unlike brothels, you can find
pavyon
s all over Turkey, but they have changed almost unrecognisably from their original incarnation. Traditionally – in fact, until about twenty years ago – a
pavyon
was a kind of wholesome nightclub, where Turkish girls would sing classic love ballads and where lonely or misunderstood men came to listen to them sing and later talk to them over a drink. The original Pavyon (French
pavillon
) was the first such place, in Taksim, Istanbul. They later spread all over the country and were, in fact, more popular in isolated Anatolian towns than in the hub of Istanbul, because of the relative lack of any other excitement. Old-fashioned
pavyon
girls were not allowed to leave the premises with customers; they were good singers and conversationalists, but they were not prostitutes. They were also all Turkish. Now, the idea of a
pavyon
has drastically changed – it is still tame compared to the strip clubs of Europe, but it is much more about ogling and, in some cases, taking the girls home: an optimist's hunting ground. There might be a token Turkish singer, but the girls are mainly Russian or Ukrainian, no older than twenty-four, dancing en masse and speaking
just enough Turkish for basic transactions. Conversationalists they are not.

The Turkish man's fascination with exotic women is well known – and by ‘exotic' I mean Russians, Eastern Europeans and, bluntly, blondes of all descriptions. Some Turkish men make pilgrimages to the seaside resorts of Antalya especially to pursue Russian women looking for a holiday romance. Academics insist that this stems from Ottoman times, when the celebrated concubines in the Sultan's harem were all from distant, northern reaches of the Empire, notably Circassia (modern Ossetia). Alternatively, it can be more simply explained as an example of the universal trait of desiring what is unusual. Belatedly, this particular racial preference is being granted full outlet in the modern revamping of the
pavyon
. In keeping with the old Ottoman tradition, contemporary Russian prostitutes initially come to the Black Sea region in the north of Turkey, mainly through the border with Georgia, before travelling further south. In the town of Hopa, near the Georgian border, there is a very high concentration of brothels where ‘Natashas' (Russian prostitutes) work, knowing there will be high demand for them just inside the border of Turkey. The sudden proliferation of prostitutes in Hopa reminds me of the towns in Holland full of sex shops, just across the Belgian border. One woman from Hopa gave an interview in which she spoke of the problems these brothels posed for Turkish families, how they were destroying family life. She had even formed an association for the maligned wives of Hopa, but to very little avail – it was no match for the sheer scale of the brothel business in this strategic town.

My knowledge of the
pavyon
scene comes from first-hand
experience. Normally women are not allowed into a
pavyon
as spectators, but I went with a persuasive man of the world who is a valued customer in Ankara – currently the most celebrated city for
pavyon
s in Turkey. I was immediately disappointed by how shabby and kitsch the place was – swirling disco lights, cheap velveteen booths and the most unbelievably overpriced, bog-standard
rakı
(this is, of course, how all these establishments make their money). The veneer of glamour was even thinner than I had expected. The whole performance was farcical to the appraising and sober eye of a female researcher: a small stage cluttered with young girls dancing to average club tracks with the minimum show of enthusiasm. It was, frankly, embarrassing in its lack of any pretensions to sensuality. Nevertheless, I persuaded my chaperon to invite one of the girls over, which requires more overpriced drinks, of which the girl drinks a thimbleful. Angelica was Ukrainian, twenty years old. She told us in fairly fluent English that she and her friends had all been imported en masse by their agency in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly she was very bored in Ankara, speaking very little Turkish and with nothing to do during the day. She said the money was good but she dreamed of going to central Europe. Later, she thanked us graciously and went back on stage to dance under a bucket of water in what turned out to be an attempt at the famous performance scene from
Flashdance
.

The atmosphere and agenda of the current scene are totally antithetical to the original idea of a
pavyon
and show a marked cultural shift in Turkish society. Thirty years ago, it was hard even to find a girl who would talk to you outside the family home (hence
pavyon
chats) – now, as society frees up,
it is more about sex. Girls used not to leave the
pavyon
with a customer; now in many cases they do.

Like everywhere in the world, Turkish society is getting more explicitly and commercially sexualised. Because sex is more visible and purchasable than it used to be, the growing conservative contingent of society has more to object to. This exponential tension leads to conflicts like the Avcilar transvestite–landlord stand-off and the imminent eviction of transvestites from Tarlabaşı as it becomes gentrified. It is safer for gay people or bisexuals in Turkey to go under the radar, joining the considerable number who are quietly conducting their affairs uninterrupted. I'm not saying this is a morally correct system, and in a liberal society everyone should have the right to express themselves just as they like. But Turkey is in many ways a religiously conservative Middle Eastern country, and it is clear that in the struggle to achieve equal rights for openly gay people, there is a long way to go and the path is not only difficult but violent. It is not easy to change the deep-seated prejudices of a nation, indeed a region, and while it might be right and worthy to attempt it, I can't help being struck by the relative normality of casual, hidden romances and the low-key nature of homosexuality as an accepted mode of behaviour in this country.

