Turkey: Women turning to surgery to combat virginity taboos

From Today's Zaman:

Though no figures are kept on the number of hymenoplasty operations conducted each year in Turkey, the medical community agrees that demand is increasing for the “virginity restoration” procedure.

The issue of women's virginity is still an important factor in many relationships in Turkey, affecting women from all social and economic backgrounds and involving complex intersections of cultural and religious values. The failure to maintain virginity until marriage can for a woman mean social alienation, forced marriage with an inappropriate match, physical abuse and even death in some cases. While there is no true way to ascertain whether or not a woman has had intercourse, modern medicine offers the ability for women to ensure cultural validation of her supposed virginity: hymenoplasty, an increasingly popular elective surgery, the morality of which the medical community is divided on.

“The rise in hymenoplasty doesn't mean that the hymen and virginity have gained importance, but indicates that women are increasingly possessed of more spending power and medical knowledge and that physicians are less conservative with regard to these operations,” psychologist Dilek Akıcı Tayanç explained in an interview with Sunday's Zaman. “Women have gained economic strength and knowledge over the years, but this development hasn't enabled them to break the taboos regarding virginity, but to more effectively be able to protect themselves from the results of these taboos.”

A popular İstanbul OB/GYN, agreeing to speak with Sunday's Zaman on the condition that she be identified only as Dr. Ö., performs an average of 10 hymenoplasty operations a month. In addition, she says 20-30 women make their way to her office each month for consultations related to the procedure. The women who eventually elect to undergo the surgery pay Dr. Ö. anywhere from TL 800-3,000 for one of a range of hymenoplasty procedures, which usually lasts 30-40 minutes.

“Most of the women who come here are serious about the procedure, and these stories you hear in the public about women undergoing the option many times -- these mostly aren't true. It does cost a bit of money to have this procedure done, so it's not taken frivolously. I don't ask questions about why women make these choices, I just take their medical histories and present the options to them,” Dr. Ö. says....

Read it all here.