NO PLACE FOR A WOMAN

Tony Scotland finds rural Turkey

determined not to embrace the European way

Erzurum TWO-AND-A-half centuries ago a 21-year- old Irish peer, on the Grand Tour, aim- pared the status of women in Turkey to that of 'the brute creation'. 'The fair sex in Turkey,' wrote James Caulfeild, fourth Vis- count Charlemont, in his journal for 1749, 'is upon a footing not only disagreeable and disgraceful to them, but shocking and abhorrent to humanity.'

The harems — those 'detestable reposi- tories' within which the fair sex was 'immured for life' for 'the arbitrary use of a lordly master' — have disappeared long since. Girls were formally included in the Turkish state education system as part of reforms initiated by the enlightened Sultan Abdtil Hamid II at the end of the 19th cen- tury. And in 1922, having abolished first the Ottoman Sultanate and then the Caliphate, and having sent the entire ruling family into exile, Kemal Atatiirk, father of the new republic, made the emancipation of women a key part of his secularisation of the state. Seventy-one years later, the seal Controlled explosion. was set on Atattirk's revolution by the appointment of a woman, Tansu cillen, as leader of the True Path Party and Prime Minister of Turkey.

But Turkey is a big country, with nearly 60 million people; the bulk of its popula- tion is a peasantry profoundly loyal to Islam. As fast as the government pushes west (in pursuit, primarily, of EEC mem- bership) Arab money is never far behind with a new mosque to remind the people, five times a day, of the Five Pillars of Islam, their obligations to the faith.

The result is that almost everywhere east of Ankara, women, even veiled ones, are rarely seen out of doors — and if they are, they're always accompanied by another woman, scurrying about, half apologetical- ly, with their eyes fixed on the ground. At work they're given the menial jobs, toiling independently of men; at home, their tasks are no less menial, and often they're expected to eat apart from their menfolk. Look, for example, at Erzurum. Six-and- a-half thousand feet above sea-level, the city huddles at the foot of a hill on the old Silk Route, about 100 miles, as the crow flies, south of the Black Sea coast, 130 miles from the Armenian border, and more than 1,000 from Istanbul. On three sides it is surrounded by, and its streets suddenly end in, the steppe, uninhabited except by nomads and their flocks. Beyond these treeless stubbled plains — bleached, in early autumn, the colour of honey —

bald and bony like the rumps of oxen, up to snow-topped mountains. Erzurum is, by any reckoning, a tough place: bitterly cold in winter, stifling in summer, isolated by mountains and steppe, frequently rocked by earthquakes, its streets choked with boy conscripts and the white-holstered military police who keep them in order. But the guns are mostly for show in this stronghold of the faith, where submission to the will of Allah exercises its own social controls.

Here western permissiveness is as unwel- come as John Major would like it to be in Britain: alcohol is prohibited, drugs are Illegal, nakedness is immoral (the genitals strictly taboo), robbery is uncommon (if only because it contravenes the laws of hos- pitality), the sanctity of the family is upheld by clan revenge (which clears the courts of domestic disputes), and women are kept on a tight leash. 'La ilahe ill Allah!' wink the coloured lights over the city's main street. Muhammeden resulullah!' — 'There is no god except Allah! Muhammad is his Prophet!'

When Mr Turgay Atcan was offered the Job of running the new Hotel Dilaver in Erzurum's old quarter, near the fabled Yakutiye theological school, with its 14th- century, Persian-looking minaret covered with a lattice of tiles, he hesitated, aware of the city's austere reputation. But it was a Challenge and he had never baulked at a Challenge before. So off he went with his pretty, young, German-educated wife and daughter. The reality of Erzurum's fierce patri- archy was grimmer than he had expected, as he explained to me one night when I was dining, alone, in his hotel restaurant, within feet of a U-shaped table accommodating 34 prosperous-looking, middle-aged men with suits and moustaches.

'They look like bank managers,' I said to Mr Atcan. 'Who are they?'

'Bank managers,' he confirmed. 'Branch managers of Turkiye Is Bankasi.' 'But where are their wives — or are they all bachelors?'

Mr Atcan threw up his arms and raised his eyebrows. Now you see my problem.' He'd been in Erzurum three months, he said, and still there weren't any women in his restaurant. 'I'm proud of my wife,' he said. 'I'm lucky she's half my age! And when I first came to Erzurum I took her into dinner. But it was not a success.'

What happened, exactly? Two dozen male eyes had looked up from their soup and glared in disapproval. On another occasion his wife had gone shopping in the city, alone, and Mr Atcan had received complaints that she was behaving like a Jezebel. Mr Atcan said he had taken every possible opportunity in the three months since the hotel was built to persuade the local business community — male, of course — to bring its wives to din- ner. It would be good for the ladies to get out of the house, he had told them — but none had ever come.

As we were talking, the music started — a provincial Turkish pop group: two bald- ing, serious men with moustaches, one plucking an electric guitar, the other play- ing what advertised itself as a Roland E70 synthesiser. Both sang — in cooing high tenor, wailing and swooping with lots of Arab vibrato — one of the intensely seri- ous love songs to which the Turks are addicted. The bank managers, mouthing the words they knew so well, started to sway in time, and at length, like snakes charmed from a pit, two of the men rose from their seats and took to the dance- floor — two beefy bank managers, one as 'He didn't write a book. He made one.' smooth and masculine as a rugger-playing Tory MP, a Turkish Bill Cash with gold- rimmed spectacles and a two-tone shirt with a waistcoat, the other in braces, with a retrousse nose, a sweetly-smiling Francis Poulenc. They stood in the middle of the U-shaped table, their arms outstretched, their feet neatly toeing the beat, gliding gracefully around one another like dervish- es winding up for a whirl. And gradually, as the fever spread, their colleagues got up and joined them — until all 34 east Anato- lian branch managers of the Turkiye Is Bankasi were dancing together, tightly packed but never touching, with that mix- ture of ease, grace and dignity which, as Lord Charlemont himself observed all those years ago, characterises the manners of the Turk.

It was gloriously peculiar, but seemly, charming and utterly unself-conscious. What a civilising effect it would have on Britain, I thought, if, at the alcohol-free, men-only, annual dinner-dance of the Lon- don branches of Lloyds Bank, Threadnee- dle Street the gentlemen were to take to the floor with Tooting Broadway for a dig- nified turkey-trot. God bless Islam for a lesson in humility.

Mr Atcan was exasperated but not beat- en. 'On Monday,' he said firmly, 'the Prime Minister is flying to Erzurum to open my hotel. Then we'll see a change. She's a woman.'