Turkey's deputy prime minister, Bülent Arinc, has some interesting advice for women: They should avoid laughing in public.
"A man should be moral, but women should be moral as well, they should know what is decent and what is not decent," Arinc said during a speech on Monday while celebrating the Bayram holiday at the end of Ramadan. "She should not laugh loudly in front of all the world and should preserve her decency at all times."
Arinc said that society's morals have declined, and took aim at Turkey's soap operas, which Arinc claims promote "lax lifestyles." He went on to decry the use of cars and even phones, saying that women spend "hours on the phone to swap recipes."
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Unsurprisingly, Arinc's comments resulted in negative reactions on social media, with hundreds of Turkish women posting photos of themselves laughing online. Meanwhile, Turkey's presidential elections will be held on August 10, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan's opponents are mocking Arinc's comments. "We need to hear the happy laughter of women," tweeted Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Erdogan's main rival.
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