I think of Turkey as a liberal country whose inhabitants are largely fun loving and spirited. Weddings are often the ultimate example of communities coming together to celebrate and in our area often last at least two days. The first night of the ceremonies in Dalyan is the kına (henna party) and the erkek düğünü (male wedding or bachelor’s party). The second night is the balo party and the legal registry. Coming from a Cypriot background, when I first arrived here, I was surprised to find that the kına and erkek düğünü were often, but not always, single sex occasions. Cypriots tend towards mixed gender groups and the division, if there is any, is likely to be along the lines of bride’s family and bridegroom’s family. The kına in Dalyan can be raucous, I have never been to one lubricated by alcohol but I’ve also never attended an all female party that needed drinks to get it going. The women play music, whoop and dance, sit and gossip, smoke and banter and somewhere along the way the bride and her relatives end up with big blobs of henna in the palms of their hands. 

This week was an eye opener in real cultural differences when we were invited to a kına party in the town of Kemalpaşa, thirty minutes drive from Izmir. We joined the bridegroom’s family first at their house and as we sat in the lounge making polite chit chat the women of the house appeared and disappeared as they served guests with lunch, prepared their outfits and made up their faces. It took a little while but slowly, as the ladies flitted in and out, I realised that only one old lady and I were joining in the men’s talk of politics and that I was the only woman there without a headscarf. I’m quite used to seing and being amongst some covered ladies but on the Mediterranean coast they are rarely so quiet or so common. It didn’t take much of a guess to find out that AK Party was very strong in the area but i was surprised to find out that prior to AK coming to power Kemalpaşa was one of the few Saadet Party (even more religiously conservative than AK) strangleholds in Turkey. 

A quick walk outside and up the hill that overlooked this nondescript semi-industrial town revealed a world quite different to ours in Dalyan. On a flat yellow plain punctuated only by glum beige smog and struggling trees twenty five thousand people live in unpleasantly close proximity to each other, in tightly bunched apartment buildings. TV aerials sprouted off each block like quills on a porcupine and the grim buildings were painted varying colours or left half finished with concrete walls and red bricks starkly visible. The resulting mish mash of discordant textures and hues was ugly and disheartening. The feeling in town was not friendly either, hardly anyone smiled at us and sullen people stared down from their windows and balconies.When we walked into the older part of town with single storey houses, whose most noticeable feature were their hidden walled gardens, the children playing in the street didn’t say hello and a surly old man splitting wood actually stopped us to ask what business we had there.  

The kına was in a wedding hall in a small village about an hour’s drive from Kemalpaşa and as we pulled up outside a semi lit steel grilled building words like ‘celebration’, ‘pomp and circumstance’ and even ‘party’ were not leaping into my mind. İnstead dank, dour, forbidding and smelling of piss more accurately described the foul corridor and barren stairs that we walked along to reach the banqueting suite. The youths selling candy floss and nougat in the hall looked as friendly as muggers and the man upstairs with Steward written on his armband resembled a pallbearer at a funeral. Greeted at the door by a surprisingly smiling lady and her husband they stepped aside to reveal a large bleak room bereft of decoration. İt’s chief characteristics were a suspended office ceiling of pockmarked grey tiles with unronatically bright flourescent panels of lights at regular intervals and austere black and white tiles. 

As we took our seats at the unadorned cheap salmon coloured tables it felt like a hundred sour scarved heads turned to watch  and simultaneously tut their disapproval. Bearing in mind İ was wearing loose black jeans, a long sleeved top and a scarf wrapped loosely round my neck and chest the level of disapprobation seemed disproportionate and unmannerly. 

The lack of a joyous atmosphere continued with the arrival of the bride and bridegroom who shuffled into the room looking almost embarassed at being the focus of attention and went straight into a morose first dance without meeting the eyes of any one in the crowd. When a few of the less pious couples took to the floor and the monkey on the organ wound the temp of the music up a gear or two they relaxed and began to enjoy themselves. The stolid mass of sanctimonious bescarved women (excepting a few) remained unmoved and entirely stationary, reeking of religious righteousness. Unable to enjoy themselves they seemed implacably opposed to others having fun.  

İn sharp contrast to their mass inertia was the bridegroom’s sister in a black slinky satin dress with its plunging neckline and glittery brooch holding together the bosom area. She danced like a djin, spinning round wildly, the only woman who danced freely amidst the groups of men, immodestly hitching up her dress and shaking her dyed blond curls and bosoms in equal measure as she let rip another full bodied chuckle. Having spoken to her all the way there though and heard her vent her frustrations at the restrictions of living in a closeted society and learned of her desire to get married at twenty before she was considered ‘past it’ even her happiness seemed less than convincing.  

She seemd to be shaking her thing to spite the assembled stuffy throng, being deliberately provocative with her hips to push their noses out of joint. The shimmies and shaking seemed like the spasms of her dying youth and the true driving force behind her exuberant energy was the desperate desire to attract a man and escape her dishwater-dull town and its dismal natives. Unable to stand the spartan atmosphere of such a severe kına we happily made our excuses at nine and the four hour drive home was a two hundred and forty minute reminder of how lucky we are to live in Dalyan. Religion for some brings peace into their lives but for the residents of Kemalpaşa it has carried with it holier-than- thou repression and brutal judgmental morality.