Only in Turkey

Each society has something that can only be found in that place. I think it is important to catalog those anomalies because, in doing so, we discover more about that culture and the struggles within. In America, we have things like the Burning Man festival (burningman.com), Fried Coke (wikipedia_friedcoke), and the KKK. Exploring such culturally specific items helps us discover truths about a country that can’t be found in travel guides or in broad discussions of culture. Language is sometimes part of this. For example, in German there is a word schadenfreude which means the feeling of pleasure one takes at the misery of one’s enemies. When we think of the Germany of two generations ago, it seems appropriate for them to have such a word.

Now I will tell you of something that one can only find in Turkey:

In one of my conversation classes, there is a student who usually sits in the back. She always wears a long black skirt and a black long sleeve top. She sits quietly with a dour expression and, upon first glance, I thought she was one of those quiet brooding goth chicks who emulates Emily Dickinson and visits grave yards on Saturday nights. Upon closer examination, I discovered I was wrong. One day, while sitting next to this student during an activity, I looked closer at her face and noticed that under her hair ran some black cloth. It ran under her left ear, around her chin and back up the other side disappearing again under her unkempt short hair. This short hair turned out to be a wig.

Turkey has a law that students at schools and universities are not allowed to wear the traditional head scarf. The idea is to push Turkey toward a more secular modern society. Those who support this law believe that women who wear head scarves drive Turkey backwards. This is a similar argument to those proffered by women in the early nineties about stay-at-home moms.

Those who wear head scarves have a choice. They can either wear them up to the gate of the school where they must then remove them; they can not go to school at all, which often happens; or they can do as my student does and don a wig so that teachers and administrators can see “hair” and everyone wins. An annoying solution but a solution nonetheless.

So a student wearing a wig over a head scarf is something one will only see in Turkey. In Iran, women have to wear the head scarf. In Malaysia, there may be some societal pressure to wear it, but many do not and the choice is theirs. But Turkey is the only country that mandates not wearing it and that causes students to put on wigs or stand at school entrances and exits putting on or taking off the garment.

One day walking out the gate with my students on our way to eat and see the sites, they asked me to wait a moment. I stood where I was as they went behind a nearby building where 10 or 15 of their schoolmates had gathered to change. As I looked at their talkative smiling faces combing and wrapping and pinning themselves and all of them in different phases of dressing, one of my students waved her hand and said “teacher, don’t look.” After they were done, that student came and stood before me, looking prouder than I normally see her and with a broad smile asked me what I thought. I admired her new look and said, “I think it’s cool.” I then asked her why she had told me to look away, “Is it like I’m watching you change clothes or something?” I asked. She nodded a yes.

What I find interesting about all of this is that in America, we are sometimes nervous about people in head scarves. We associate it with Islam and oppressive societies and might even sometimes make the mistake of associating that simple cloth with terrorism and 9/11. But, ironically, if one of these young women wanted to study in the U.S., we would never tell her to take it off to do so.

Turkey, in its attempt to be secular, has developed a sort of secular fundamentalism. Their intention is to separate church and state, but this mandate, even though it seems to separate the two, ends up doing the opposite because it is mandating that a people not practice their religion or culture. The fear of lifting such a mandate is that social pressure would cause students who wouldn’t normally wear the scarf to feel compelled to do so. These arguments are similar to American arguments for and against prayer in school.

Ideally, the mandate would be lifted and students would feel truly free to dress as they wished, but for now it stays and the issue increases in political fervor by the year. One thing worth noting is that the popularity of head scarves is growing...(ahh...rebellious teenagers)...and more and more the head scarf is becoming a symbol on both sides of the debate. Stay tuned.

So think of your country or a country you’ve been to and an issue, a word, or a cultural phenomenon that only occurs there. For therein lies the heart of the place.

For more on the headscarf issue, watch this:
headscarf_newyorktimesvideo

...and although I didn't include a link to the aforementioned KKK, I am including this video which pretty well sums that group up: