“As if” culture

“As if” culture describes a tacit social arrangement in which people continue to perform respect for tradition even as their conduct changes. In the Keskin home, Füsun may smoke in front of her father, Tarık Bey, without his openly objecting; at the same time, the family’s manner of receiving Kemal Basmacı allows him to visit as though he were merely a distant relation, not the suitor he is. The convention is neither simple adherence nor, in Kemal’s account, mere duplicity: it lets family life adjust while retaining recognizable forms of deference.

Meaning and social setting

Kemal places the expression within a society negotiating Westernization, modernization, and rapid urbanization. His retrospective account of premarital sexual respectability describes rules that varied by circumstance and social recognition: in affluent Westernized circles, a couple’s formal engagement or other sign of serious intent could make premarital intimacy more tolerable, while young women might present their choices as evidence of modern independence rather than trust in a future husband. The gap between changing behavior and the continued force of tradition is the setting in which “as if” conduct becomes legible.

That gap did not mean the rules had disappeared. Kemal describes a code in which women’s conduct remained subject to judgment, while social standing and a recognized commitment could affect the consequences. His account of Belkıs likewise places a romance between a wealthy young man and a girl from a poor family under the authority of family opposition and gossip. These episodes give the phrase a specific social context: custom persists not only as a private belief, but through family decisions and public scrutiny, even where people’s lives are changing.

Rituals in the Keskin home

The family’s everyday gestures make the convention concrete. In his early visits, Füsun covers her cigarette with her curved palm, avoids the ashtray used by Tarık Bey and Kemal, and taps ash into a small coffee saucer so that she can smoke without drawing attention to it. When exhaling, she turns her head away from the table. Kemal reads these actions as a performance of deference, particularly because Tarık Bey appears to know she smokes yet does not respond as a strictly traditional father might.

The significance lies in the coexistence of the gesture and the knowledge behind it. The smoking is not wholly hidden: Tarık Bey sees it, while Füsun’s manner still marks respect for his presence. Kemal calls attention to the family’s small social refinements and rejects the idea that this arrangement is simply deceitful. The rituals allow the household to accommodate changed behavior while continuing to act as though customary respect is intact.

Courtship under an accepted appearance

The same convention governs Kemal’s access to the family. He can see Füsun because his visits are treated as those of a distant relation, although he is in fact her suitor; the appearance remains useful even as the visits become frequent. The social form does not erase the underlying relationship. Instead, it gives that relationship a place within the household without requiring it to be acknowledged openly on every visit.

This arrangement also helps explain the tension surrounding Kemal’s engagement to Sibel. When their future is in question, Sibel challenges his appeal to modernity: if virginity has no importance to people who consider themselves European and modern, she argues, that principle should apply equally; if tradition still matters, it should be respected consistently. Her objection exposes the unevenness of invoking modernity to excuse one person’s choices while treating a woman’s chastity as a separate obligation. “As if” culture thus names more than polite family manners: it illuminates how social appearances can preserve customary expectations while private relationships strain against them.

Narrative significance

The expression emerges from Kemal’s close observation of recurring domestic behavior. A covered cigarette, a saucer used as an ashtray, and the pose of a distant relative are ordinary details, but together they show how a family negotiates what can be seen and acknowledged. Kemal’s interpretation is also situated: he presents these rituals through his own position as a suitor who depends on them to remain in Füsun’s life. The phrase captures the double action of the household’s manners: they both maintain a surface of deference and create the conditions for a changed reality beneath it.