Stine Jensen, a Dane who has lived in the Netherlands since the age of one, is one of the country's prominent female writers. But what makes her distinctive from her peers is that she is one of those Western intellectuals who fell in love with İstanbul at first sight. She is not only a writer but also active in the other sides of "brain work" like teaching, journalism and foremost dreaming about her coming novels. Jensen's latest book, "Turkse vlinders. Liefde tussen twee culturen" (Turkish butterflies, love between two cultures), is a personal and journalistic investigation into the choices of female and male thirty-somethings, emigrating Europeans who have lost their hearts to Turkey, Turks who are dreaming of a life in Europe and the difficulties and pleasures of intercultural love. The novel received much attention as it touched on a very heartbreaking subject; people who speak different languages but also speak one common language, that of love. Today's Zaman spoke to writer, lecturer and philosopher Jensen on the subjects of İstanbul and intercultural love.
What struck you the most during the process of writing in terms of relations and cultural differences?
These past five years, I have divided my time between Amsterdam and Istanbul. I've talked to young Europeans and Turks involved in intercultural relationships. My investigation resulted in a book that is part autobiographical, part journalistic fieldwork and part cultural analysis. It is about emigrating Europeans who have lost their hearts to Turkey, Turks who are dreaming of a life in Europe and the difficulties and pleasures of intercultural love. It was published in Dutch this June and is entitled "Turkish butterflies, love between two cultures." When writing, many things struck me. For one thing, I had no idea that there were so many Dutch people involved in relationships with Turks. After the book came out I received an enormous amount of mail by Western women who had lost their hearts somewhere in Turkey. Of course, when one realizes however, that last year, approximately one million tourists from the Netherlands visited Turkey, one must start thinking about the political and cultural impact of intercultural romances for the coming years; they will only increase.
Second, I was amazed that these women have organized themselves in discussion boards on the Internet, and even a black list. On (the blacklist), you will find women discussing some of the Turkish barmen, animators, beach boys and others they have fallen in love with, and other women post warnings if they think they're dealing with a serial Casanova.
Third, the beauty of some of these love stories struck me, as well as the openness with which people shared their intimate stories with me. Particularly how openly Turkish women discusses matters of love and sexuality with me, their hopes and their dreams. Some of these stories were heartbreaking comedies, others life-changing tragedies.
Fourth, no matter how different individuals are, in these intercultural relationships between Turks and Europeans the same things arise. For instance, the Western women seem to struggle with the important role family plays within Turkish society, and the Turkish men struggle with her independence. They might be clichés, but I heard many of them repeated as real life struggles, over and over again.
Do you really believe people from different backgrounds, religions and languages can be happy couples overcoming the barriers originating from those differences? What do your experience and observations say?
There are some specific extra difficulties to overcome with an intercultural relationship -- such as moving/language/religion and who will adapt to whom. These differences can be very pleasurable and exciting as well - there's no time to get bored and always a topic for conversation. There is a wonderful word for measuring the differences in a relationship: mixogamy. It describes that people can be different in many ways; education level, economic status, color, gender, religion or age… In intercultural relations people sometimes settle arguments quicker, saying "'It's his/her culture, I have to accept therefore," but also struggle over the question what things are "cultural" and what things are a matter of personality, for example showing up late, saving money, being friends with someone of the opposite sex, etc.
I personally believe that every marriage or relationship has its difficulties, and that a happy marriage is a bigger mystery then one that is unproblematic. A Dutch female journalist, Ileen Montijn, once said it jokingly like this: "Every marriage is intercultural."
Mind you, there is one practical boundary these couples risk facing: migration policy. Turkish people still need visas to travel and migrate to Europe. But a new and young generation is flirting, experimenting with and tempting the boundaries between East and West, Turkey and Europe; mind you, butterflies in the stomach don't need visa to cross the borders and to travel abroad.
What struck you the most during the process of writing in terms of relations and cultural differences?
These past five years, I have divided my time between Amsterdam and Istanbul. I've talked to young Europeans and Turks involved in intercultural relationships. My investigation resulted in a book that is part autobiographical, part journalistic fieldwork and part cultural analysis. It is about emigrating Europeans who have lost their hearts to Turkey, Turks who are dreaming of a life in Europe and the difficulties and pleasures of intercultural love. It was published in Dutch this June and is entitled "Turkish butterflies, love between two cultures." When writing, many things struck me. For one thing, I had no idea that there were so many Dutch people involved in relationships with Turks. After the book came out I received an enormous amount of mail by Western women who had lost their hearts somewhere in Turkey. Of course, when one realizes however, that last year, approximately one million tourists from the Netherlands visited Turkey, one must start thinking about the political and cultural impact of intercultural romances for the coming years; they will only increase.
Second, I was amazed that these women have organized themselves in discussion boards on the Internet, and even a black list. On (the blacklist), you will find women discussing some of the Turkish barmen, animators, beach boys and others they have fallen in love with, and other women post warnings if they think they're dealing with a serial Casanova.
Third, the beauty of some of these love stories struck me, as well as the openness with which people shared their intimate stories with me. Particularly how openly Turkish women discusses matters of love and sexuality with me, their hopes and their dreams. Some of these stories were heartbreaking comedies, others life-changing tragedies.
