Expat Women in Turkey
Anastasia Ashman and Jennifer Gokmen, authors and editors of Tales from the Expat Harem, discuss what makes Turkey so unique and what it's like to be a Western woman living in this Mediterranean country!
Commitment: Tales from the Expat Harem is a collection of essays by Western women living in Turkey. Where did you get the idea for this book?
Anastasia Ashman: Jennifer and I met at an American women’s social group in Istanbul, formed a writing workshop with some of the other members and soon realized we were all writing about our Turkish experiences. We thought they might begin to piece together the puzzle that is Turkey, so we brainstormed an anthology proposal that would encapsulate our work. We imagined the Expat Harem concept as foreign women in Turkey constricted not by physical walls of the harem, but virtual walls. For instance, a lack of language skills, undeveloped understanding of the culture, the ethnocentricities we cling to. The Expat Harem is not a negative thing, necessarily. Most expats will identify with its survival technique. The title also positively reclaims the concept of the Eastern harem. It’s been a victim of erroneous Western stereotypes about subjugated women, sex slaves, orgies. In fact, the harem is a place of female power, wisdom and solidarity. Like the imported brides of the Ottoman sultans, we consider our writers inextricably wedded to Turkish culture, embedded in it, though forever foreign. We put out the call for submissions – to groups of women, writers, travelers, expatriates, Turkey expats, and Turkophiles. We heard from more than 100 women in 14 countries who felt their lives have been changed by Turkey. They came pursuing studies or work, a belief, a love, an adventure: an archaeologist, a Christian missionary, a Peace Corps volunteer, a journalist. Thirty stories spanning the entire nation and the past 40 years share how they assimilated into friendship, neighborhood, and sometimes wifehood and motherhood, and reveal an affinity for Turkey and its people. Not everyone is Western. We have one Pakistani contributor, along with writers from Ireland, the UK, Australia, Holland, Guatemala, and the US.
Commitment: Most of the authors in this anthology are non-Muslims living in a predominantly Muslim country. How does religion affect the experiences of expats in Turkey?
Jennifer Gokmen: Although Turkey is a Muslim country, it is also in many ways culturally Mediterranean, particularly in coastal towns and much of the Western half of Turkey. The visible presence of Islam in the wearing of headscarves and its audial presence in the form of the ubiquitous call to prayer shows the religion’s prevalence, but an acclimated expat can tell you that the incidents of unfriendly radical Islam are not common at all. Turkey was established as a secular republic and in many ways it remains staunchly secular. In my experience in Western Turkey among secular Turks and even devout Muslims, on a person-to-person level there exists an easy tolerance of foreigners-- and usually of each others’ differing religious views, too. Rarely have I experienced any evangelism and never have I experienced religious discrimination in the 15 years I’ve lived here. Even though there seems to be a push in recent years towards politicizing Islam in Turkey, between individuals, hospitality and geniality are the hallmarks of Turkish interactions, not religious conversion or intimidation.
Commitment: In “Water Under the Bridge,” Catherine Salter Bayar laments that although she knows that she, an independent American businesswoman married to a Turkish man and now living in Turkey, would have to adjust to small town life in Western Turkey, she “didn’t realize that adjusting to life in a house of fifteen would be a one-way street.” Do you think many of the foreign women who have made Turkey their home have found that their adjustments are one-way?
Anastasia: No, I don’t think so. It’s certainly not the case in my life and for most foreign women I know. If anything we’re in a constant state of negotiating which way the street is going at any given time to accommodate both our instincts and those of the people around us! Also, keep in mind Catherine’s in-laws are from a rural village in the far east of Turkey with a low level of formal education and that background factors in to their world view and their ability to be flexible to new ways of thinking and doing things. There is a huge spectrum of society in Turkey, all with their own quotients of modernity and comfort with Western traditions. My Turkish family is secular, modern to the point of being trendy, and highly Europeanized. Everyone’s mileage varies.
Jennifer: I would also add that for many of us expats, the opposite is true: when it comes to foreigners in their midst, Turks are very often willing to suspend the social rules to accommodate us. They know we’re from other cultures and make allowances for that. In terms of social mores, what might be expected of a Turkish woman, for instance, is rarely expected of us. Rather than a one-way street, we sometimes are afforded our own lane!
