5.25.06 Urfa, Turkey

Following another fabulous breakfast at the Tekirova resort, going down to at least put our hands into the Mediterranean, and another one-hour bus ride along the beautiful coast, we went into Antalya and took a quick look at the oldest part of the city by the harbor. Then we flew to Ankara.

The first thing that stuck us about Turkey’s capital city was the style of buildings, with tiles with designs on them on the outside of the structures. It was somewhat reminiscent of Zermat, Switzerland, minus the Matterhorn. We had lunch at a school. Before we ate they took us to a room to show us a film about the school. I’m sure it was impressive, but it was in Turkish, the room was very hot, and we had had four hours sleep each of the past two nights. I was nodding off to sleep almost immediately. I found out later that most people in the group were doing the same.

We visited the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. Two school groups of the most beautiful, happy, smiling children imaginable were outside. They gave us a natural high. Inside the museum is a spectacular collection of original artifacts from Çatal Höyük, the early agricultural town that dates from ca. 7000 BCE, which is about 30 miles southwest of Konya. Included are wall paintings of hunting scenes that are believed to be shrines to pray for successful hunts and the wonderful seated Mother Goddess from 5797 BCE. They also have a large collection of “Venus” figurines from Hacilar. I spent almost the whole time in the Neolithic section and didn’t most of the later art, but that’s fine with me; I was so much enjoying the “prehistoric” stuff.

We had our de rigour afternoon tea at an open air café at the top of an artificial, but very high, waterfall. Then we drove past, but did not go in, the Hisar (Citadel), which is very impressive.

When we arrived at the Şanliurfa (the prefix, which means “glorious,” was added in 1973 in recognition of the city’s role in sparking the resistance to French occupation after World War I) airport, the first thing I noticed was one of the passengers from our flight getting back his pistol from a security agent. When we got into the car to take us to dinner with our host family, Anne saw a rifle on the floor next to the driver’s door. Driving through parts of the city as we went to dinner, we could tell that we were in a different part of the world—Arab men in sariks (the traditional. Arab head scarves with checks, usually red and white), and many more women dressed in full covering tesetturs. We also saw for the first time on the trip many women in the full black charshaf (burqua). Even here, though, about half the women seen on the streets are in Western dress. Since many women are not often outside the home, however, I suspect the overall fraction of women who wear Western clothing to be well below half.

Urfa is located on the edge of the Syrian Desert, about 10 miles north of the Syrian border, and roughly 100 miles from the Iraq border, which is about as close to Iraq as I want to get at this point.

The driving in Urfa is wild. There are no stop (Dur) signs. Maybe they should consider painting lane lines in the streets.

Our group for dinner with a host family tonight was Sabri, Tyree, Linda, Michael, Anne, and me. The lady of the house came out to greet us shortly after we arrived, and she set up some things at the dinner table and we noticed that she was wearing high heels under her long tesettur covering. We wondered: What’s the point?

She didn’t eat with us or join us for talk afterwards. (The woman of the house had been totally involved in Antalya the night before.) Sabri later tried to explain that this exclusion of women did not mean that they are seen as inferior. They should not be around men they do not know, because it could lead to trouble. For the same reason, women are covered, so they do not lead men into temptation. It is for their protection. I think he actually believes this, but of course it is not for the protection of the women as persons, but, as has been the case with similar policies and restrictions on women throughout most of history and across cultures and religions) for the protection of the property of the men who own them and, all the rationalizations notwithstanding, obviously does mean that they are considered inferior, although not necessarily by any particular male who may just be following long-standing tradition..

This is not at all to say that many women who wear the hijab today do not do so voluntarily or that most of the men currently see it as a sign of subordination or ownership. But there can be no question about the original meaning and message, which is one that is still very much present among more extreme Muslim men in some other nations. Those origins and purposes are unmistakable in some of the early Christian writings. St. Paul made the rationale plain in his first letter to the Corinthians: “For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man.” Women should be veiled, Paul thought, because they are, unlike men (who are closer to the supposedly male God), too imperfect. Like Aristotle before him, Paul saw women as deformed or, as Aristotle put it, “monstrosities.”

And then there is Tertullian, one of the leading Christian theologians prior to St. Augustine, who argued that women must be veiled because they are agents of the devil. He said that a woman must “affect meanness of appearance” in her style of dress, “in order that by every garb of penitence she might the more fully expiate that which she derives from Eve, the ignominy, I mean, of the first sin, and the odium of human perdition.” His condemnation of women dripped with unabashed hatred: “And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil's gateway . . . You destroyed so easily God’s image, man.”

There is, then, no doubt about the misogyny that is the basis for such restrictions on women. But those misogynistic arguments were being made by Christians long before Islam came into existence.

Soon after we arrived, Sabri went off to pray. Since he was the only one there who spoke both Turkish and English, conversation was difficult while he was gone. And he was gone for at least a half hour. We thought he had fallen asleep. Later we went out on the expansive patio of the penthouse apartment (our host is the builder and/or architect of the building), where there was a wonderful breeze and then we realized that that was where he was praying and why he stayed so long.

While there were no adult Muslim women at dinner or the after-dinner conversation, several children, male and female, were around throughout dinner, and that was very nice. Especially touching was the way a newly arriving child greeted us: They would kiss our hand and then press their forehead against our hand.

The conversation was excellent. We learned that the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is trying to establish a Kurdish state in eastern Turkey and northern Iraq) is active in the area, and I heard what I took to be a gunshot while we were on the patio. At home I would have assumed it was a firecracker and no one seemed to take any special notice of it, so maybe it was just a car backfiring. But having seen the guns earlier, I had reason to think it might have been a gunshot.

Our host and other men who came to join the after-dinner conversation are engaged in a project to pay for educating the sort of young people the PKK is recruiting and taking to mountain camps to train them in terrorism It seems to be helping, as the percentage of boys going off to join the PKK has declined significantly. Tyree pointed out, though, that many terrorists are well-educated, so just education isn’t going to solve the problem.

I suddenly thought that “well-educated” has two quite different meanings. One meaning is the traditional idea of having acquired a lot of knowledge. But being well-educated in a more important sense means to be educated in peace, nonviolence, justice, and the common good.

These men are good men who are doing good work. The subordination of women is a serious problem in their practices and one that must be changed, but it does not mean that they do not deserve credit for the substantial good they are doing in other areas. After all, men in virtually all societies throughout history have subordinated women, and this has been the cause of many of the world’s problems. But some good things were being accomplished by men at the same time.

Before we left, Anne and Linda were told they could go back to the room where the wife was. Although there was no common language, the women immediately bonded.

It was a fascinating evening.

-RSM