The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Was the Father of Turks the Gay Son of a Prostitute? -- (Chap. II, Pt. 18)

'Are many imams gay?'

'It's not as common as gay priests. Imams have to marry and have children. If not, they set a bad example.'

Mehmet delivers all this with soft-spoken good grace. To use a crude term, he's straight-acting, and nothing in his appearance marks him out as being different from his countrymen. It's only when we move on to our final topic that he starts to dish the dirt.

So far, we've freely discussed sex, sodomy and honor killings in the open air at a public café, despite my misgivings.

THE BATTY BOYS OF DOLMABAHCE

But when he starts talking about the sex life of the Father of the Turks, Mehmet lowers his voice, as if the palm trees might have ears, and uses a codename: '"Osman" was the son of a prostitute.'

Now, most Kurds don't like Atatürk—he killed scores of them in forging the Republic—but to claim he's the son of a whore is, well, highly controversial.

It was Atatürk who defended the rump of the Ottoman Empire and saved the Turks from being well and truly buggered after World War One.

The Harem suite where he died in Dolmabahce Palace is a shrine, and you can be locked up for three years just for insulting his memory.

'But many of the sultans were sons of concubines,' I counter.

'Yes, but "Osman" did not have any royal blood. He was a commoner.'

Mehmet lowers his eyes and glances around furtively. '"Osman" was also homosexual. Many people say they made up the stories of him being a womanizer.'

But even I know 'Osman' was married. 'You mean he was bisexual?'

'No, he was only one way,' Mehmet whispers. 'He would make party all the time with boys in Dolmabahce.' 

Aside from the tempting alliteration of 'batty boys' and 'Dolmabahce,' I have to confess there's a mischievous appeal to the idea of the Father Turk being the gay son of a whore who chose to die in the pink-walled harem of a palace confected by the Frenchman who designed the Paris Opera.

And a private ability to swing both ways would go a long way toward explaining his uncanny knack for keeping the Soviets and Americans off his back, so to speak.

Then there was his advanced approach to women's liberation, which can't be entirely explained by economic motives: Turkey needed women to work, but there was nothing forcing him to give them the vote.

Throw in the dandified dress sense and matinee-idol poses, and well, I can see Mehmet's point.

For me, of course, it doesn't matter. But for many Turks, it would be reprehensible to paint their founding father as a political Liberace.

Out of respect for Turkishness, then, I suggest we move on.

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- 'The Most Horrible Thing Happened in My Family' -- (Chap. II, Pt. 17)

Mehmet notes that most of the 'tradition killings' you read about in Turkey and the rest of Europe are by Kurds, but they're also common among Turks from the countryside.

'In traditional culture, women are the men's honor, and the men will even call them that in conversation.' Instead of calling a sibling 'my sister,' in other words, a man may refer to her as 'my honor.'

And then he tells me: 'The most horrible thing happened in my family.'

Mehmet was in Germany at the time, but he heard the details from his relatives later.

One of his female cousins was having an affair with another cousin who was also married. Both lovers were first cousins, though that wasn't the problem.

'YOU WOULD HAVE DONE THE SAME THING'

The controversy started when the woman began threatening that if her lover didn't make good on his promise to divorce his spouse, she would set up home in his house and effectively force him to take her on as another wife. 'That would have been a big scandal. It would not have been seen as a respectable marriage.'

Likewise, divorce wasn't an honorable option. 'In the area where I was born, only three or four women have been divorced.'

So the adulterer did the 'honorable' thing: he killed her—apparently by strangling her with a wire.

Mehmet says the man's mother then helped him dispose of the corpse. 'They burned her body in an industrial furnace.'

The man was arrested and jailed for two days, but without a body as evidence, the authorities ruled that the woman had run off or disappeared.

Within Mehmet's extended family, though, the cousin's murder is an open secret. The killer's mother has even goaded the victim's parents, saying: 'If you were in my position, you would have done the same thing.'

Mehmet still sees the man at family functions. 'He's a killer, but he lives like a respectable man.'

Muzzammil Hassan, founder of Bridges TV, a US network aimed at portraying Muslims in a more positive light;
in 2009, he beheaded his wife in upstate New York after she filed for divorce

Conversely, Mehmet can't tell his family he's gay because 'it would be like being a murderer.' Many homosexuals have been victims of 'honor killings:' their families have them shot dead, usually by a younger brother because he'll get a lighter sentence.

Even so, it's not uncommon for married men to take advantage of sexual segregation to have gay affairs.

Mehmet says he had an older lover who tried to get him to marry his daughter, just so the two of them—father- and son-in-law—could be together.

As a camp comedian used to say, my flabber is gasted. That seems so wrong, I can't even think of the term for condemning it. It wouldn't be incest—maybe just plain old fraud?

My guide's merely bemused. 'And the strange thing was, he was a fundamentalist, a very religious man.'

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Islam's Model Child Bride -- (Chap. II, Pt. 16)

For traditionalists, the Prophet's marriage to a child bride also serves as a potent role model, Mehmet says.

'Many families give their daughters to older men when they're young. I've heard people say, "Aisha married when she was nine, so thirteen is fine for her."'

A 40-year-old groom poses next to his 11-year-old bride in Afghanistan
(photo by Stephanie Sinclair)

Even if the man is much older. 'When they come together on their wedding night, the girl is crying and shaking. For her, sex is a torture. It's kind of like rape.'

Traditionally, the newlyweds also have sex on a special piece of cloth to prove that her hymen is intact. 'If there's no blood, sometimes they send her back and say she is not a virgin.'

And thanks to mass migration from the countryside—encouraged by Muslim hardliners—this isn't just a rural problem.

Mehmet knows a family in Ankara, the capital, where the bride failed to bleed on her wedding night.

After their first night together, the groom wanted to send her back to her parents—a potentially lethal move.

However, the woman swore that she'd been a virgin, so both sides agreed to seek an expert opinion: 'Three people went to the doctor with her.'

A SMART MAN

The physician examined the bride and told her inlaws that she had a very deep hymen, which was why it hadn't broken.

'But if her hymen was that deep and blocked her vagina, how did she manage to become pregnant later?' Mehmet asks. 'I think the doctor was a smart man and lied to them.'

In doing so, he may very well have saved her from death—or a genelev.

As a father myself, I can't imagine murdering one of my daughters for sleeping with someone she shouldn't have. And purely from a selfish, propagation-of-the-species point of view, you'd think people would instinctively stop short of killing their offspring simply because it lessens the chances of their own genetic survival.

'Is virginity really all that important?' I ask.

Mehmet sighs patiently before explaining the paradox.

'Every man wants to have sex with a woman, but no man wants to marry a woman who isn't a virgin. It's very rare that a woman would have sex before marriage because if she's caught, that means her life is over. She can never marry.'