Back in 2000 when I first lived in Istanbul, most of my foreign female friends were blonde. Whenever we met for coffee they would regale me with stories of being followed by strange men and touched intimately and inappropriately on the shoulder or the backside. Perhaps I was more prejudiced than I realised or simply naive, but at the time I felt they were exaggerating. Some of them went on about it so often I wondered if they secretly liked the attention, as by their accounts it was so much more than they received back home.
Two years later, after a confusing day when it seemed like the whole male population was winking at me as I ploughed through the crowded alleyways of Eminönü and Tahtakale in search of smuggled tobacco, I had to rethink my assumptions. It was late December and I was well rugged up in a long black coat with my hair back in a neat pony tail that showed off the black beret I’ve worn every winter since I was sixteen. The tobacco men were situated in a tiny, almost hidden laneway I called Porn Alley. It was where smuggled tobacco was sold alongside pornography, perfumes, condoms, vitamins and elaborately displayed packets of Viagra. Few if any women frequented the area but I was with my husband so I wasn’t worried the men would do anything more than just look.
However I was really puzzled, so I told my Turkish friends what had happened. I learned that in those days, young Russian women were turning up in Istanbul with a single suitcase full of items to sell. With the money they made they planned to return home with the same suitcase, full of money and Turkish goods to re-sell. Sadly many were unsuccessful and had to turn to other methods to survive. My friends told me told me these women, known locally as ‘Natashas’, would mingle with the crowds trying to catch men’s eyes. If a ‘Natasha’ winked at a man it meant she was ready to do business. Wearing a beret somehow signalled to the passing men that I was one such woman, despite my marked Anglo Saxon appearance.
Even without the beret I am marked as a foreigner. For me it’s normal to go out on my own but Turks travel in pairs or groups unless it absolutely can’t be helped. Being on one’s own is a marker of foreignness that makes you rethink your ideas on a lot of things. Such as what constitutes a ‘short skirt’ in Turkey? When I lived in Kayseri I stopped wearing knee length skirts altogether because there they were considered practically indecent. Back home it’s not uncommon for girls to wear skirts so short they’re little more than belts designed to display as much as is possible and then some. And again, after years of living in Turkey and being told how ‘brave’ I was to go out with wet hair I no longer do so because I’ve learned everyone will think I’ve just had sex. I no longer so readily make eye contact and am selective in whom I ask for help.
Change comes so gradually that you often don’t realise how much you don’t let yourself do as a woman in order to have a hassle free life. At a lunch with a foreigner newly resident in Istanbul, it came to me how much I now take for granted that I would not so easily accept in my own country.
The fact is whatever you do to change, sometimes it doesn’t matter. You will always be a yabancı woman, a foreigner, and therefore the object of unwanted attention from certain types of men. And believe me, age, theirs or yours, is no protection. This came home to me when I was at my local hospital waiting to have a tomography. I was in the emergency section and in a lot of pain from mysterious stomach cramps. No one was at the desk of the department and all I did was politely ask the only other patient there if he knew when the receptionist would come back. Five minutes later he was telling me my beautiful blue eyes reminded him of the waves in the sea. After he had his test done he waited for me to exit the hospital. When I spotted him loitering in the carpark I wheeled around and went in search of the toilets. I decided if he as still hanging about when I came back out I’d find a security guard and say the man was a sapık, a pervert. When I was a teenager my mother told me the toilets were the one place a man wouldn’t follow me, and luckily this proved to be true, even in Turkey.
About the Author: Lisa Morrow is a sociologist, English teacher and writer. After many years travelling back and forth from Australia to Turkey, she decided to make Istanbul her home five years ago. She now writes stories about Istanbul so that others can better understand this place she loves.
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