First I should say that it is a very common topic also for the Czech Republic, my homeland. We don´t really like to discuss it because we like to believe we are simply the centre. We also get angry when looking at the map, asking ourselves if Austria appears to be more eastern than us, why are they considered the pure West and we are considered the opposite? We all know the answer is our communist history. (Altough again - shouldn´t half of Germany be considered the East, too?)
This used to get me angry (and it still does) especially in Portugal (or better said among the Portuguese). I am going to be quite bad to them now, although not unfair, but if they are my friends, they know this opinion of mine.
The Portuguese happen to be geographically in the very west. Still, they are said to be the poorest West European country and I can´t forget my French professor´s reaction to my Czech presentation in Porto when I mentioned that our economy actually is stronger than the Portuguese one. She started laughing as if she heard the best joke of the year and commented that it is quite obvious because they are the poorest country of European Union (I guess she didn´t count some countries of the East).
Anyway, what I´m trying to say is that there is this very annoying disturbing thing of the Portuguese. They do realize they are a sort of poor neighbour to all the other West European countries and they just hate it, they feel inferior to them. And what do they do to feel better? They compare themselves to the East, so that they can feel superior to some others. The point is when they do it to my country which they know basically NOTHING about, and moreover their strongest argument is "you know, we have a great history! We had the greatest discoverers and we discovered this and this..!", I just stop listening saying "yep, nice, that was 500 years ago, do you mind?".
If you take Brazil, it´s something different, the Brazilians don´t really seem to care about that kind of shit. West or East of what? Europe? Come on, first you just become a gringa that most Brazilians simply consider rich and then you continue with that label as European, that´s it. (How much nicer the Brazilian way is!)
Finally getting to Turkey. To start, I´d like to mention I feel very sorry for my Turkish friends because of the prejudices foreigners have against them. It´s amazing. The harem, 4 wives, the sultan, the burqa, the camels and then a lot of crap coming with the prejudices against islam (like the women circumcision, cutting your hand or arm when you steal something etc.). After realizing this, I thought we are lucky because there are no such strong stupid prejudices against the Czech Republic. What do they say about us? Beautiful girls, quite easy, ugly guys, a lot of beer, people are kinda cold... Well, but aren´t they at least partly true?
Coming back to the West and East, it´s very interesting the way the Turkish see themselves. They like to believe they are both Europeans and Asians. I guess they are. They do have a juicy mixture of it. It amazes me how "Western" they want to be, or maybe how western they want to be considered, still, they can´t and don´t want to get rid of so many traditions of theirs. The amount of traditions they still keep is unbelievable, it feels like I can spend my whole life learning about them. It even made me think that my own country doesn´t have any compared to Turkey (I felt something similar when tasting Turkish food). The funny thing is that even if they try their best to become Europeans, they keep this deep suspiciousness to everything Western. In their eyes we represent the immorality, no sense for family, traditions, values etc.
So ok, you have just explained us they are more fond of the East, we can understand that, in the end they are muslims, aren´t they? - Oh, how wrong you are! You would think they are automatically friends with Arabs and Persians and whoever of the same belief, hum? No, the impression I got from the Turkish was quite the opposite. They don´t like the Arabs because they make the muslims look bad and because they care too much about money etc. And the Persians? Well, in Iran they mix too much politics and religion and that´s not exactly the Turkish style (they are republic and they are hell proud of it).
Now you know the reactions of some of you? Like "Petra, be careful, he´s a Turkish and a muslim!". So it also goes the other way around. It goes like "But Ahmet, be careful, she´s a European, so she can leave you any time, if you married her, she would divorce you the second day and she can cheat on you any time" and bla bla bla. So for them I´m simply a European. A person you should always suspect.
So in the end, where am I from?
středa 19. ledna 2011
neděle 9. ledna 2011
Turkish wear
My friends commented I haven´t written anything new here in a while so here I am. And as you can see, I decided to write in English this time, I hope I won´t commit a lot of nonsense, linguistic or factual.
One thing that has been on my mind because everybody has been asking me about that, is to write about the kind of clothes Turkish people wear. Especially the women, of course. There have been too many silly jokes about the burqa etc.
From what I have seen, not only the clothes, but also the mood, the religiosity, the atmosphere change from place to place. Many people don´t realize that Turkey is a huge country and that brings big differences, too. I may just talk about the places I have been to, which actually is not much so far. I might mention places that some Turkish people told me about or that I read about (because I have basically become a collector of everything Turkish in my own country).
Let´s start with the most popular one: the veil or the headscarf.
I would say that a half of Turkish women wear it and a half don´t. That could be the case of Istanbul which is soon twice bigger (talking about the number of inhabitants) than my country. What happens there is something typical for all big cities: people from all over Turkey come there to look for better life, often from villages in the east and other parts of Turkey. Because it seems to me that the east of Turkey is considered to be quite different from the rest of the country, the people´s traditions tend to be stronger and their minds closer than the others´ ones. My guess is that especially because of these people Istanbul´s inhabitants might become more orthodox, which brings the headscarf.
I have the impression that in Eskişehir, which is said to be the city with the biggest percentage of university educated people in Turkey and you can actually feel that just walking around, majority of women don´t wear any headscarf. In fact, I found myself slightly surprised every time I saw a woman wearing it, especially if it was a young girl my age.
I saw a lot of scarfed women in Bursa and I imagine there must be almost 100% of them in Konya.
