In old Istanbul quarter, Islamic and secular Turks grope toward coexistence
In much of Turkey, observant and secularist Muslims live largely apart. But in Fatih, an ancient Istanbul district, the two cultural camps are side by side. They interact daily, sometimes uncomfortably.
Reporting from Istanbul, Turkey — The two sisters wear Islamic head scarves and say they have no problem with their secular friends and classmates, who don’t. Yet on the streets, in classrooms and along the hallways of apartment buildings in the cramped Fatih district of Istanbul, Deniz and Daria Ker remind them every now and then that they’ll stew in a fiery hell if they don’t cover up.
The thinking behind the statement below is a big part of the problem. It’s really non-thinking—a narrow literal interpretation of things without regard to context. I actually heard the exact same thing at a Muslim women’s meeting shortly after my conversion many years ago. Even back then I knew that couldn’t possibly be correct, and I never went back to another meeting of that particular group.
“We say, ‘If a single strand of hair comes out and a man sees it, you’ll be damned for 40 years,’” says Daria, an 18-year-old high school student, a white head scarf covering her head as she helps her 20-year-old sister work the cash register of a children’s clothing store. “It’s a must in our religion.”
In much of Turkey, observant and secularist Muslims live largely apart, inhabiting different enclaves within big cities like Istanbul and in different regions of the country.
But in Fatih, an ancient district that’s home to about 450,000 people near the center of Turkey’s economic and cultural capital, members of the two main cultural camps are side by side. They interact, sometimes uncomfortably, every day.
For centuries, Istanbul has been a crossroads of East and West, straddling the European and Asian continents on either side of the Bosporus strait. Fatih, a mostly working- and lower-middle-class district on the city’s European side, is a microcosm of contemporary Turkey. As a growing and prosperous Muslim middle class rises to take the helm in Turkey, Fatih’s fate also may be a test for the country’s future, and possibly that of the West as it attempts to integrate Islam into its ethnic and religious landscape.
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But there are some signs that there is room for compromise.
THIS, this right here is what people overlook—the vast moderate middle (88% in this case) that simply wants to quietly go about their lives without imposing anything on anyone:
According to polling by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, no more than 5% of Turks are hardcore Islamists and 7% strident secularists. Most fall in the middle, presumably looking for common ground.
“Thirty years ago, when people were ignorant, the believers lived on one side and the nonbelievers lived on the other side,” said Osman Keskin, 64, the proprietor of a cafe, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1957. “Now, the people don’t live past each other. It’s a mosaic.”
Zeinap Joske and Kubra Aryigit, both 14, have been best friends since childhood, living in the same Fatih apartment building and attending the same schools. The teenage girls walk arm in arm through the streets, Joske wearing a head scarf and overcoat, and Aryigit’s long blond curls hanging freely on her shoulders.
“We fight occasionally, but only about little things,” Kubra said. “We respect each other’s religious views. And we would never try to impose our ideas on each other.”