Canan Cimilli works alongside two other women in an office where every expense has been spared: there's only one computer between the three of them.
Despite her imposing title, Canan speaks in a shy, girlish voice that's easily overruled by the trio's alpha female, a raucous, middle-aged mamacha who's probably never had an opinion she didn't like.
As Canan starts showing me photos of the many rooms in the Harem that are falling apart, her dark-haired elder pulls up a chair and hijacks the conversation, informing me that there are no restorers or curators in residence at Topkapi.
WOMEN IN CHARGE
'The Turkish Ministry for Culture not give money for Topkapi. The Turkish government keeps the reality secret.'
'What do you do as curator of the Harem?' I ask Canan.
The other woman flaps her hand dismissively. 'Curators of Turkish museum do everything: they guardsman, housewife, archeologist. Only women could work for such a small amount of money.'
'Why's that?'
Canan stops laughing long enough to reply. 'Because in Turkey the men have to make money for the family.'
And before I know it, I'm immersed in a moanfest about the male domination of Topkapi and Turkey in general.
Topkapi's top managers are both men, it seems: one a secular academic, the other an imam who lives on site, along with the Prophet's relics.
'MACHIAVELLIEST'
As for Turkey's prime minister, well, my informer doesn't think much of Recep Erdogan, either.
'He's machiavelliest. You know what that means? He go to Europe and say one thing, then he comes home and does another. He's fundamentalist—he supports women wearing the headscarf.'
'You don't?'
'I'm atheist,' she volunteers proudly.
'But her mother was a Muslim!' Canan laughs.
'I hate religion. Do you know who is Mustafa Kemal Atatürk? Atatürk is big man in Turkey—he is very handsome. He has blue eyes—like you—and light hair. All the Turkish women love him.'
 |
| Ataturk (with remarkably blue eyes) |
Not least because Turkey's autocratic founder made sure the new Republic implemented female-friendly reforms that were not only revolutionary for the Mideast but advanced by Western standards: first he banned polygamy and the veil and then, in 1934, he granted Turkish women the right to vote and run for election—a full decade before French women had the same privilege.
Canan's colleague bustles over to her desk to retrieve a small, black-and-white portrait of Atatürk at his matinee-idol best.
It's a billfold-sized photo, the kind that a woman might keep in her pocketbook to remind her of a lover, only here it's propped up on a lone gilded shelf above the telephone (in addition to the standard, government-issue portrait of Atatürk in uniform, naturally).
THE PROPHET FOR ATHEISTS?
And I can't help but wonder if Atatürk is to Turkish atheists what Mohammed is to their Muslim sisters.
'In my life, my husband is first man'—the woman taps her wedding band. 'My father is second man'—she touches her heart. 'And Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is the third man.' She beams and shows me the photo again. 'I love him.'
'She's got three men in her life!' Canan cracks.
Funnily enough, the Father of Modern Turkey died in the Ottomans' Imperial Harem (no, not from that; he had cirrhosis).
One of the last sultans, the grandson of a French Queen Mother, had decided that he needed new digs to replace Topkapi, so he splashed out on a great big, frilly confection of stone in High French Style.
When the Dolmabahce Palace was finished, he transferred his Harem there in 1853.
Decades later, Atatürk used Dolmabahce's defunct Harem—complete with its pastel-pink hall—as his base in Istanbul.
By the time he died there in 1938, some eighteen women had been elected to Turkey's parliament.
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