"Harem--The World Behind the Veil," by the San Francisco Turkish-Americanwriter ALev Lytle Croutier, whose grandmother grew up in such secludedquarters, made me wonder just how many steps hackward kerchiefwearing Islamicwomen now want to go. Would they really want to retreat to the era before1924 when Kemal Ataturk established the secular Turkish Republic, guaranteedthe rights of women and emcouraged them to abandon the veil? Guneli Gun's"On the Road to Baghdad" has a heroine who changes sex, marries a womarnand a man while traveling in time from 16th-century Ottoman Istanbul toeighth-century Baghdad, and tells lusty Scheherazade-like tales in a breezyAmerican lingo. The spellbinder's name is Huru, which may stem from theArabic word that designates "those .charming creatures bonded to serveworthy male souls in Paradise," but the author prefers to think her liberatedheroine's name was derived from hur, which means free.
Freedom from American culture appeared to be on the minds of thousandsof shouting, bannerwaving Islamic fundamentalists when they recently demonstratedoutside the Marmara Hotel, startling guests at the 13th annual IstanbulInternational Film Festival. The demonstrators had rushed to Taksim Squarewhen they heard false media reports of a chemical warfare attack on Gorazde,Yugoslavia, that allegedly killed 5,O00 Muslims. The crowd was protestingAmerica's failure to intervene in that conflict.
Hulya Ulcansu, the film festival's chic director, was criticalof the media mischief and the motives behind the demonstration. It wascause for concern because the March municipal elections had placed fundamentalistWelfare Party mayore into office in Istanbul, Ankara and small towns ineastern and southeastern Turkey. Nearly everyone involved in the Turkishcultural scene was worried about future projects. They were already feelingfinancial constraints because of a 65 percent devaluation of the Turkishlira in three months, when the exchange rate for $1 changed from 14,000lira to 30,000 lira.
There's no telling how inflation and the fundamentalists will affectplans to make a cultural center out of the theater-studded Beyoglu district,a popular hang-out for gays and prostitutes. Once known as the Pera district,it attracted the notice of writers as diverse as Pierre Loti, TheophileGautier, Graham Greene and Agatha Christie. Even that area elected a fundamentelistadministrative "mayor," defeating a faunous leftist actor.
Beyoglu's bohemia was freely portrayed in the Turkish film "The Night,Angel and Our Children," in which a transvestito tries to console a prostituteafter her discovery that the man she loves is carrying on a homosexualaffair. The entry reminded me of two gay-themed films that played lastyear: "Whistie If You Come Back ," which portrayed the friendship betweena dwarf working as a barman and a transvestite, and "Walking After Midnight,"which dramatized a lesbian romance that develops between a divorced doctorand a childhood friend who is now a whore, precipitating the disapprov-alof conservative townsfolk.
JUST HOW Islamic militants would react to such subjects may emerge duringa study by Jeanne Finley, on leave as chair of the video and film departmentat the Oakland College of Arts and Crafts. Interviewing Islamic women fora documentary, Finley found that "they come from a highly feminist perspective.They are very much against the representation of women's bodies in advertising.They believe that covering their hair with a kerchief and wearing the longjackets known as 'raincoats' is a way to deter the female body from beingused as a sex object. Under Ataturk's law, they couldn't wear scaryes ingovernment offices, state institutions or universities because it was seenas a political act."
"Kemalists" are still adamant about keeping that law, she observed."The reaction against modernism is endemic to Middle East Islamic culture.The Welfare Party's anti- Western attitudes represent moralism gone amok.It is a very confusing issue. There are constant discussions about wherewomen can go, what they can wear, whether there should be separate busesfor men and women.
"The political tension between Europe and Islam also exists in Turkishtraditional arts. They have a hard time flowering because there is lotsof pressure to bring artists into the modern cultural world. As a resultneither European nor Turkish traditions become realized."
Rosie Boyd, an American who has been studying calligraphy .and illuminatedpainting here for the last five years, dislikes the rigid fundamentalistattitudes that insist everyone should think the way they do. However, oneof her teachers, Hikmet Barutcugil, is less eoncerned about their influence.A master in the art of marbling,. he taught at an international marbiers'conference at Fort Mason in 1992. His small, inexpensive guest house atNo. 8 Sultanahmet has a gallery and sales room displaying the colorful,innovatire marbling he and his wife have developed on paper, wood, textilesand ceramics.
