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I have posted a part of this article in response to the forum topic "Welcoming the new year in Taksim Square." I think it is a really very nice article so I am posting the whole article here.
Sex and the City
Attila Pelit
(2005-08-14)
As they say, when in Rome do as the Romans do, but first you should know how the Romans do it. We begin by taking a look at some aspects of sexuality in the city.
Like any major city, Istanbul is a temptress. It draws people in from all over, seducing each and every one with its beauties and its vices, its forbidden pleasures and its insincere promises. Naturally, in a city as diverse as Istanbul, there are many different approaches to sexuality, and among Turks in particular there are certain sexual idiosyncrasies which predominate and which may come as a surprise to many.
Recycled taboos
To begin with, girls from a conservative religious background in Turkey are taught from early on to consider sex something sinful and dangerous, something merely functional, only done for the sake of procreation, and certainly not something that could possibly be pleasurable. They are taught – often forced – to cover up and to shun the company of men (who are considered sexually incontinent, and thus dangerous), be it on the street, in school or in the workplace. Even girls from a relatively modern and secularist background will have hang-ups on sex as being something demeaning, shameful and dirty, often thinking that engaging in anything other than straight, missionary sex is something that would only be expected of prostitutes. For example, many Turkish girls frown upon alternative styles of sex which would seem normal in many sexually liberal societies (e.g. oral) and in every census it is found that the greatest problem among Turkish women is their inability to experience orgasms, which would seem a natural result of the disinformation, fear and taboos toward sex that is instilled in them from an early age.
When it comes to males, they’re essentially under the assumption that there are only two types of women: mothers (including their own future spouses) and whores. In other words, sex for males too is something that is still considered dangerous and vicious if engaged in only for pleasure and not within the confines of the institution of family and marriage. Thus it’s not at all odd to find men who will date a girlfriend while at the same time having sex with numerous others without feeling the slightest ethical concern, considering he differentiates between the women who are “pure,†“virginal†and thus marriage material, from the ones who engage in sex, which is something “impure,†“dirty†and “depraved,†but at the same time a need that must be satisfied. This attitude – a sort of sexual schizophrenia – even exists among relatively westernized, educated males, who will strictly delineate between the “girl to marry†and the “girl to have sex with.†The fact that often in censuses the number one problem cited among married Turkish men is erectile dysfunction is a telling reminder that many relationships – men and women – are suffering from these attitudes to sex whereby the wife is not seen as a sexual object of desire and pleasure but as a manifestation of the mother figure, thus complicating the process of having a healthy married sex life. A further look at the popularity and proliferation of foreign women (often called natashas) as prostitutes in Turkey reinforces this sexually schizophrenic categorization whereby the woman is divorced of one part of her nature (sexuality) or the other (procreation/mother/wife).
Sexual psychosis
Even though the westernized and modern segments of society are more liberal and open in their approach to sexuality, it’s obvious that most Turks are still in a dilemma on the topic. In many cases these stringent sexual taboos have created a sense of sexual psychosis in Turkish society. Considering such attitudes, it’s often no wonder that we see such mind-boggling violence as “honor killings†where young boys are encouraged to kill their own sisters, often on nothing more than a rumor as to her “looseness,†or we see cases of adolescents blatantly harassing women in public, something which was most startlingly demonstrated during the New Years festivities in Taksim square when some Croatian tourist girls were molested, taunted, groped and even knocked over in the middle of the square by a mob of laughing revelers, all of which made the front pages in some of the biggest newspapers in Turkey. But this is just the most extreme manifestation of a widespread phenomenon of the objectification of women as either “mother†or “whore.†Many women are daily molested, followed, manhandled, verbally and physically harassed – and sometimes much worse. Women who are “modern,†who dress “openly,†or who are simply foreign/western, are often assumed by Turkish males to be “easy†and thus willing for sex and obvious targets for advances, even if it goes to the point of harassment and violence.