Andrew says that he loves being gay in Turkey, because it is his own business. In England he would have to be ‘out', and this would immediately give him a dictated identity in the eyes of a Western audience. In Turkey, he is a delightful charmer, or flirt, however you choose to look at it, queen of his castle. He has had several long-term, fondly remembered relationships with Turkish men, and now, as a more senior
‘Alpha Female', as he puts it, has the exciting prospect of a new encounter round the corner in the fruitful hunting grounds of Istanbul or Bodrum (or wherever he happens to find himself). His gay circle of friends are the best company in Istanbul, and Andrew loves discovering hidden kindred spirits – ‘I think he's a bit of a whoopsie, Alevia darling, don't you?' (This question is entirely rhetorical – Andrew always knows his man.)

Andrew would be quite wasted in England.

Betrayal, jealousy and family conflict: these are the ingredients of all successful Turkish soap operas, or
diziler
. Sex and money are the inner sinews running through their cores and holding viewers captive. Fittingly, the worlds of TV production and commercial acting warrant scripts of their own – dark tales of strategic censorship, politics, the druglike pull of celebrity and, above all, money. Digiturk, while sounding like a subversive metaphor, is in fact the reigning satellite provider, holding the monopoly of almost all national and international channels broadcast in Turkey bar Sky and the state channel, TRT (Turkish Radio and Television). It is available worldwide, and is arguably Turkey’s most powerful PR agent.

In the past six years, televised melodrama from Turkey has taken over countries in the Middle East and North Africa, central Asia, the Balkans and Eastern Europe in dubbed or subtitled format, and is wildly popular in unlikely countries like Iran and the Ukraine, sometimes even more so than in Turkey itself. Enthusiastic teletourists, mainly Arab, have flocked to Istanbul to visit familiar locations from their favourite shows, whole families trooping over on a giddy pilgrimage of pop culture. This TV tourism is so profitable that in October 2012 the Turkish Ministry for Culture and Tourism decided to stop charging certain countries for the
broadcasting rights to soap operas, specifying a desire to shower audiences as remote as Kyrgyzstan with freely available blockbuster shows like
Aşk-ı Memnu
(
Forbidden Love
),
Ezel
(
Eternity
) and
Muhteşem Yüzyıl
(
Magnificent Century
). Considering that the annual income from foreign broadcasting sales had reached nearly a hundred million Turkish lira from a total of 150 series sold to seventy-three countries, this was a striking testament to the more valuable potential of
dizi
-
turizm
and the anticipated boost to trade.

Of course, money is a big motivator but there would have been more important strategic and long-term financial motives behind this decision. Until the AKP came to power, the Middle East was largely suspicious of Turkey, seeing it as an extension of the West with its secular ways. Now, under the Islamic auspices of the AKP, these countries can view Turkey more as part of the fold, and over the past decade the country has become what the Turkish Foreign Ministry carefully calls ‘an inspiration’ rather than ‘a model’.

The proliferation of Turkish soap operas in the Middle East pushes an image of Turkey as a modern, socially inspirational example without alienating the viewers in these countries. In central Asia and Eastern Europe, Turkish soap operas far outshine their nearest competitors on Russian television channels and the sheer volume of Turkish TV spread over international airspace speaks of progress and prosperity. The shows have a regular, captive audience and media hype constantly fed by a growing online audience obsessing over the attractive Turkish stars of the series. The sphere of influence stretches from Oman to Uzbekistan to Bulgaria; it is a digital renaissance of the Ottoman Empire.

The popularity of Turkey in Middle Eastern countries is such that during the Gezi protests of 2013, many Arabs could not understand why Turks would be protesting. People in the Middle East, and North Africa in particular, are big fans of Erdoğan. Often they cannot fully articulate why, but he seems to be a feel-good regional leader with strong Muslim credentials. If pressed, these Erdoğan fans talk admiringly of his protective stance on Palestine and fearless criticism of Israel. This is a hugely emotive subject and the kudos of a strong position on Palestine cannot be underestimated in the Middle East. Erdoğan has hit that exactly right, and strengthened his position with a tour of ‘liberated’ Middle Eastern countries post-Arab Spring in September 2011, in which he encouraged optimistic Arabs to copy Turkey’s example of a moderate Islamic democracy. Arabs are simply perplexed by the attitudes of Turks who might have concerns about his leadership.

