Telekinetic Turkish babies

BELGİN AKALTAN - belgin.akaltan@hdn.com.tr

Our officemate Fulya Özgel Yılmaz is expecting twin girls. She has no shame. DAILY NEWS photo, Hasan ALTINIŞIK

The best solution for Turkey would be conceiving through telekinesis. I made the entire office burst into laughter yesterday when I told Erdem not to look at me too directly because there could be the risk of a very aesthetic pregnancy. I am Erdem’s mother’s age.

Actually, babies born out of telekinetic relationships are perfect for Turkey. There would be no sex, there would be no flirting, there would be no naked bodies or naked bellies and there would be no need for the opposite sexes to be so dangerously close to each other. Actually, if they were to wipe out all women from the entire land called Turkey, they would finally achieve their desired level of decency.

But then, who would look after the telekinetically conceived babies, who would cook, wash, clean the house, shop, be always on hand for further humiliation? Be ready for being battered by husbands? Maybe we will make telekinetically activated female robots whose bodies can be used for sex after they die – but wait, that’s Egypt’s problem for the moment.

My poor international readers. You need to be living in Turkey to understand this schmoose. The shortest possible explanation: A pro-government journalist said people were trying to assassinate the prime minster through telekinesis. That person, soon after that comment, became the chief adviser of the PM. In a separate development, in a live iftar (fast-breaking) show on the state-run TRT channel, one Islamic scholar said it was immoral for pregnant women with their huge bellies to reveal themselves in public. If they needed fresh air, then the “Mister” should take them out for a short drive with his car. In the evening hours – not in broad daylight.

Telekinesis is the moving of solid matter via the power of the mind. (Oh, how I wish I could…)

It was Turkish lawyer and Sufi thinker Ömer Tuğrul İnançer who said this. First of all, he said it was not aesthetic.

Here are some comments in social media about whether Turkish women should go out into the streets “swinging their bellies” in their late pregnancies? #direnhamile is trending on Twitter; it means “resist pregnant.”

‏@yelizaras: I wish your mother had gone out on the street to get some fresh air, sir, then…

@aylavkafi: The idiot who said it was immodest for a pregnant woman to go wander the streets was, I believe, thrown in the air three times as a baby but was held twice only.

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Istanbul deputy Binnaz Toprak said she was speechless and it was grave that a Sufi thinker would speak as such: “This viewpoint is the essence of the discrimination and violence against woman.”

Former Education Minister Nimet Baş, from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said there could not be any restrictions on women according to men’s aesthetic perceptions. She said it was irrational to say pregnant women should not be on the streets, asking, “Will she be confined to her home for nine months?”

CHP Ankara deputy Aylin Nazlıaka said she condemned the mentality that dictated how many kids a woman should have, how she should talk and how she should give birth. She claimed the next step would be to interfere with the air women are breathing.

Daily Hürriyet writer Melis Alphan said, “A smart person would try to hide this hate against women, the desire to dominate the body and mind of women, those eyes that see women as a commodity and how he abhors women… We know we were not able to leave such men behind in the medieval ages. But, just shush for a while so that we have the wrong perception as if we left you behind in those times.

Allow us to deceive ourselves. Because we are aware that we won’t be able to get rid of your mentality within a short period of time…”

Aylin Anne from Hürriyet Pasaj said women in their late pregnancies should be walking to prepare for the birth, not be driven around in the Mister’s car. If pregnant women sit at home, her muscles will not be ready for birth and, God forbid, will need a C-section, she said.

@UtangacAdam: Ömer Tuğrul İnançer said pregnant women should not go out. Since he is so ashamed of pregnancy, probably he is reproducing through mitosis.

@Luynmii: If a woman is pregnant, she is immoral; if she wears short skirts, she is loose, if she does not wear a headscarf, she is a slut. Why don’t they close womanhood once and for all and build a shopping mall in place of it?

@yucelbaskin81: Let’s not lose time by condemning pregnant women wandering around the streets and banning tampon commercials on TV. Let’s ban women altogether. Voila!

serbülent T.: Dear sir, you not at all aesthetic either on the TV screen.

Hemşire Sağlıkçı: With our prime minister’s insistence on five kids, then a woman is practically sentenced to home detention for five years.

Ramazan Makaev: The scholar is right. Public display of late pregnancies is against our traditions. They should wear loose clothes.

Sebahattin Kılıç: It is more immoral to continuously watch women on the streets, at work, in the bus and in the ferry.

AYSEL ALKAN KASAP: How they fear woman; they fear each and every state of ours…

@_duslerdiyari: Don’t touch my mother! Or I’ll kick you – Unborn Çapulcu (Çapulcu means marauder, but is used by the Gezi protesters)

@tubabacioglu: Next, they will ban the udders of cows because they may arouse them…

I remember my own pregnancy. It was the healthiest time of my life. I felt like a cow, in a good sense. I felt as natural as a cow, as healthy as a cow, as simple and duty-conscious as a cow. Focus on one duty: carry your baby. I remember an incident when I was showing my father how the baby was moving. My mother commented, “We used to have to hide our pregnancies in the old days. How nice it is now you are showing it proudly, sharing nice moments with loved ones, even showing the movement of the baby to your father.” My late mother was born in 1926. Her pregnancies were around the 1950s.

(Stop calculating my age. I said stop.)

Maybe, we should send this Islamic scholar and his shallow interpretation back to the 1950s, shall we?