From The Sunday Times
November 4, 2007


SEX AND THE MUSLIM GIRL

An explicit novel by Selin Tamtekin has caused uproar in her native Turkey. She tells why she had to break the taboo

There is no way that Selin Tamtekin could be described as even remotely low-life. Immaculate, groomed to perfection, she walks towards me on perfectly unscuffed heels, without a gleaming hair out of place or a single microfibre of dust on her pristine white shirt.

At 33 she looks after the private clients of a Mayfair contemporary art gallery, organising dinner parties for collectors and inhabiting a glittering world that thinks nothing of dropping £40,000 on a painting. Her father is Yuksel Tamtekin, one of Turkey’s most revered consular-generals.
Yet she has caused outrage in Turkey after the British publication of her debut novel. The Turkish Diplomat’s Daughter is a racy roman à clef, chronicling sexual affairs with a Bangladeshi landlord, a sailor and a Freddie Mercury-obsessed fantasist.

When Turkish newspapers got hold of the book, Tamtekin admitted her identity (it is written under the pseudonym Deniz Goran) and was so roundly pilloried that worried friends dubbed her “the female Salman Rushdie”. Splashed on the front pages of at least four national newspapers, she was derided as a “high-class Mayfair prostitute” who was writing about her own thinly veiled sexual experiences. The media were astonished that not only a Turkish woman but one from the highest echelons of society had written so frankly about her sexuality.
A public witch-hunt went on to name and shame members of the Turkish elite whose sexual peccadil-loes were supposedly outlined by the novel. Tamtekin went into hiding for three weeks, horrified by the uproar.

Despite the title, she insists that the novel is not about her experiences.
“It’s not an autobiography, although there are people and situations in it that have inspired me. In society, women are expected to play the game according to the rules. Well, I wanted to create a character who does as she pleases. It’s not common for women in Turkey to be so overtly sexual,” admits Tamtekin.


Although she concedes she has not received death threats, the examples of not only Rushdie, but also Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film-maker murdered for Submission, his transgressive film about women and sex in Islamic society, are a reminder that artistic expression as social critique is not easily accepted in some Muslim countries, even the secular ones.
Tamtekin is unbowed and is furious about the hypocrisy. “It’s not as if no one has sex in Turkey. Of course women have sexually active lives, but they always make sure that no one hears about them. Women aren’t able to stand out as individuals and talk openly about sex or fancying men,” she says.


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