Commitment: Jennifer, you state that as an American living in Turkey, you “felt as if [your] wings were clipped by living in unfamiliar territory.” Do you think that all expats feel that way to a certain degree?
Jennifer: Yes, I think it’s initially a disempowering experience and the degree depends on how much the new culture differs from one’s home culture. It’s a natural part of the acclimation process to have to re-evaluate one’s surroundings and recalibrate one’s actions in response to “new” cultural norms. Re-empowerment comes with acclimation and the more effort an expat puts into acculturation, the faster they become re-empowered.
Commitment: In your essays, both of you discuss your parents’ reactions to your decision to marry and live in Turkey. How would you describe their feelings and have they changed over the years?
Anastasia: My mother worried she wouldn’t be able to wear pants in Turkey and my father was hung up on news reports about the black market in kidneys, and the reverence in which Turks hold the military. In liberal Berkeley these things seemed suspect. Coming to Istanbul and meeting my Turkish family they were shocked to find a sophisticated, world class city and modern people wearing whatever they wanted. There’s a lot to absorb about this complex nation and I think my parents are now better attuned to the limited information circulating about Turkey than they were before. One story, one view does not cover it!
Jennifer: My parents were also wary at first. What the media prefers to portray about Turkey didn’t help—only the negatives and little of its extensive positives. But when they met my husband-to-be, their idea changed completely. They admired his devotion to family (and to them as his extended family). His is a secular, highly educated family with a family culture similar to ours, despite the difference in nationality and language. When my parents met his, they connected like they were siblings, not inlaws. When saying their goodbyes at the end of a visit, it’s tears and hugs like they can’t stand to be separated. Until America’s recent financial crisis, my parents were planning to buy property on Turkey’s southern coast to spend half the year near my inlaws.
Commitment: Anastasia, it seems as if you acclimated easily to Turkish traditions and customs, perhaps as a result of the fairy tale wedding to your Turkish husband. What is it that you most love about Turkey?
Anastasia: I wouldn’t credit my acclimation to a fairy tale wedding! The fact it went so smoothly was an indication of the depth of cultural sensitivity I strove for and my ability to collaborate with my husband. I continue to draw on many hard-earned lessons from my five years as an expat in Southeast Asia in the 1990s, from basic expatriatism techniques to melding with a Eurasian (Turkish) family. However I don’t mean to say it’s not a fairytale, because it is.
I love Turkey’s heavy history overlaid with vivacious new layers of lives and dreams. Modern-day Turkey has more than its share of fabulous places, people and events -- using its breathtaking Roman amphitheatres, Byzantine basilicas, Crusader castles, Ottoman fortresses for cultural activities like concerts, exhibits, festivals. There is no mistaking that this is an important place of power and energy and ideas, and has been for centuries. Istanbul’s historical significance as the center of the ancient civilized world is never far from my consciousness and I find that inspiring.
Commitment: How did each of you decide to make Turkey your home?
Anastasia: My husband and I were living in New York, in what became Ground Zero after September 11th. Transport, basic shopping, air quality, employment: they were all affected badly by the attacks, the dotcom bust and the bottom dropping out of the New York media market. Meanwhile he’d been running the tech side of his brother’s Turkish company for years, and when the cellphone work ramped up we decided to give Istanbul a try. The mobile scene here was so much more advanced than in the USA., it gave him more cutting edge opportunity. He was born in Istanbul but moved to Belgium as a toddler when his father took a job at N.A.T.O., so it promised to be a similar adventure for each of us. With my portable writing career and a degree in archaeology it wasn’t hard to say yes to a stint in ancient and fabulous Istanbul! We came with the intention to evaluate our options in two years and recommit or make a change. So far nowhere and nothing has been able to top our experience in terms of quality of life: Spacious apartment with an unobstructed view of the Bosphorus and the hills of Istinye which look like Switzerland, organic groceries delivered weekly from the farm to our door plus the secretly-stupendous Turkish cuisine, all kinds of family and community support, holidays on the Aegean and around Europe, a more leisurely pace of life. It’s kind of hard to beat.
