The British deputy prime minister is Nick Clegg and, for the most part, he’s not been that much of a lol, particularly when he reneged on his election promise to halt a hike in tuition fees. But if we take a look at the Turkish deputy prime minister, Bülent Arinc, Nick Clegg looks positively brilliant.
You see, Arinc has called for women to not laugh out loud in public because, apparently, it’s immoral.
‘A man should be moral but women should be moral as well. They should know what is decent and what is not decent,’ he said in a speech to commemorate the end of Ramadan in the western Bursa region of the country, an area governed by his Justice and Development party (AKP).
According to* The Guardian,* he added: ‘She should not laugh loudly in front of all the world and should preserve her decency at all times.’
Far from stopping after telling women not to lol, Arinc also said that moral decline in Turkey has left it awash with drugs and prostitution, and he decried Turkish soaps for encouraging lax lifestyles. He also mocked women for ‘spending hours on the phone to swap recipes’, as if they haven’t discovered anything beyond the kitchen through their smartphones.
One person who’s cackled in the face of Arinc’s words is that (unofficial) cultural ambassador to Britain, Kate Moss. The supermodel is alleged to have arrived at the boarding gate for an EasyJet flight at Bodrum airport ‘clearly inebriated’, according to the *MailOnline’*s source, who said: ‘The general consensus was that she didn’t have a ticket but after chatting to the manager for some time she was whisked off and ushered on to a flight.
‘It was pretty obvious that Kate had had a bit to drink as she was talking loudly and didn’t seem worried about being seen.’
Maybe Kate wasn’t drunk at all, but actually staging an elaborate pre-emptive political protest against the Turkish deputy prime minister? We can’t think of a better way for a loud, laughing woman who doesn’t give a shit to show exactly how silly Arinc’s request is.
Because if laughter isn’t allowed, then how else would he like to impinge on women’s rights?
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
Picture: Rex
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.