As domestic and international media began to show footage of Turkish protesters being attacked by police in 2013, the government responded by describing the protesters as dangerous looters manipulated by an ‘interest rate lobby’ whose mission it was to bring down the Turkish economy. Turkish soaps began broadcasting propaganda-style episodes in which brave policemen resisted unprovoked attacks from protesters and responded only unwillingly with tear gas. In one memorable episode, the interest rate lobby group are unconvincing villains represented by a couple of snappily dressed businessmen who cackle as they watch protesters and police fighting from behind a fence, high-fiving each other as the clashes get out of control. Incidentally, the channel
that aired this was Samanyolu, a nationalist channel with links to the Islamic movement headed by the cleric Fethullah Gülen. While these soaps were obviously aimed at a Turkish audience, I’m sure they were seen by a fair number of Arab viewers too.

The popularity of Turkish soap operas in Arab countries has caused problems over the years. Prominent Saudi clerics, including the Grand Mufti himself, complain during the holy month of Ramadan about too many people watching programmes glorifying loose morals in the evenings after their
iftar
(fast-breaking) dinner. In November 2012, Macedonia’s Information and Society Minister announced that the broadcasting of Turkish soaps would be reduced on national channels, as Macedonia’s own programmes were being pushed past midnight while Turks hogged the precious primetime slots. ‘To remain under Turkish rule for five hundred years is quite enough,’ apparently.

This has done very little to dent the mass viewership of these soaps. One particular series,
Gümüş
(
Silver
), a sentimental rags-to-riches cliché that ran to one hundred episodes over two years, was renamed
Noor
(
Light
) for its Arab audience and became far more popular abroad than in Turkey, reaching 85 million viewers in Arab countries alone for its final episode in August 2008. Part of its success was explained by the fact that the programme was dubbed into the widely spoken Syrian dialect of Arabic, rather than classical Arabic, which had previously been used for imported soaps such as Mexican
telenovelas
.
Noor
was the real breakthrough in the phenomenon of Turkish soap operas’ popularity abroad, and set the standard high: the lead actors, Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ and
Songül Öden, were catapulted to cross-continental fame, their characters inspiring a generation of baby names, their onscreen wardrobes copied and sold in the most far-flung souks. A feature-length film starring the original cast is in production as I write.

It would seem that the semi-liberal yet not-too-alien lifestyles idealised in Turkish
diziler
are perfectly pitched for an Arab audience yearning for a world to which they can both relate and aspire, an audience which cannot necessarily identify with Western TV. Turkey is, after all, recognisably Middle Eastern while having many of the attractive trappings and fashions of a European country. There is more freedom for women, crucially, and most of the storylines involve some kind of romantic intrigue designed to be pleasantly shocking for the average housewife.

Aşk-ı Memnu
is a wildly popular modernised tale of secret lust adapted from an Ottoman-set novel of the same name, and seems to me the quintessential
dizi
. It centres on the claustrophobic situation of a young wife conducting an affair with the handsome nephew of her old, rich husband under the noses of everyone in the house. Worse, the heroine’s scheming mother has designs on the old husband, and towards the end the dashing nephew gets engaged to the heroine’s stepdaughter. The heroine duly kills herself. Stolen embraces, laden silences and guilty glances fill every episode. When the credits start to roll, one realises that hardly anything has actually happened in ninety minutes, but the tension has been pulled ridiculously, unsustainably high. It is like an elongated, meaningless cliffhanger with all the qualities of a tooth being drawn. But it is somehow very watchable,
and Middle Eastern housewives cannot get enough of it. The atmosphere of stifled lust and the pressure of social restrictions prevalent in so many communities in the Arab world are dramatically reproduced on screen with improbably daring characters playing out the housewife’s wildest dreams. More often than not, the onscreen femme fatale is fatally punished, but the aproned spectator has lived through her for scores of episodes.