In a developing country of discernible have’s and have-not’s like Turkey where the income distribution gap is wide and widening, some parts of society have a standard of living and way of life on a par with the most modern societies, while other classes live distinctly different lives in which they have no possibility of accessing private schools and hospitals (which are the best in Turkey), in which they are increasingly conscious of themselves as the under-classes, as alienated and estranged elements of society in which they are between being rural and urban in a state of socio-cultural limbo. They are often ridiculed by the westernized elite as “kiro†or “maganda,†they are shunned and forced to live marginal existences on the fringes of the dominant popular culture, the culture that is upheld by the mainstream media, by the press, television, newspaper and magazine culture where every day the underprivileged see glamorous, scantily-clad women who inhabit a world beyond their reach. The sexual taboos and traditions they have been brought up with – many of them first or second generation migrants to Istanbul from rural Anatolian towns – clash with the sexually free, alluring, seductive life all around them, the models on TV, the glamorous girls in nightclubs where they’re not allowed in, the faces in the papers, in magazines and in the movies, everything that they can see but never have and never touch. The commodification of sex and its use as a marketing and advertising tool by businesses and media further add to the feeling of alienation and estrangement felt and instilling the feeling in large segments of the population of being cultural outsiders in their own country. The result is a societal psychosis whereby the fringe elements assume a counter-identity and an aggressive counter-assertion of their own sexuality which comes off even more extreme, alien and intractable. That which cannot be had is despised, dehumanized, yet desired all the more strongly for it precisely because of its exclusiveness.
Who are you calling gay?
Homosexuality is a complex issue in Turkey. But in a sexually repressed and conservative society, there is an aspect to Turkish conceptions of homosexuality which facilitates an overcoming of the very same repressive ideological systems which give rise to it in the first place: namely, that in Turkish homosexuality, only the passive partner in a relationship is considered “gay.†This can often be baffling to foreigners, but two men can have intimate sexual relations and the active partner can claim exclusion from the label of “gay.†This attitude is certainly not something new. In fact, it can be traced back to the ancient Greeks among whom homosexuality between two grown men was shunned whereas it was considered natural for a man and a boy to have homosexual relations – although this was more for pedagogic purposes than sexual, considering there was no public education system in the Greek polis. The onus among the Greeks was on sexual overindulgence, in line with the ancient Greek ideal of “sophresune†which roughly meant the ideal of “moderation,†or a “middle way†in all pursuits. Once the boy had become a man (i.e. had grown facial hair), the relationship was usually over (at least publicly).
The same attitude seems to have passed on through the years in Anatolia, through the time of the Ottomans (who prized young boys above girls – who belonged to the private sphere of the household – as did the Greeks) and into our present day. In fact, the words “oglan†(boy) and “ibne†(from the Arabic “ibn†for “son†or “boyâ€) show an obvious continuation of almost the same concept of homosexuality in present-day Turkey. The significance of this within the conservative Turkish society is quite important, because it has meant that in a country where the women’s sphere is still mainly considered the private (home) domain and thus where premarital sex between youths is shunned, there has always existed the alternative option of homosexual sex which can be engaged in without the active partner taking upon himself the “stigma†of being homosexual, that is, an “oglan†or an “ibne.†This also explains the amazing proliferation of transvestite men who are courted by many a “straight†man for the purposes of sexual gratification. Indeed when we asked some of these men is they considered themselves gay, they immediately reacted with an emphatic “no†and stated that they never touched the other person’s penis, nor did they ever engage in a passive role, and thus excluded themselves from being categorized as homosexual.
Sex in the city
We have compiled some glimpses into the various aspects of sex in Istanbul in the following articles. You can read up on transvestites, homosexuals, historical contexts, the seedy underworld of mafia-run bordellos, or the slick nightclub scene, strip joints and erotic stores. Istanbul has a bit of everything, for better or for worse. It’s a good idea to know about what’s out there and be wary, but it’s even more important to remember that sex is simply fun, and sex in this city is no exception to that fact.
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