Unmarried couples might live together in the same house. Legally there is no restriction on this issue given that none of the sides is married with somebody else. It would be illegal if one of them is.

Actually this has been a discussion for a long time. I remember a case about two collegues. The man was married and at the time he was on a business trip with a female colleague. While they were staying normally in different rooms for some reason at a certain time they where sitting in the same hotel room with pajamas while they were discussing an issue. An hotel staff saw them. He locked them inside the room and informed the police. The man was found guilty and his situation was described as inappropriate.

This was a couple of years ago. Later on they made changes on the law. I don't know the details currently on this issue. I think this shows a good example of public opinion.

In traditional places in Turkia it is everybod's business to take care of what every unmarried woman or girl is doing. In such places (in all villages, in all small towns, in all sections of traditional city life) it would be impossible for a female to live together when unmarried. Only in a few big cities and in modern sections of these cities it would be possible for an unmarried couple to live together.

Some sick secondary school head teachers have forced their female students to take virginity tests if they had boyfriends. Turkish police also is in cooperation with these sick minded people and they used force to take the the students to the tests. They really love to cooperate with sick minded people.

Unfortunately our law doesn't protect our citizen's privacy. Some parents said they didn't mind their doughters having a boyfriend and it was none of the school's business to get involved in this issue. But then again this is Turkia and we have a long way to go.

In some more traditional places virginity can be a reason to kill. These are called honor killings. It can also happen if a women divorces since again the control over the female sexuality slips away with the divorce but this control is essential according extremists. It is the meaning of their life and their life is dedicated to control female sexuality. This is a reason for headscarf in İslam.

Recently a girl was killed by her brothers after a family commission of elderly male members decided that she deserved to be killed because having a boyfriend. It was on news for long time since it occured in Germany. The family was a traditional extrenmist, İslamist Turkish family. The old family members had given the younger members the duty since they wanted to get away with lower sentences. In fact the sentences were very low because the brothers were too young.

I didn't write very nice things but at least I wrote the truth I believe. Europeans don't understand religious organisations and what they are working for. They are supporting extremist organisations (especially in Germany they have thousands of members) and these organisations are operating agains our secular system.

Erdinc, I found your post really shocking. This oppression of women in the name of religion sickens me and without wanting to repeat what I said on the “Turkish Women” thread, I do agree that men use religion as an excuse to abate their jealousy and retain control over women.

I can understand parents being protective of young girls, but to do this to the extremes that you describe isn‘t ‘love’ or ‘protection‘. At best it is a selfish need to control , at worst, it is a serious fundamentalist obsession, in which the life of your child becomes less important than your need to control her. The sad, and worrying, fact is that there is nothing that anyone will ever be able to do or say that will change the opinions of people so brain-washed by extreme views.

On a lighter note, I spent many years in my job travelling the Far East and was usually accompanied by male colleagues. We would work into the early hours on many occasions, but I can honestly say there was never an occasion when I needed to be in a colleague’s room wearing my pyjamas! ! It seems a lame excuse, and would be funny if it were not for the actions the hotel staff took.

If it hadn't been the army our secular republic would have been changed to an İslamic Republic long time ago. The army is following Atatürk's lead who has founded our republic.
A few times the army has taken control and then in shortest time possible gave it up on elections. Education on military schools is modern and they are educated to protect our secular system from external and domestic treats. Interestingly one of these taking controls started in a military school in Ankara.

Literally, 18 year old military school students and their military teachers took the control by occupying the parliament when they were armed. Our short history of our republic is full with these kind interesting details.

You need to understand that we are a new country. There was no Turkish Republic 84 years ago and religious leaders were part of the Government then at the time of Ottoman Empire. It's not very easy to change minds in such short times.

The army has some special anti-terror units that are assigned to certain duties in certain areas. There is also a Jandarma unit which works as police in non-residental areas where police isn't available. For instance, most coastlines on touristic seasides are Jandarma areas.
If it is an issue related to their anti-terror and Jandarma units of course they make their points.

In many other countries there isn't a huge terrorism issue where the army is involved. We are talking here about more than 10.000 terrorists. Currently 5.000 or them are protected by the United States forces in Northern Iraq. These are not ordinary citizens suppoting a certain politics. These are terorists with military training, military uniforms and machine guns. They live in their military camps in Iraq and from time to time they leak into our country to kill teachers, road workers, police officers, doctors, nurses and any other offical workers.

The army's involvement on certain issues will be unfamilier to those who are unfamiliar with the kind of problems we have.

The terorists have their own TV channel broadcasting from European countries.

In general the army doesn't like to interfere with issues outside their responsibilites but we must add that it is their responsibility according to our Fundamental Law (constitution) to protect our republic.

Our law system doesn't work at all which is the main problem. All kinds of criminals are arrested, sentenced for a few years and after they stay 30% of their sentence they are released.

Turkey is different country by the some specialites friends.Mainly u can 2 different life stilies in Turkey,so when u talking about Turkish culture and people u have to know somethings about this difference.Some of (little part of Turkish population) agreed with live all opne minded to everythings(individula relationships,freedoms,to be opne to all changes),but important and big part of Turkish people still having many traditions.And traditional Turkish families very conservative about female&male realtionships.and when we talking about a life style we have to know realities of this people cultural and historical back round.But i can say that with the more civilization things changing for the traditional Turkish familes even,i think this new life style calling with ''Golbalism'' and seems a new common culture raising on all over world with goods&bads??

Our law system isn't working now because it has never worked before.

I don't think our government or our public seems to understand the importance of a working law system. I'm not saying that we have the worst justice system in the World but we are not too far from it. There are countless examples.