to Irrelevant

Submitted by Lina (United Kingdom), Apr 2, 2009 at 16:42

It's nice to have some input from a man of Turkish origins. While I can definitely understand some women's anger and fury (it's natural after some of the treatment that they've received), it should be remarked that the actions of these vile men are not merely culture-related. You will find psychopaths on every level, who use their status as a crutch, be it as a man, a politician, muslim, a christian or whoever. And it's true, these scammers are the Turkish equivalent of "rednecks", as an outsider it's hard to notice of course. But if you grew up in Turkey, Middle East etc. you would be able to differentiate between social classes.

I've had several Turkish female friends, most of them were intelligent, ambitious, none of them seemed unhappy or sheltered, none of them wore headscarves & they were extremely beauty-conscious. And I've known some Turkish men also, who were well-educated and rational, one is even happily married to an English woman. The only people a lot of Turks seemed to have issues with were Russian girls... not sure why lol.

I think the best thing for a woman, if she wants a serious intercultural relationship, is to do a hell of a lot of research. Once you've learnt enough it's so easy to filter out the bad from the good. If you can't see yourself marrying a man with drastically different values, stay away, don't even have him as a boyfriend. Personally, if I was scammed by a Turkish man I wouldn't rule out befriending another one because life is far too short to be negative based on one idiot's unstable mentality.

The only issue I have with what you wrote is the alcohol thing - drinking, eating pig products and females appearing topless in public are all forbidden in Islam. I mean, I myself know several muslims who drink (but they are only moderate muslims anyway) and that Turkey is a fairly secular country, similar to Lebanon. But I was just wondering how seriously you take islam really, and whether drinking is common amongst Turkish men?...

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