Headscarves and all that…..

...another cancellation….the first choice a view on inner-city farms from the original Istanbul being encroached on by buildings and developments….a study of the balance between the urban and the rural. After initial agreement someone tells them I might be a property developer and it disappears. Secondly a friend mentions she’s going in for a nose job in a couple of days….. compared to the UK where everyone hides things like that, in Turkey everyone spills the beans on the most intimate of details. My friend AMD counted 6 nose job plasters in my local area in just 4 days….. it’s a badge of wealth. The doctor was excited and had granted access to the operating theatre. Then 16 hours beforehand he just happens to mention to her that if I were to faint in the operating theatre and distract him, the consequences are not his responsibility..she knocks it all on the nose (ho ho)....a minor plastic surgery story with no surgery takes “minor” to a new level……a slightly bent nose for a slightly un-bent nose – sod that.

What to do? 3 weeks down out of 4 and a slight edge of desperation. In the last few weeks I’ve befriended a mad cap journalist and photographer for a socialist paper here – and socialist equals the devil incarnate in nationalistic Turkey. She now calls me up and tells me when things are going on – somewhere along the way I have to pay her back. Wednesday a demo against changes in the social security laws, nice photographs, dull subject. The next day a demo against police cover ups (a shooting the previous week in a campus demo; the shooter was photographed with the police beforehand and previously with the nationalist party leaders, but he can’t be found despite having a sword tattooed across his forehead….). I was interviewing people afterwards when something starts up again.

One of the other guys I now know tells me that it’s a pro-headscarf demo by Islamist students. In Turkey the secular state of 80 years ago ruled that no women who wear headscarves can attend school or university – therefore you have a significant minority of women who either I) attend University with uncovered heads, but have to remove at the gates the headscarves they wear all evening and weekend, or ii) despite having the required grades turn down their place at university because of their religious beliefs.
What struck me most about the demo, and that I tried to capture was that the girls were:
1) to one side
2) slightly back from the lads
3) tend to be looking downwards
4) not making visible signs of protest such as fist waving
5) and captured in the audio recording, didn’t speak at all. All the verbal protests were by the boys and men.

Through speaking with the protestors (the men) I have now got an interview with a girlfriend of one of the guys tomorrow morning who isn’t going to Uni despite having the required grades. They’ve also promised to bring along another couple of girls in similar situations as well…….I can on one hand record the interviews, but my next task is to convince me into doing a photo-story on them – that would be really powerful. To follow how they are either being their religious beliefs due to state laws, or more significantly being denied education at all…..

The other interesting fact is the anger this story has created amongst the secular women I know here. One a doctor, lawyer, coroner and lecturer in medical ethics at the same university was furious about my “naivety”; nose-job girl told me that I was “behaving anti-Turkish”. I have audio interviews and portraits with both of them lined up next week too....this might get really interesting……..