Jennifer: Bilgehan and I met at university in Michigan in January 1993; I was completing my bachelor’s degree in literature and creative writing and he was doing his master’s in economics. Ours was a whirlwind courtship --he proposed on our third date—that was followed by a lengthy engagement. I visited Turkey and met his parents, they came to Michigan to meet my parents, and we married in August 1994. Our graduation, marriage, and move to Turkey happened in one frenetic month! Ensconced in Bilgehan’s hometown of Ankara, with me teaching communications at Middle East Technical University and Bilgehan back in the Ministry of Finance (who had sent him to America for his advanced degree), we initially thought we would stay in Turkey only two years until I learned the language. He wasn’t expecting that I would fall in love with his country and his whole family and decide we should stay! We moved to bustling Istanbul the following year and have been there since.
Commitment: Many of the women in your anthology write about the way women are treated in Turkey – from the role of a daughter-in-law to the rules regarding dating. Do you think being a woman in Turkey is more difficult than being a man?
Anastasia: We might ask that same question about any country in the world. Turkish men have gender and cultural expectations placed on them as well – and expat men here certainly labor under their own set of macho constraints. Although we do enjoy some leeway for being foreign, Western women in a liminal East-West place like Turkey have special confusions – what becomes of our homegrown gender markers of a modern woman like sensible shoes and unadorned faces, doing our own home repairs, not being a docile servant girl? The biggest culture clash we face may be the definition of femininity and the levels of our particular embrace of those definitions. In general I find Turkey full of pro-woman surprises. For instance, the positive attitude about motherhood and breastfeeding here puts America to shame. Cabbie driving too fast? Tell him you’re pregnant and presto, he’s a model citizen of the road. Several of the country’s biggest business titans are women – groomed and promoted by their dynastic families, while female executives abound and women make up the majority of university professors. Turkey’s had a female head of state, and awarded women’s suffrage fifteen years before France. Is being a woman in Turkey more difficult than being a man? Probably. How much more difficult will depend on your socio-economic background, your family makeup, and your educational opportunities.
Commitment: What are the best and the most difficult aspects of being a Western woman living in Turkey?
Jennifer: The difficulties of Turkey (and this can be true of any expat experience) include finding that balance between how much one can really assimilate without beginning to erase one’s sense of self. For women here, that might manifest itself, for instance, in feeling the pressure to be as constantly well groomed and ultra-femininely dressed as Turkish women tend to be in the Istanbul business world and social realm. Of course the country is expansive and what’s typical of Turkish city life may not hold true in rural areas where traditions are more conservative and expected gender roles more emphatic.
Because of the interdependent nature of the social make-up, everyone is solicitous of each others’ welfare and that level of reciprocal intimacy—particularly between Turkish women-- can be antithetical to the typical Western reserve and preference for independence.
Opposite of commitmentphobic Western men, Turkish men tend to be commitmentphiles, and that can be cloying when romantic overtures are expressed at record speed. A corollary to that—these commitmentphile men tend to be highly family-oriented and if you, the Western woman, don’t click with his family, that can be problematic.
One of the most positive aspects of life here that foreign women enjoy is access to the culture without necessarily the expectation to adhere to all its social rules, particularly in Western Turkey and in coastal towns. Hospitality dictates that allowances be made for our cultural differences, yet we’re often graciously invited to take part in the context of Turkish society to the extent that we want to. That manifests itself in expat women being able to dip a toe into the exotic nature of the culture and test the waters without fully jumping in.
Anastasia M. Ashman is a career essayist specializing in personal tales of cultural adventure. She has spent ten years working for literary agents and producers of film, television, and Broadway theater. She has been published in Cornucopia, a magazine for connoisseurs of Turkey, Dow Jones Far Eastern Economic Review, The Asian Wall Street Journal, and The Village Voice. Born and raised in Berkeley, California, she holds a degree in Classical Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr, and lives in Istanbul with her husband, Burc Sahinoglu.
Jennifer Eaton Gokmen is a writer captivated by the people and customs of Turkey, her home for the past decade. For the past six years Ms. Gokmen has served as International Coordinator for the Kadikoy Municipality Annual Folkdance Festival showcasing two hundred ethnic dancers and musicians each summer. A native of Michigan, she holds a degree in Creative Writing and American and English Literature from Western Michigan University. She has been a regular contributor to the monthly city guide Time Out Istanbul. She lives with her husband, Bilgehan, in Istanbul.
To learn more, visit www.expatharem.com.
To purchase Tales from the Expat Harem, click here.
