Online Date with Fish2Fish: Turkey's PM said women ‘laughter’ #kahkaha in public is ‘moral corruption’

Monday 11 August 2014

Turkey's PM said women ‘laughter’ #kahkaha in public is ‘moral corruption’

Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç gave a speech that reeked of chauvinistic notes after he made comments that women should not laugh in public because it might be a sign that she is happy in her love life. It was reported today that he said women should practice “chasteness” and withhold any signs that show a woman’s attractiveness, but it wasn’t long before the social media sphere was bombarded with laughter and smiles.

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Since yesterday the Twitter hashtag #kahkaha has been used more than 300,000 times and paired with photos of women strutting their beautiful smiles. Among the first women to tweet a photo smiling was Ece Temelkuran, a writer. She told BBC Trending that her entire timeline was beaming with smiles and she felt it was simply fabulous. The laughter and smiles protesting Bülent Arınç’s conservative statement started to build within hours of his speech and continues trending across all social media with thousands of women sharing their laughter and smiles with hashtag #. In fact, some men are also jumping onboard to show their support that laughter regardless of a person’s gender is healthy and shouldn’t be damned by anyone, especially politicians.

Many Turkish citizens believe their government should be more concerned on preventing violence, rape, and murder against women -- instead of asking them to stop expressing laughter in public. Ece believes that his statement was shocking and is so out-of-touch.

Maria Spirova, a journalist, tweeted, “I support of #Turkey women’s right to laugh be free human beings. Conservatism is going mad in politics!” Arinc’s political ideologies have backfired as women and men “literally laugh in his face,” as @Channel4 tweeted. Seriously, look who's laughing now.

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