LIDF

Tonight’s captivating documentary brought us into the lives of three Turkish women ‘who dare’ to go against the grain and get further education, stand up for women’s rights, create their own non-traditional art and dance professionally and publicly in a country where between 2002 and 2007 there were 1806 ‘honour killings’ and somewhere in the region of 5000 ‘honour suicides’, mainly over the question of women’s sexual autonomy. Belkis, Nur and Banu are, or were, all married, but only one of them is married completely happily to a man who supports her need to express herself – this was a focus of discussion in the panel afterwards where the Director Binnur Karaevli was asked whether the fact that they had all married at some time undermined what they stood for as women breaking the Middle-Eastern-Muslim-Woman mould. It’s a difficult issue in a country that seems to be going forward and backward with women’s rights; 10% of the first Parliament under Ataturk were women, now it is only 4%, and ‘women-friendly’ work laws have been introduced, such as that giving women five days a month off ‘menstruation leave’ and stopping them from ‘having to do’ heavy industry, such as working night shifts, actually reducing them to the level of children and the disabled.

The film really reflected this interesting mish-mash of cultural gender identity, with the director choosing to center on educated, privileged and heterosexual women so as not to muddy the waters with further issues of poverty or homophobia. Belkis, Nur and Banu were vibrant, interesting, unafraid to disappoint their husbands who had for the most part wanted “more domesticated” women to look after their homes. Interestingly, the careers of two of the women, Belkis the textile artist and Banu the student and professional dancer, are formed around two very traditional aspects of Turkish culture, carpets and belly dancing, and yet are looked down on for wither subverting this traditional art form or for lowering themselves to partake in it in the first place – when Banu’s brother, already jokingly (we hope) cross with her for hiding her boyfriends and removing his responsibility for looking after her, was watching a video of some dancers with friends and recognized his sister, he banned the other men from watching it, and ‘belly dancer’ is often synonymous with ‘prostitute’. Yet, as mentioned in the film, “tradition keeps society intact but also stops development”, and Karaevli and her fans recognize that Turkey is trapped in a cycle of gender oppression; it seems possible that the discriminatory elements of Turkish culture could soon again be forced to admit defeat, hopefully for good.