An American Life in Istanbul

For those of you that didn’t read the first part of this entry here is the link to it. The first part of this entry got more feedback than any other entry by far (not necessarily in the form of comments on the page) and I have several people ask me when PartII will be posted.

Girls, girls, girls…: Part I

So yes, it’s finally here. I think many of you will be disappointed. The impression I got from family and friends was that you all wanted to read about specific interactions with Turkish girls and the juicy details. In other words my love life. Well sorry to disappoint you. This entry specifically addresses the comment Dancing Queen left on the first girls entry. His comment was as follows:

My question of course is “how are the boys?”

Do they treat their ladies well? I hear tell that Turkey is “progressive” — and remembering your culturally (in)sensitive entry, I wonder what you think about the gender conflict where you are?

So I suppose this entry should really be called, “Guys, guys, guys…” but then I wouldn’t be able to make a trilogy out of it.

Let’s start with some facts (before I give you my subjective opinions and observations): The Swiss-based World Economic Forum releases an annual list that ranks countries by gender equality. They judge countries on four categories: educational attainment, economic participation and opportunity, political empowerment, health and survival. The US ranks 31st, relatively low (this is attributed to low political participation by women). Turkey ranked 121st, which is terrible. It ranked higher than only seven other countries: Yemen, Chad, Pakistan, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Benin and Morocco (think about who’s not in this list).

Clearly the swiss think that there is a huge divide between the genders here in Turkey. I have seen it, I have talked about it with friends and acquaintances. After reading the report, I talked about a bit more. Bit by bit I collected various observations about how inter sex relations work here in Turkey.

Near to where I live is a part of the city known for it’s “Russian girls.” I put the phrase Russian girls in quotes because the abundance of Russian prostitutes here in Istanbul has mad the phrase “Russian girls” synonymous with prostitutes. I cannot tell you how many times people have said to me:

• “You want Russian girls.”
• “Conrad, you go Russian girls?”
• “Conrad, you want go Russian girls?”

They love it. They love to talk about girls and sex. Some of it is very PG other bits are not appropriate for the content of my blog. The majority of the time, these questions are coming from people already with a significant other.

Several people have bragged to me about how they have been cheating on their significant other. Some of these people are hailed as ‘lucky’ or ’smart.’ They are praised and envied by their friends, which only reinforces the continuation of the behavior. They are held in high regards, amongst the men that is. Worse is the man who has a child at home.

From what I can tell, cheating appears to be rampant. Defenses to this criticism include, “but Turkish girls don’t put out.” I find this weak at best as I am reminded of people who have told me they only want to marry a virgin, or my doctor who told me it is important to marry a girl much younger than me (it’s about the sex, you don’t need to be friends he said).

A friend told me that most Turks are just talk. They said that because of the culture many Turks are celibate until they marry, and then have only one woman. For them it is exciting and entertaining to talk about the possibilities if they were to say, go to the Ukraine for a fair for one week. A significant number of men do not deceive their significant other in this way. I have seen more evidence to suggest that they do deceive their wives, but as usual, my experience comes out of the small bubble that I live in here in Turkey.

If we look at world wide divorce rates from 2002, we can see that Turkey ranks quite low at only 6% of new marriages compared to 45.8% in the US (if divorcing was a contest, it appears Scandinavia would win that too). But I don’t have a lot of experience with Turkish couples. I have been told that typically, wives will not ask questions of their husbands if they bring home the money. One friend told me that if a wife starts asking questions, the husband has only to give her money for new clothes and she will let it rest. Does this mean that divorce is taboo and that people are living marriages they don’t want to be in? I think so.

One evening some friends and I sat down to play a game. We played and I asked some of the girls there if they would like to join in. They had been watching us play and had asked a question or two. One of the guys interrupted and told me not to bother trying to get girls to play games. He said that this was not their thing and it was a waste of time trying to get them to play. What? This seemed ridiculous to me. Anybody can have fun playing a board game, a card game. Like Izzy’s mother and my mother, they are both very good bridge players. Many of my female friends from back home really enjoy playing some of the games I have. I of course said that’s silly, and that there is a game for everyone. So the girls joined in and they had a good time. A small victory for me!

I can say with reasonable certainty that Turks don’t have much respect for women (I make this as a general statement and not as an absolute truth of Turkish culture. There are many exceptions). I could go on and on here citing examples of Turkish men having no confidence in women’s ability for various tasks, or of great surprise when seeing a woman succeed, but I don’t want to sound like a broken record. You get the idea.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!