‘Gorilla Man’ and ‘Veiled Woman’

I’ve been living in Boston for two years. With a new academic field, a new job, new friends, new life, I’ve been somewhat neglecting Turkey for a while now. 

I didn’t even notice this negligence of mine for quite some time, and when I did, my relation to Turkey’s goings-on remained limited to 140-character messages on my Twitter feed. To put it simply, Turkey was all ‘American’ to me lately. 

However, taking my eyes off the hustle-bustle in Turkey helped me see lots of other interesting things: in particular, the Turkey branch of ‘gorilla man’! 

For starters, who is this gorilla man? He is the hero of a selective attention experiment conducted by two American psychology professors named Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. 

His only action as the hero is that he passes by right in front of your eyes, banging his chest with his fists, as you keep on counting how many times the five people in the experiment video pass a ball to each other.  

According to the results of the experiment, half of those who watched the video did not notice the gorilla man for counting passes. Interesting, right? So much happens right before our eyes, and half the time, we don’t even notice! 

This same gorilla man phenomenon seems to be taking place these days with the young women wearing what some call headscarves and others turbans. Oftentimes we focus so much on the fact that they cover their heads that we don’t even notice the messages they give out. 

Did you ever just take a good look at them? During my last, weeklong Istanbul visit, I looked at them constantly. They were all over Starbucks, Demirören Mall, the Modern Art Museum, and Atlas Movie Theater. I encountered tons of people covering their heads in ways I’ve never seen before, all of whom were miles away from the ‘sıkmabaş’ [squeezed head] stereotype. 

Scarves of vibrant colors, skinny jeans, Converse shoe strings changed according to outfit, walnut reed flute cases...

These people just seemed so familiar to me! I very sincerely think that they also follow the culture that makes me who I am, if only from another angle. And with its more authentic ways too! 

Let me speak for myself: It turns out that I, who take myself to be liberal and unbiased but don’t have a single friend with a headscarf, have never actually tried to understand these people before. 

Perhaps out of my own inattention, or perhaps due to the confusion of current events, my eyes were unaccustomed to those messages. What’s worse is that something tells me that experiences like mine still persist.

But I haven’t lost hope. I believe that people will somehow see the ‘gorilla man’, either through pieces like this one, or by finally looking at what’s right before their eyes. (PU/BM/BB)

* Click here to read the article in Turkish.