This breed of TV is brilliantly simple but sensational escapism, typically gilded by a luxurious setting (or the promise of luxury), social competition and cathartic falls from grace. Many of the soaps are set in wealthy houses on the banks of the Bosphorus; the female characters wear designer dresses and full make-up to breakfast, the children have governesses, and there is usually an
Upstairs, Downstairs
scenario going on, with the kitchen staff or local salesmen providing comic relief in the interludes between the glitterati’s wrangling. To a Western eye, it all seems totally over the top, grotesque even. And yet a lifestyle which is patently several million dollars beyond what most Turks could afford is not seen as improbable and alienating but rather, impossibly exciting, the stuff of dreams. Producers such as Ay Yapım, the production company behind
Aşk-ı Memnu
and other successful shows, have developed a magic formula and are pursuing it doggedly.

I began watching the soaps to improve my Turkish. I had initially started off watching cult films like
G.O.R.A
(a sci-fi spoof by much lauded Turkish comedian Cem Yılmaz), but the lightning pace of the dialogue defeated me. Instead, soppy classics such as
Aşk-ı Memnu
,
Muhteşem Yüzyıl
and
Kuzey Güney
(
North, South
) became my linguistic bibles. I
can highly recommend these soaps to anyone wishing to improve their Turkish, because they are invariably filled with pregnant pauses (allowing the looking-up of new vocabulary) and the kind of acting which renders dialogue largely superfluous – sadly not in an Alec Guinness kind of way, but more like a nuanced mime artist. The plot is reinforced yet further by the heart-rending strings and sinister percussion of traditional Turkish music, expelling any remaining confusion over what is going on. This is of course a slight exaggeration, and I have often worried about the intricacies of which character knows what details about the secret betrayal/affair/switch of allegiance currently unfolding; luckily these mysteries have, if anything, added zest to the exercise. I remind myself of my grandmother, who spoke not a word of English, but would never miss an episode of
Dallas
, providing her own specialised interpretation of the plot and chiding the characters in animated Turkish as she watched.

For the
dizi
dilettante there is an extensive underworld of niche, budget soaps which are almost more fascinating than the mainstream ones, if less watchable. Many of them follow similar lines of ill-fated romances, but often draw their inspiration from real life. One particularly unfortunate series was inspired by the true story of Sarah and Musa, the stars of a scandal which the
Daily Mail
and
Mirror
covered with ghoulish tenacity, as did most of the Turkish media, in the summer of 1996. Unlikely thirteen-year-old heroine Sarah Cook accompanied her parents on holiday to Kahramanmaraş in southern Turkey, and ran away with an eighteen-year-old waiter called Musa Kömeağaç. As the world watched, aghast, the two got married. British papers decried
the disgraceful neglect of everyone responsible while Turkish papers, although officially shocked, rather enjoyed the romance of it all. Sarah fell pregnant and was finally whisked back to England.

Sara ile Musa
(
Sarah and Musa, Together
) was the series that drew its inspiration from this cause célèbre. It was not a roaring success, lasting only five episodes, but it is astonishing that someone thought it was a good idea to serialise the story at all – it would be like making a soap opera out of the British schoolgirl Megan Stammers running off with her maths teacher in September 2012. Turkish papers occasionally revisit the Sarah-and-Musa story, some sixteen years on, printing sadly nostalgic pieces about Musa missing his distant son, but declaring himself happy with his new Turkish wife. This, to my mind, is absolutely typical of the Turkish trait of dramatising and romanticising everything, no matter how inappropriate in the eyes of the rest of the world.

For sheer genre variety, I am very glad that such series exist but it cannot be said that they have the same mass appeal as the glamorous blockbusters like
Aşk-ı Memnu
. The actors involved in these are huge heart-throbs, in a way that is almost old-fashioned now in the West due to the proliferation of transient talent-show stars and the myriad avenues of celebrity. Turkey has its fair share of minor celebrities, but there are a handful of astronomically well-paid actors who take on most of the lead parts in the top soaps and who are real megastars as a result. One actor in particular, Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ (the male lead in
Gümüş
,
Aşk-ı Memnu
and
Kuzey Güney
), has cult-like status across the Arab world, where he far outranks Hollywood types like Brad Pitt. Tatlıtuğ was
once sighted in the mall in which I worked, and I went to the office bathroom at lunchtime to discover it packed with near-hysterical ladies daubing themselves with war-paint rouge, ready to go and hunt down the poor man like sexually charged Bacchic priestesses. Although most soap viewers and fans are female, Middle Eastern men are equally dedicated star worshippers. The equivalent of Tatlıtuğ is Beren Saat, the actress who plays his adulteress lover in
Aşk-ı Memnu.
There are forums devoted to Saat in which Arab men post odes to her eyes and chastity. It would seem that there is a degree of separation in the minds of fans between onscreen characters and the actors themselves, which is charming.