From Undressing Herself · Kadın Bedenini Soyarsa adlı romandan Written by Meltem Arıkan

Disturbing Family Order


Laurie Penny Interviews the Turkish Feminist and Author Meltem Arikan

  When the final scene ended, there was shocked silence. Absolute quiet, for two minutes. 'We were so scared!' said the director. And then the lights came up and with them thunderous applause. Some of the audience had tears pouring down their faces.     This was the reception in Zurich, Rotterdam and Istanbul of Meltem Arikan's new play, I'm Spoiling the Game. The award-winning secular feminist author is on a mission to raise a shout against the forces of religion and patriarchy grinding down women in the Middle East and across the world.     Her last novel, Enough - Don't Hurt my Flesh, which deals with incest and domestic violence was banned and then prosecuted in her native Turkey for 'disturbing family order' and attacking moral values. 'The government says that incest doesn't happen in Turkey,' she said, 'There's a strong belief that the family is a holy, sacred space. I'm saying that it's not holy.'     Although she won the case, Arikan has moved away from fiction for the present. I'm Spoiling the Game is the 40-year-old's first play...(Read More)

BEING A WOMAN IN TURKEY?..

By Meltem Arıkan

I always find discriminations such as, being a woman in Turkey, being a woman in Germany, being a woman in United States or the conditions of women in Turkey, conditions of women in Holland, very disturbing. Whichever country they are from, women have been living under the power of male dominated system and the imposed laws of this system for thousands of years.The issues could be relatively less or more problematic, this does not change the fact that women from all around the world are essentially facing the same issues. Did you ever hear questions such as, what are conditions of men in Germany or how is it like to be a man in Africa? You cannot hear any of them because men own this world...(read more)