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Turkey's
'Traditional Family Values'
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Originally published under the title "Our Traditional
Family Values."
Having condemned —endless times, and rightly so— past secular
governments' social engineering attempts in the Old Turkey, calling them
illiberal, Turkey's Islamists are perfecting conservative social
engineering in their virtual New Turkey. In fact, the Islamists were not
against ANY social engineering. They were just against secular social
engineering; conservative social engineering is fine.
In its latest effort, the government threatens, with unspecified
sanctions, newspapers, broadcasters and even social media that do not
conform to "traditional family values." In the official
wording: "Measures will be taken to ensure that visual, aural and
social media, news, tabloids, films and similar types of productions
conform to our traditional family values."
This columnist has argued, from 2011, that the idea that Turkey could
set a democratic precedent for the "awakening" Arab Spring
was not realistic. In reality, the Arab Spring
seems to have set a precedent for Turkey.
It is deeply problematic that the
state intends to punish any media product that does not conform to
'traditional family values.'
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From a democratic point of view, it is deeply problematic that the
state, with its police power, declares that it will punish any media product
that does not conform to "our traditional family values." In
democracies, it is not the government's duty to punish what is against
traditional family values or support what is not. What's next in Turkey?
A ministry in charge of determining what constitutes traditional family
values?
A 2014 PEW research, "Global Views on Morality," found what
is morally unacceptable to the Turks. Extramarital affairs: 94 percent;
premarital sex: 91 percent; gambling: 80 percent; homosexuality: 78
percent; alcohol use: 69 percent; abortion: 52 percent. Murder? Official
statistics show that there were four murders per day in Turkey in 2015.
Does murder, then, conform to "our traditional family values?"
Take gambling, for instance. A couple of years ago, the Religious Affairs
Directorate issued a fatwa that declared all sport betting games and the
national lottery as sinning "because they all constitute
gambling."
In 2012, betting and lottery industry in Turkey totaled over 11
billion Turkish liras. Since 80 percent of Turks are against gambling,
Turkey is probably visited by millions of aliens every year who play
betting games and the lottery. It must be the same visiting aliens who
consumed 1.077 billion liters of alcohol in 2014. It's funny, too, that
some of the levies on state-organized gambling finance arms programs
through a fund.
Fortunately, there are no credible/official statistics on extramarital
affairs, premarital sex,
and homosexuality – all the other sins that Turks do not morally accept
(but sometimes practice). Those numbers could have been embarrassing.
History is full of sad,
unsuccessful stories of ethnic or religious perfectionism that ended up
in the political wastebasket.
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The history of the world is full of sad, unsuccessful stories of
ethnic or religious perfectionism that ended up in the political
wastebasket. The Turkish government's latest attempt to teach morals to
the nation will remain a futile attempt.
Ankara should have learned from Iran where, thanks
to the Islamic rule, all Quranic evil tends to disappear and all Quranic
good proudly prevails.
All the same, things are not as pure as the Islamist puritans may
wish. In Tehran, drugs are prevalent, as Iran has one of the
highest rates of drug addiction in the world. In 2013, the United Nations
estimated that roughly 2.2 percent of Iranian adults are hooked on drugs,
the highest rate in the world. In 2014, Interior Minister Abdolreza
Rahmani Fazli announced some 6 million Iranians are affected by problems
related to drug addiction.
Iran's own youth is not happy with Islamic purity. According to an
InterMedia Young Publics poll released in 2013, one-third of those aged
between 16 and 25 said they would abandon the Islamic Republic if given
the option. Iran's parliamentary research department found that 80
percent of unmarried females, including secondary-school pupils, had
boyfriends. The department also discovered that 17 percent of the 142,000
students who were surveyed said they were in fact homosexual.
The figures were quite revealing, but there was more. The Islamic
Republic is also notorious for its prospering sex industry that is
religiously purified through an ancient practice in Shia Islam, sigheh,
a much deprecated temporary marriage that can last an hour or a decade.
Perhaps the Turks should think twice before they impose purity by
state police power.
Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based
columnist for the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News and a fellow at the
Middle East Forum.
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