If you're a woman looking for some fun... we strongly urge you to avoid Turkey. Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc has some strong opinions on the female of the species. First, on Monday, he exclaimed women needed to be "morally upright" and "not laugh out loud in public." And now, the senior Turkish minister, that some women "don’t have self control and can’t stop themselves from climbing up a pole." Of course his actions sparked an avalanche of social media posts of women laughing-out-loud and on-the-pole... which is ironic given that Twitter reports that Turkey accounts for 43% of all global requests for content removal.
Bulent Arinç, who is also the spokesperson for the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), said on Monday women needed to be “morally upright” and “not laugh out loud in public,” the news agency quoted him as saying.
He said women should not “laugh out loud in front of everyone” and needed to “remain descent” at all times. The conservative Turkish politician also said a woman needed to be able to discriminate effectively between what was decent and what was not.
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"Stop giving us speeches in morality, instead, tell us about the money you’ve stolen,” btürkmen, another user wrote in Turkish, clearly referring to the corruption scandal Erdogan and his entourage have been facing since December.
Arinc said in televised comments Wednesday that those remarks had been taken out of context and he had wanted to comment on the “general rules of morality.”
But he added: “There are women who leave on holiday without their husbands and others who don’t have self control and can’t stop themselves from climbing up a pole.”
“Anyone can live like this. I can’t be angry against you but I can just have pity for you,” he said.
Which prompted exactly the opposite reaction amongst Twitter users...
Yo?un istek üzerine #direnkahkaha [9]
Ar?nç' ve avarelerine gelsin... pic.twitter.com/Awc0sjVKEu [10]
— Xemrevîn (@zeynebduygu) July 29, 2014 [11]
Pole fitness even on holiday ????#PoleFitness [12] #DrunkenFun [13] #Turkey [14] pic.twitter.com/VgJRW9QPvh [15]
— Amy Louise Walker ? (@Aimzidoodles) July 27, 2014 [16]
Arinc’s latest remarks appear to have been prompted by the wife of a prominent Turkish footballer who posted a picture of herself pole dancing on Instagram with the slogan “when I see a pole, I just can’t resist.”
The woman, the wife of Caner Erkin, a prominent player for Istanbul giants Fenerbahce, has since deleted the image from her account. Mimicking the Twitter campaign Tuesday over Arinc’s comments on laughing, bloggers posted pictures of their pets climbing up poles or flags proudly flying from poles.
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“We know what kind of society, woman and morality you are trying to reconstruct. We are following it closely but we don’t like it. And we don’t choose it,” she wrote.
Which is ironic given the following:
- Twitter: 43% of Global Requests to Remove Content From Turkey
So there is a nation with a lower transparency than the US.
