The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Talking Dirty with 'Mohammed' -- (Chap. II, Pt. 14)

Mehmet reckons the best place to see Istanbul's underbelly is Aksaray, a grotty district popular with Russian, Eastern European and Iranian tourists.

Purchasable women are as plentiful as kebabs, but we shake off the touts to find a cafe terrace that shields us from the traffic. Overhead, above an expressway flyover, stands the dome of the Valide Camii—the Mother Sultan's Mosque—a monument marking the beginning of Women's Rule (and the decline of the Ottoman Empire).

With the mosque in the background, I settle down to talk dirty with 'Mohammed.'

As a gay Kurd, he's obviously a minority within a minority.

But as someone with experience of both men and women, Asians and Europeans, not to mention city and country life, he knows more than most about sex in Turkey.

For instance, he mentions that Turkish towns on the Georgian border saw divorce rates skyrocket after the fall of the USSR; local men were squandering all their money on Russian floozies.

Ukrainian women protesting in Turkish:
'Ukraine Isn't a Brothel'

'I think it's because Turkish girls don't open their legs,' he remarks.

'Eh?'

'For example, they don't do blow jobs. They think it's dirty. You see, in Eastern Turkey, even lip-kissing is very new. They think it's dirty to kiss someone's mouth. One woman in my mother's village, when she saw people kissing on TV, she'd say, "How disgusting! It's like kissing a dog!" But Russian girls, they do everything.'

Mehmet reckons the quick turnover at genelevs probably has to do with Turkish men's staying power. 'Men in Muslim countries tend to come very fast.'

I feel a fatwa coming on, but Mehmet quickly restores Muslim pride, assuring me that Turkish men have more repeating power than Westerners.

'With Western men, you usually have sex once, and then everyone sleeps—' —I stifle an urge to protest— 'But Middle Eastern men want to have sex several times in one night. Sex outside marriage is very difficult to find, and once they find it, they're going to have as much as they can!' He laughs.

'Also, in Western countries, you hear people say "I'm depressed" and things like that. But you never hear that in Turkey.'

'Why's that?'

'I think it's because 60% of people in Turkey have only a primary school education. So mentally, they're not very busy.'