What matters, is to explain you how such a "Turkish headscarf" looks like and what kinds of them you can see. It is quite simple, they tend to cover their hair and look kinda like our grandmothers from the country (although some of the women are highly chic!). Some more orthodox ones prefer to wear a long coat (something like our "baloňák") that hides everything (I could see that in Istanbul in the summer).
Now, there are no burqas in Turkey and the Turkish won´t really laugh with you when you joke about it (together with the jokes about four wives, camels and the name of their present sultan). It appears to me they rather hate it as a stupid thing of the Arabs. When you see a burqa in Turkey, it is more than probable that the woman is Arab.
The clothes in general differs again. In some cities you should be careful mainly in summer what you wear and how much of your flesh is shown. I actually got quite fed up with that in Istanbul and Ankara. You should watch your cleavage and it´s good if your skirt or shorts reach your knees. But then you come to Eskişehir, go out with your new long skirt and feel like the biggest village idiot that is completely out. And oh, dear Mersin! I could walk in biquini on the street and nobody would care (I didn´t stay in the tourist part).
One chapture that called my attention mostly in November, was the clothes of Eskişehir´s nights. Oh boy, the girls were as glamorously dressed at least as the clubbing Portuguese and moreover, they looked more daring than Czech girls! I was looking at them, fascinated, not feeling so comfortable in my jeans, telling Ahmet that nobody would believe me that was Turkey if they saw it. Still, there was this interesting detail: a lot of legs around but no showing breasts. You neither can see, as it is so often here and it gets quite annoying, somebody´s ass looking at you from their trousers.
After this, I noticed some girls in there in fact dress in a similar way also during the day. And noone cares, the guys don´t bother them, simply everybody´s cool with it. Maybe that is one of the reasons why Erman said that if Turkey doesn´t join the EU, at least Eskişehir should (I loved it).
Hum, I think this is quite enough about the Turkish clothes, but if you have any questions, ask me. I just hope my Turkish friends and boyfriend won´t say this is a complete bullshit.
One thing that has been on my mind because everybody has been asking me about that, is to write about the kind of clothes Turkish people wear. Especially the women, of course. There have been too many silly jokes about the burqa etc.
From what I have seen, not only the clothes, but also the mood, the religiosity, the atmosphere change from place to place. Many people don´t realize that Turkey is a huge country and that brings big differences, too. I may just talk about the places I have been to, which actually is not much so far. I might mention places that some Turkish people told me about or that I read about (because I have basically become a collector of everything Turkish in my own country).
Let´s start with the most popular one: the veil or the headscarf.
I would say that a half of Turkish women wear it and a half don´t. That could be the case of Istanbul which is soon twice bigger (talking about the number of inhabitants) than my country. What happens there is something typical for all big cities: people from all over Turkey come there to look for better life, often from villages in the east and other parts of Turkey. Because it seems to me that the east of Turkey is considered to be quite different from the rest of the country, the people´s traditions tend to be stronger and their minds closer than the others´ ones. My guess is that especially because of these people Istanbul´s inhabitants might become more orthodox, which brings the headscarf.
I have the impression that in Eskişehir, which is said to be the city with the biggest percentage of university educated people in Turkey and you can actually feel that just walking around, majority of women don´t wear any headscarf. In fact, I found myself slightly surprised every time I saw a woman wearing it, especially if it was a young girl my age.
I saw a lot of scarfed women in Bursa and I imagine there must be almost 100% of them in Konya.
What matters, is to explain you how such a "Turkish headscarf" looks like and what kinds of them you can see. It is quite simple, they tend to cover their hair and look kinda like our grandmothers from the country (although some of the women are highly chic!). Some more orthodox ones prefer to wear a long coat (something like our "baloňák") that hides everything (I could see that in Istanbul in the summer).
Now, there are no burqas in Turkey and the Turkish won´t really laugh with you when you joke about it (together with the jokes about four wives, camels and the name of their present sultan). It appears to me they rather hate it as a stupid thing of the Arabs. When you see a burqa in Turkey, it is more than probable that the woman is Arab.
The clothes in general differs again. In some cities you should be careful mainly in summer what you wear and how much of your flesh is shown. I actually got quite fed up with that in Istanbul and Ankara. You should watch your cleavage and it´s good if your skirt or shorts reach your knees. But then you come to Eskişehir, go out with your new long skirt and feel like the biggest village idiot that is completely out. And oh, dear Mersin! I could walk in biquini on the street and nobody would care (I didn´t stay in the tourist part).
One chapture that called my attention mostly in November, was the clothes of Eskişehir´s nights. Oh boy, the girls were as glamorously dressed at least as the clubbing Portuguese and moreover, they looked more daring than Czech girls! I was looking at them, fascinated, not feeling so comfortable in my jeans, telling Ahmet that nobody would believe me that was Turkey if they saw it. Still, there was this interesting detail: a lot of legs around but no showing breasts. You neither can see, as it is so often here and it gets quite annoying, somebody´s ass looking at you from their trousers.
After this, I noticed some girls in there in fact dress in a similar way also during the day. And noone cares, the guys don´t bother them, simply everybody´s cool with it. Maybe that is one of the reasons why Erman said that if Turkey doesn´t join the EU, at least Eskişehir should (I loved it).
Hum, I think this is quite enough about the Turkish clothes, but if you have any questions, ask me. I just hope my Turkish friends and boyfriend won´t say this is a complete bullshit.
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