Fourth, no matter how different individuals are, in these intercultural relationships between Turks and Europeans the same things arise. For instance, the Western women seem to struggle with the important role family plays within Turkish society, and the Turkish men struggle with her independence. They might be clichés, but I heard many of them repeated as real life struggles, over and over again.
Do you really believe people from different backgrounds, religions and languages can be happy couples overcoming the barriers originating from those differences? What do your experience and observations say?
There are some specific extra difficulties to overcome with an intercultural relationship -- such as moving/language/religion and who will adapt to whom. These differences can be very pleasurable and exciting as well - there's no time to get bored and always a topic for conversation. There is a wonderful word for measuring the differences in a relationship: mixogamy. It describes that people can be different in many ways; education level, economic status, color, gender, religion or age… In intercultural relations people sometimes settle arguments quicker, saying "'It's his/her culture, I have to accept therefore," but also struggle over the question what things are "cultural" and what things are a matter of personality, for example showing up late, saving money, being friends with someone of the opposite sex, etc.
I personally believe that every marriage or relationship has its difficulties, and that a happy marriage is a bigger mystery then one that is unproblematic. A Dutch female journalist, Ileen Montijn, once said it jokingly like this: "Every marriage is intercultural."
Mind you, there is one practical boundary these couples risk facing: migration policy. Turkish people still need visas to travel and migrate to Europe. But a new and young generation is flirting, experimenting with and tempting the boundaries between East and West, Turkey and Europe; mind you, butterflies in the stomach don't need visa to cross the borders and to travel abroad.
You lived in İstanbul for a while. What were the best and worst parts of living in Turkey? What still makes you smile when you remember?
The best, in three words: better social life. Lots of tea, talking and enjoying life… The worst: slow organizational matters. I smile a lot when I think about my Turkish for beginners' course in İstanbul. We were six foreigners, five men, one woman (me). Within one week we had turned into he stereotypes of our cultures: the American guy was carrying his own super size coffee cup to class, because the Turkish coffees were too small for him, while the French guy was eating croissants and saying "voila" all the time. It was a wonderful experience, all these people from different backgrounds, stuck together in a class, each and everyone searching for a new life in İstanbul for different reasons.
After this book, what changed in your life? In which ways did 'having such a book' contribute to you?
It broadened my mind. Before writing this book I hardly knew any Turks, or anything about Turkey, and I could never have guessed that I would be learning Turkish one day. It brought me new friends, emotional experiences, life-lessons and Turkish music. The cliché is true that, when learning about another culture, one really learns about his or her own culture as well, with all its benefits and drawbacks.
What do you think of the current debates on 'samen leven' (living together) and integration? Do you believe that those are the real issues? And beyond that why do you think foreigners can not integrate into society, if there is really such a problem?
Some policies I find very silly, such as taking a language exam in Turkey before coming to the Netherlands. The focus on integration of cultures can, in my opinion, be emphasizing the "cultural" aspect too much, when really socio/economic issues are at stake. I'll give you an example: say we have a Turkish guy called Ahmet and Jan, who both are from working class and live in Rotterdam; they can have more in common than Pieter-Willem (upper-class from Baarn) and the same Jan.
And in terms of 'samen leven' what do you think the interested parties should do?
For my book I tried the following experiment, one might consider these hesitant and beginning love stories of my book, the relations between two individuals, a Turk and a European, a small micro-cosmos, or even excellent test case, for the larger discussion on Turkey and the European Union. This idea, I actually derived from a Turkish television series called 'Çocuklar Duymasın' (Don't let the children hear), in which a poor, and rather ugly boy watches a beautiful Scandinavian woman on television and comments that he can't get a girl here in Turkey, but that he would be happy to settle for one of those Scandinavian beauties. "Mmm, I see," says his father. "Then you should first meet the standards of the Copenhagen Criteria," he jokingly adds. I would say: don't loose your sense of humor and openness, be self-critical and reflexive.
You know Turks very well, both those in Turkey and the ones here. How do you compare them? Can you also see differences, as I very often hear from other Dutch people I know?
I find it really very hard to generalize about the two groups. Some of the Turks I've met here are indeed more traditional than those I've met in Istanbul (as one often hears), as they tend to come from the East; but the opposite has also occurred.
About Stine Jensen
Dr. Stine Jensen (1972, Denmark) is a literary theorist and philosopher. In 2002, she received her Ph.D. degree in the field of arts and culture from the University of Maastricht. She held a position at the Radboud University of Nijmegen as an assistant professor in television studies from 2002-2004. Currently she works as a university lecturer in literary studies as part of the Faculty of Arts at the Free University of Amsterdam. She is the author of De verlangenmachine. Vrouwen in de popmuziek (Desiremachine. Women in Pop Music, Prometheus 2001), Waarom vrouwen van apen houden. Een liefdesgeschiedenis in cultuur en wetenschap (Why women love apes. A love affair in science and culture, Bert Bakker 2002, to be published in French at Seuil in 2006), and edited Aapverhalen (Ape stories, Wereldbibliotheek 2004). She is a literary critic for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad in British fiction and non-fiction and writes articles on film, popular culture and literature for NRC Handelsblad. In December 2004, in a special edition of the Dutch newsmagazine Vrij Nederland, Stine Jensen was chosen as one of the best and most promising young philosophers of the Netherlands.
Ali Çimen, Amsterdam
11 March 2007, Sunday, TodaysZaman
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