Füsun’s experience of sexual harassment

Füsun’s experience of sexual harassment is presented through incidents that began in childhood and continued into her adolescence, at home, in places of learning, and on the streets of Istanbul. The episodes show how men could exploit ordinary social access while the expectations of respectable behavior constrained the girl they targeted. Her growing ability to recognize danger changes how she navigates those situations, but does not make public space safe or shift responsibility away from the men who harass her.

Childhood Encounters and Unequal Protection

Between the ages of eight and twelve, Füsun was often sent during the summer to a neighborhood shop for household purchases. Its owner was a friend of her father’s, and their acquaintance made the shop seem like an ordinary place for a child to visit. He used delays and other pretexts to keep her there and touched her when they were alone. The arrangement depended on adult trust: Füsun was sent on errands, while the shopkeeper’s friendship with her father offered no protection from his behavior.

A second pattern developed during family visits. When Füsun was about ten to twelve, a neighbor regularly came to the house with his wife. While the adults talked, drank tea, and listened to the radio, he placed a hand on Füsun in ways that could pass unnoticed by the others present. The secrecy and apparent casualness of these actions made them difficult for a child to interpret. Her father liked the visitor and did not recognize what was happening, leaving Füsun without an adult who could name or stop the conduct.

Another incident involved her father’s card-playing friends. At ten, Füsun asked to sit on her father’s lap while he played; when he refused because he was occupied, one of the men invited her to sit with him and touched her in a manner she understood only later to have been inappropriate. Across these episodes, adult men were admitted to the home as friends or visitors, and their conduct was concealed within familiar routines. The contrast is especially sharp because her father failed to notice the touching but later punished Füsun when a schoolboy’s declaration of affection appeared outside the house. When she was thirteen, he pulled her to the window by the ear and slapped her over the writing. The account thus distinguishes the attention that threatened her from the attention that threatened her family’s standards of propriety: the latter drew a visible response, while the former remained unseen.

Harassment Beyond the Home

Füsun’s stories extend the pattern from domestic settings to the city itself. Parks, vacant lots, backstreets, buses, crowded squares, and secluded corners could all become places where men watched or approached girls. She learned, like other girls considered respectable, to avoid some locations because men might expose themselves there. This restriction made safety a matter of managing routes and conduct, rather than a limit placed on the men who created the danger.

Some men followed Füsun for months after seeing her on a street, at a school gate, outside a cinema, or on a bus. Their behavior varied: some remained at a distance, while others approached, pressed her to walk with them, became angry when she did not respond, or insulted and cursed her. Men sometimes followed in pairs or brought friends to look at her; others tried to pass her letters or gifts, and some wept. The range of reactions did not make the attention welcome. It showed how pursuit could be recast by the men themselves as courtship, while Füsun was left to manage their demands and the possibility of escalation.

One pursuer cornered her and tried to force a kiss. After that, she stopped challenging the men as she sometimes had before. By fourteen, she had learned to read their intentions and recognize tactics that once might have surprised her. Yet the harassment continued in changing forms: men used passing cars, stairways, elevators, and exchanges of money to engineer unwanted contact. Her increased alertness reduced the element of surprise, not the frequency of men seeking opportunities to touch or approach her.

Social Codes and the Burden of Respectability

The narrative places these experiences against the sexual and reputational norms of 1975. In Istanbul and the wider region, virginity was still widely treated as something a young woman should preserve until marriage, even as urbanization and Westernization were changing expectations in some circles. The resulting code did not simply regulate sexual conduct; it distributed its risks unequally. Engaged couples in affluent Westernized circles might be tolerated if their relationship appeared serious, but when a relationship lacked social recognition, a woman who had lost her virginity could be expected to marry the man to protect her honor. If she was under eighteen and he refused, her father might pursue the matter in court. Public representations also marked women accused of sexual transgression as shameful, including through newspaper photographs that concealed their eyes.

These rules sit uneasily beside the repeated failures to hold harassing men accountable. Füsun was expected to avoid risky places and, as a teenager, believed that being a good girl meant not complaining about men who touched her. The account does not equate harassment with consensual premarital relationships; rather, it shows how a culture preoccupied with women’s sexual respectability could leave male misconduct unobserved while making a girl’s reputation a family concern. Later, when Sibel speaks to Kemal about his relationship with the shopgirl, she identifies the inconsistency in invoking modernity to dismiss virginity while appealing to tradition when it is convenient. Her argument makes explicit the unequal standard that Füsun’s experiences have already exposed.

Narrative Significance

Füsun’s account gathers incidents that might otherwise be dismissed as isolated misunderstandings into a recurring social pattern. The settings change, from a shop and family visits to streets and public transport, but the imbalance remains: men can conceal their conduct within ordinary encounters, while Füsun must anticipate it and adapt. Her ability to recognize danger by fourteen is a form of practical knowledge acquired under pressure, not evidence that the danger has ended.

The episodes also complicate a simple opposition between modern and traditional values. Füsun is constrained both by harassment that narrows where she can go and by standards that police how a girl should behave or what her conduct means. The distinction between protecting women’s honor and protecting women from men is therefore crucial. In Füsun’s remembered experience, attention to reputation is conspicuous, while recognition of the harassment itself is repeatedly absent.