"Harem--The World Behind the Veil," by the San Francisco Turkish-American writer ALev Lytle Croutier, whose grandmother grew up in such secluded quarters, made me wonder just how many steps hackward kerchiefwearing Islamic women now want to go. Would they really want to retreat to the era before 1924 when Kemal Ataturk established the secular Turkish Republic, guaranteed the 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 womarn and a man while traveling in time from 16th-century Ottoman Istanbul to eighth-century Baghdad, and tells lusty Scheherazade-like tales in a breezy American lingo. The spellbinder's name is Huru, which may stem from the Arabic word that designates "those .charming creatures bonded to serve worthy male souls in Paradise," but the author prefers to think her liberated heroine's name was derived from hur, which means free.
Freedom from American culture appeared to be on the minds of thousands of shouting, bannerwaving Islamic fundamentalists when they recently demonstrated outside the Marmara Hotel, startling guests at the 13th annual Istanbul International Film Festival. The demonstrators had rushed to Taksim Square when they heard false media reports of a chemical warfare attack on Gorazde, Yugoslavia, that allegedly killed 5,O00 Muslims. The crowd was protesting America's failure to intervene in that conflict.
Hulya Ulcansu, the film festival's chic director, was critical of the media mischief and the motives behind the demonstration. It was cause for concern because the March municipal elections had placed fundamentalist Welfare Party mayore into office in Istanbul, Ankara and small towns in eastern and southeastern Turkey. Nearly everyone involved in the Turkish cultural scene was worried about future projects. They were already feeling financial constraints because of a 65 percent devaluation of the Turkish lira in three months, when the exchange rate for $1 changed from 14,000 lira to 30,000 lira.
There's no telling how inflation and the fundamentalists will affect plans 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, Theophile Gautier, Graham Greene and Agatha Christie. Even that area elected a fundamentelist administrative "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 prostitute after her discovery that the man she loves is carrying on a homosexual affair. The entry reminded me of two gay-themed films that played last year: "Whistie If You Come Back ," which portrayed the friendship between a dwarf working as a barman and a transvestite, and "Walking After Midnight," which dramatized a lesbian romance that develops between a divorced doctor and a childhood friend who is now a whore, precipitating the disapprov-al of conservative townsfolk.
JUST HOW Islamic militants would react to such subjects may emerge during a study by Jeanne Finley, on leave as chair of the video and film department at the Oakland College of Arts and Crafts. Interviewing Islamic women for a 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 long jackets known as 'raincoats' is a way to deter the female body from being used as a sex object. Under Ataturk's law, they couldn't wear scaryes in government offices, state institutions or universities because it was seen as 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 where women can go, what they can wear, whether there should be separate buses for men and women.
"The political tension between Europe and Islam also exists in Turkish traditional arts. They have a hard time flowering because there is lots of pressure to bring artists into the modern cultural world. As a result neither European nor Turkish traditions become realized."
Rosie Boyd, an American who has been studying calligraphy .and illuminated painting here for the last five years, dislikes the rigid fundamentalist attitudes that insist everyone should think the way they do. However, one of 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 at No. 8 Sultanahmet has a gallery and sales room displaying the colorful, innovatire marbling he and his wife have developed on paper, wood, textiles and ceramics.
Referring to the deteriorating conditions in Istanbul, he said, "I want water in the tap, garbage collected and the Bosphorus clean. If the Welfare party will do that, I'm for it."
MEANWHILE, the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and the Arts is proceeding with its first international jazz festival at the open-air theater in Harbiye. It will begin July 11 with the Bobby McFerrin trio and continue through July 23 with performances by such heavyweights as the Toots Thielemans Brasil Project and Milten Nascimento; Gateway with John Abercrombie, Jack de Johnette and Michel Petrucciani; Al di Meola with Stanley Clarke and Jean-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 continuing through July 21 with the BBC Orchestra, the Bilkent International Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Londra Garbieli Brass Ensemble and the Robert Schumann Ensemble.
Recitals through July 7 will be given by guitarist Narciso Yepes, pianist Shur Cherkassky, violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann, flutist James Galway, cellist Julian Lloyd Weber and accordionist James Crabb. Soprano Victoria de 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 festival already has an agreement with San Francisco Opera director Lotfi Mansouri to stage "Abduction from the Seraglio" at the Topkapi Palace; the opera will also be filmed at various Topkapi locations such as the perial Gate and the Gate of the White Eunuchs. Next year will also be the first Istanbul International 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-red St. Sophia, centerpiece of Christian architecture for many centuries; the famous Blue Mosque with its six elegant minarets; and the fabulous Cistern Basilica, where the head of Medusa with her snake- ringed coiffure can be glimpsed submerged in water at the base of a marble column.
A boat rids along the Bosphorus also shouldn't be missed. Magnificent homes line the waterfront, and the two soaring bridges connecting Europe and Asia la may bring homesick pangs to a Bay Area visitor. Shoppers can haggle with merchants in the enormous Grand Bazaar, built in 1461; its 4,400 stores, spread over 30 acres, display everything from gold and silver jewelry to rugs and leather jackets. These tourist spots and the ambitious summer festival program seem to contradict the pessimistic outlook of Celik Gulersoy, the energetic head of the Touring and Automobile Club of Turkey, who believes that Istanbul can now only hold a tourist's attention for two days unless the city acts to improve a lot more than its image.
Gulersoy has certainly done his share to beautify the place. He wes responsible for restoring the Malta Pavilion in the once rundown Yildiz Park, re-making an Ottoman wooden mansion into the charming Yesil Ev Hotel and transforming an adjacent old theological school into a handicraft center. He renovated a group of old wooden houses on a cobbled street into tourist apartments -- the Ayasofya Pansiyoman. He also restored Hidkiv Kasri, the art nouveau summer palace of Abha Hilmi Pasha, the last viceroy of Egypt on the Asian shore of Istanbul.
All this work was financed by a unique automobile registration fee that Gulersoy devised in 1971 for customs at the Turkish borders, with funds split between the Turkish government and the club's histerical renovation projects. 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 "always at 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 maintained and none of them provides translations for their productions. There are no small concert halls. "I take venice as a model," Gulersoy said. "I see how Italian specialists maintain several small theaters as well as handicraft centers, but we have only one. In many' European cities, museums are open at night. Our museum personnel are not well paid and the museums close at 4:30 because the state doesn't pay overtime. There are no programs or publications to explain the exhibits and help raise funds. Cares and restaurants do not exist in our museums -- or they're in had style. I got permission to 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 shines
through.