I hate how true this is.
As a commentary, though, this is hilarious.
Conservative party recommends pink metrobüs for İstanbul’s women
Istanbul should begin operating pink metrobuses catering solely to women so that they have a more comfortable traveling experience, the deputy head of the Felicity Party’s Istanbul branch has suggested, according to daily Hürriyet.
Selman Esmerer said the pink vehicles would eliminate the discomfort experienced by older and pregnant women, as well as those traveling with children, on the overcrowded transport system while also preventing sexual harassment.
The idea, which will require every third or fourth bus to be designated for women, will be presented to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality in the near future, Esmerer said.
In my experience, the only thing uncomfortable on the metrobüs is the overwhelming body odor. They are air-conditioned, they are efficient, and people often stood up to offer me their seats. Adding more buses to make the metrobüs system run more frequently and thin crowding might be a better solution, although I don’t know how feasible that would actually be. But I don’t see how a pink bus that would more likely be seen as a target than anything else will help prevent sexual harassment. In fact, it would probably only exacerbate it.
Women now have equal rights in choosing their child’s surname in cases of divorce and annulment, the Constitutional Court decided on Tuesday.The Court of First Instance in Siirt applied to the Constitutional Court for the annulment of the Surname Law, which stated that, in cases of divorce or annulment of marriage, the father of the child has the right to choose his or her surname.
The Constitutional Court, in a progressive step forward in gender equality, annulled the Surname Law with a unanimous verdict as it contradicts the 10th and 41st Articles of the Constitution. The decision of the court, which was published on Tuesday in the Official Gazette, made reference to provisions regulating gender equality in international legal documents such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the European Convention on Human Rights.
In the 1979 CEDAW, the UN officially adopted a provision to the effect that women and men, and specifically wives and husbands, shall have the same right to choose a “family name.”
The Constitutional Court cited decisions made under the European Court of Human Rights, which found that a difference in treatment based on sex alone violates the prohibition of gender discrimination found in the 14th Article of the European Convention on Human Rights. As the law stood in Turkey, men were granted the right to determine the surname of their child as recognized under their custody rights. But women did not have the same right, even if they had custody rights.
It wasn’t the usual images — those of long shapely legs and deep cleavage — that outraged Ibrahim Burak Birer, 31. Rather, it was pictures of penises and of fake, strap-on breasts which convinced him that things were getting out of hand. Birer had happened upon a series of photos on the subject of trans-sexuality printed in a major international fashion magazine.
The photos demonstrated conclusively to him that taboos hardly exist anymore — and that it was time to come up with something to combat the “diktat of nudity.” He knew that he and his team were on the right track.“Cosmopolitan, Elle, Vogue, Marie Claire, it’s all about sex and naked skin,” says the devout Muslim. “The motto is that sex sells. But we, and millions of women around the world, believe that fashion can also be different.”
Çamlica is a quiet residential neighborhood on the Asian side of the megacity Istanbul. Birer and his friend Mehmet Volkan Atay, 32, two stout men in jeans and designer jackets, are sitting at their desks on the second floor of a white house.
Soft jazz music is playing on a laptop. The two managing directors of Alâ are in excellent spirits, as are the two women who are sitting across from them: Eyma Yol Kara, 28, the editor-in-chief of Alâ, “the magazine for a beautiful lifestyle,” and Esra Sezi, 24, the head fashion editor. Both women are young, attractive and wearing headscarves.
Most Beautiful of the Beautiful
The core team of the magazine, which is currently the talk of the country, are perusing the sixth issue of Alâ. It’s a complete success, as were the preceding issues, so much so that the magazine has to increase its circulation again, from 25,000 to 30,000 copies. These are impressive sales figures for such a high-gloss product, which only uses models that wear headscarves and only advertises brands specializing in women’s clothing that conforms to Islamic customs. Alâ is the avant-garde of “Tesettür,” or “veiled” fashion. The name of the magazine, which stems from the Ottoman era, means “the most beautiful of the beautiful.”
The liberal daily newspaper Radikal called the fashion magazine “the Vogue of the veiled.” The first issue came on the market in June 2011, at a price of 9 lira (€3.90, or $5.10). A smiling model covered in pink material and black lace, looking bashfully at the floor, appeared on the cover. Inside, were articles such as “The Colors of Summer,” photos of love-struck, freshly married couples and all kinds of shopping tips — chaste, but somehow cool at the same time. All of this seemed to suit the taste of conservatives to a T.
The Turkish women’s magazine Âlâ first gained notice in the summer of 2011 by putting the most controversial piece of fabric in Turkey, the Islamic headscarf, on its cover. Four months later, Turkish secularists and traditional Muslims alike are still debating: Can fashion and Islam comfortably coexist? The brainchild of advertising agency account executives Mehmet Volkan Atay and Burak Birer, Âlâ (Beautiful Lifestyle) targets Turkey’s growing number of observant Muslim women with a monthly selection of clothing advice, interviews with Muslim designers and businesswomen, travel tips and feature stories. It claims that its circulation has quadrupled to 40,000 copies since the first edition hit newsstands last July, and is widely reported by Turkish media already to have surpassed sales of Vogue and Elle.
But don’t tag it as an Islamic Vogue. Âlâ Art Director Esra Sezis asserts that that the notion of Islamic fashion contradicts the Islamic idea of women modestly covering their bodies. “[The magazine] is only meant to be a helping guide for conservative women — where can they shop, what clothes can they combine,’” Sezis said in an August 20 interview with the Turkish daily Sabah. “[I]n short, there cannot be Islamic fashion; just details.”
In online social media forums, critics nonetheless claim that the glossy, high-end monthly tries to “westernize the idea of modest Islamic dress,” and tries to turn veiled women into the prototype of Vogue-reading, spend-thrift fashion victims; concepts contrary to Islamic ideals. The magazine features photos of both professional models and ordinary readers in Islamic garments.
“To try and squeeze modest Islamic dress into fashion patterns is as absurd as trying to squeeze Islam into a Western lifestyle”, writes journalist Aysegül Genç in the monthly Genç Magazine. “If this magazine, already contributing to ongoing degeneration, would like to minimalize the damage it will cause, it has to think as much about how to be a beautiful veiled girl as it has to find answers to the question of how to be a veiled girl with a personality.”
