About a month ago, I took an early afternoon meeting with Jennifer Eaton Gokmen and Anastasia M. Ashman, the co-editors of Tales from the Expat Harem, a collection of essays by women about their experiences living in Turkey. I was planning to write about our conversation, but a couple days later there was this plagiarism scandal that occupied most of our attention for a couple weeks…and then I went and lost the moleskine with my interview notes in it down in Washington… so I can’t tell you exactly what we talked about, but the two of them put together an impressive 18-city tour, with corporate sponsorship, all of their own, and it’s winding down in Manhattan tonight at a Turkish arts festival called The Moon and Stars Project (6:30 p.m. at CUNY’s Graduate Center). I was impressed by their intensely focused marketing skills, to be sure, but also by their deep enthusiasm for Turkey as a place where they believe Western women can and should feel safe and welcome, a place where they feel entirely comfortable in their femininity without a cultural glass ceiling. (Both married Turkish men and now live there full-time; Gokmen’s parents, though apprehensive at first, are now so supportive they’re planning to emigrate as well after they retire.) Because of Turkey’s unique developing role in bridging the economic and political gaps between the U.S./EU power blocs and the Middle East, people have become more and more curious about the country, and the women of the “Expat Harem” shed a timely light on its culture.
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