The Woman's Program

In Turkey, ‘women’s program’ is the name given to a specific daytime television format that caters mainly to housewives and the terminally comatose.

Woman’s programs have a simple formula: A female host, light banter, and a studio audience picked for their ability to clap along with anything. Often ridiculed for their lack of substance, this doesn’t stop 84 percent of women from watching.

Which prompts a question: what exactly are these women learning from daytime television?

How to socialize with strangers, boringly

Women’s programs need guests to keep the host from talking about herself for three hours. But they do try to mix it up: the celebrity hosts of Sabahların Sultanı and Herşey Dahil get to sit on a couch to talk while the host of Mavi Şeker (links Turkish) makes up for her lack of fame by standing and being perky.

It doesn’t really matter what is being said, or if there is any conversation at all; most daytime television viewers are happy just seeing shiny movement on screen.

How to Cook/Clean/Furnish

Some shows like Deryalı Günler (link Turkish) focus on “home economics,” the nice way of saying “woman work.” Guests are interviewed while cooking or sharing decorating advice and typical comments include (really) “Coffee stains are a woman’s worst nightmare…” which explains why families spend more a year on detergent than on donations to UNICEF.

How to feign enthusiasm while B-list stars lip-synch

There is always at least one pop-star lip-synching terrible hits for the audience to clap at. A bad host will behave like this is the worst thing that has happened to her since that coffee-stain, the good ones like the first day they learned to remove one.

How to respect the disabled

Beside the singer, there has to also be one eccentric guest, which can be anyone from “astrologer/positive energy expert” to “man who claims he can fly, then literally flips when someone questions his credibility”:

How to look at the brighter side of life

For the dark, brooding housewives, Tatlısert (link Turkish) invites guests to share stories of how their loved ones were murdered or kidnapped or abandoned them, then cry into the cameras.

How to get married out of desperation

Many people in Turkey were not lucky enough to get married for the wrong reasons and as the subtitled clip from spinster dating program Dest-i İzdivaç shows, many of them are willing to share their public shame on television.

So, while each show teaches women different things, their common underlying theme is really the most important lesson of all: “How to maintain the low-standards needed for a happy marriage.”

The Domestic Abuse

In honor of Turkey becoming the first country ever to receive a slap-on-the-wrist over domestic abuse by the European Court of Human Rights, below are rules on how to handle yourself if you find you are in a fistfight with a woman:

• There are many reasons to get in a fistfight with a woman, even though Hollywood only gives us two: “if she’s a superhero” or “if she’s an enemy spy.” If you cannot prove she is either, local authorities also accept “for honor” or “she didn’t love me.”
• Considering there is a forty percent domestic abuse rate, if you aren’t dishing it out, you are probably taking it; it’s best to go preemptive on this one.
• Most police will consider abuse “an affair to be resolved within the family” rather than “assault” if you are legally married; avoid pesky paperwork by popping the question first.
• We have a saying, “Kol kırılır, yen içinde kalır” (The arm breaks, it stays within the sleeve); domestic abuse is one of those public taboos like kinky sex or being fat that are only shameful if it leaves the house. Avoid friends and neighbors and you’ll go through life a “decent” human being.
• Also avoid the media: every day there are several stories condemning violence against women. Just today there was one on a woman beaten to death by two men trying to convince her to marry one of them, a woman who was strangled to death for divorcing her husband and an officer who killed his ex-wife and her lawyer over custody (links in Turkish). Save yourself embarrassment by holding your abuse for when Obama delivers a speech or the World Cup finals to avoid becoming a headline.
• No firearms! Firearms are what make the difference between an asshole and a psychopath.
• Don’t forget your taunts! Most of the world doesn’t consider it abuse, plus spouses with low self-esteem rarely go to the media or to court.
• A good death threat has, at the bare minimum, a subject, a predicate and at least 3 exclamation points:

Wrong: Die?

Right: I will run you and your mother over with a car if you leave me!!!!!

• Brush your teeth and bathe regularly! One judge in Ankara penalized an abusive husband not just with the standard restraining orders and psychiatric treatment, but also ordered the unhygienic man to routinely groom himself (link Turkish) if he wished to avoid jail.
• Beg her not to go to the European Court of Human Rights.

Remember, nothing proves manliness like a good fistfight with a lady, no matter what the UN says.

The Cover Up

Women’s liberation is a matter of pride in Turkey. Not only was polygamy outlawed and Sharia law abolished in the early days of the republic, but by 1934 Turkish men had granted women full suffrage back when many Western nations (not to point fingers, but some of which rhymed with “rance” and “elgium”) were busy experimenting if women-friendly ballots should have kittens or puppies in the margins.

Regrettably, we had been told that giving women the right to vote would resolve all gender issues and society could move on. Yet more than seventy years later, many women still refuse liberation and cover up in un-emancipated defiance of both the Turkish state and the fashion editors at Vogue.

This was not much of a problem back when the religious were too poor to leave the house, but somewhere they acquired money and entered politics, and now for the first time both the President and Prime Minister’s wives sport headscarves.

That is the Prime Minister’s wife to the right, the only covered woman in the middle of Arabic first ladies; societies the West considers as treating their women a little better than a three-legged ox but worse than a refrigerator.

And the white Turks are pissed, particularly the female ones, at having the world judge Turkish women by such dated threads. If the uncovered woman is a symbol of secularism and modernity, covering up must be a renouncement of such values. A woman’s appearance has become a major source of contention between the elected conservative government and the secular establishment, with the country see-sawing between permitting and re-banning the headscarf.

Some could argue women’s issues extend beyond appearance, especially since the second greatest leap in women’s rights began in 2001, almost all of which was undertaken by the conservative government. The legal framework was revised granting women greater equality and deeming their sexuality an individual right rather than pertaining to family honor. Critics might contend it was vocal women’s organizations and EU pressure that brought about these changes, but it doesn’t speak highly of prior secular administrations that spent their eight decades in power “just about to get around to the women thing.”

As for how Turkish women are appearing in the eyes of the world, the woman to the left was selected by a conservatively-appointed public television board to represent Turkey at last Saturday’s Eurovision song contest. That is her performing in a governmentally-approved outfit.

So the only principle that all Turks can agree upon, whether they are on the path of secularism or the path of God, is the same the rest of the world agrees on: “sex sells.”