Referring to the deteriorating conditions in Istanbul, he said, "I wantwater in the tap, garbage collected and the Bosphorus clean. If the Welfareparty will do that, I'm for it."
MEANWHILE, the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and the Arts is proceedingwith its first international jazz festival at the open-air theater in Harbiye.It will begin July 11 with the Bobby McFerrin trio and continue throughJuly 23 with performances by such heavyweights as the Toots ThielemansBrasil Project and Milten Nascimento; Gateway with John Abercrombie, Jackde Johnette and Michel Petrucciani; Al di Meola with Stanley Clarke andJean-Luc Ponty; Joe Henderson and the Bheki Mseleku Quartet; Natalie Cole,Marcus Miller and Randy Crawford.
Classical music performances at the St. Irene Church are continuingthrough July 21 with the BBC Orchestra, the Bilkent International YouthSymphony Orchestra, the Londra Garbieli Brass Ensemble and the Robert SchumannEnsemble.
Recitals through July 7 will be given by guitarist Narciso Yepes, pianistShur Cherkassky, violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann, flutist James Galway,cellist Julian Lloyd Weber and accordionist James Crabb. Soprano Victoriade Los Angeles will appear with tenor Nicolai Gedda on July 6.
A May theater festival included companies from France, Poland, Romania,Italy, Spain, Germany, England and Turkmenistan. For 1995, the festivalalready has an agreement with San Francisco Opera director Lotfi Mansourito stage "Abduction from the Seraglio" at the Topkapi Palace; the operawill also be filmed at various Topkapi locations such as the perial Gateand the Gate of the White Eunuchs. Next year will also be the first IstanbulInternational Arts Festival, an alternative to the Venice Biennale.
Of course there is always time out to see the legendary attractions:the Topkapi Palace with its fantastic gem collection; the sandsWne-redSt. Sophia, centerpiece of Christian architecture for many centuries; thefamous Blue Mosque with its six elegant minarets; and the fabulous CisternBasilica, where the head of Medusa with her snake- ringed coiffure canbe glimpsed submerged in water at the base of a marble column.
A boat rids along the Bosphorus also shouldn't be missed. Magnificenthomes line the waterfront, and the two soaring bridges connecting Europeand Asia la may bring homesick pangs to a Bay Area visitor. Shoppers canhaggle with merchants in the enormous Grand Bazaar, built in 1461; its4,400 stores, spread over 30 acres, display everything from gold and silverjewelry to rugs and leather jackets. These tourist spots and the ambitioussummer festival program seem to contradict the pessimistic outlook of CelikGulersoy, the energetic head of the Touring and Automobile Club of Turkey,who believes that Istanbul can now only hold a tourist's attention fortwo days unless the city acts to improve a lot more than its image.
Gulersoy has certainly done his share to beautify the place. He wesresponsible for restoring the Malta Pavilion in the once rundown YildizPark, re-making an Ottoman wooden mansion into the charming Yesil Ev Hoteland transforming an adjacent old theological school into a handicraft center.He renovated a group of old wooden houses on a cobbled street into touristapartments -- the Ayasofya Pansiyoman. He also restored Hidkiv Kasri, theart nouveau summer palace of Abha Hilmi Pasha, the last viceroy of Egypton the Asian shore of Istanbul.
All this work was financed by a unique automobile registration fee thatGulersoy devised in 1971 for customs at the Turkish borders, with fundssplit between the Turkish government and the club's histerical renovationprojects. It was discontinued by Ankara for political reasons in 1990,leaving other restoration plans in limbo.
Although Istanbul has excellent hotels, Gulersoy said he is "alwaysat war" with municipal officials over improvements that should be made.The roads are in terrible disrepair. The Metro system has to be finished,There hasn't been enough water in recernt. years to supply the population,which has burgeoned upwards to 13 million. The theaters are poorly maintainedand none of them provides translations for their productions. There areno small concert halls. "I take venice as a model," Gulersoy said. "I seehow Italian specialists maintain several small theaters as well as handicraftcenters, but we have only one. In many' European cities, museums are openat night. Our museum personnel are not well paid and the museums closeat 4:30 because the state doesn't pay overtime. There are no programs orpublications to explain the exhibits and help raise funds. Cares and restaurantsdo not exist in our museums -- or they're in had style. I got permissionto install a restauramt at the top of Topkapi, but the atmosphere is poor.A palace restaurant must be imperial."
Hearing this gentle, impassioned man, one must sympathize with his frustrations-- but for a visitor, the magic of the city-bythe-Bosphorus still shinesthrough.