In a move that sparked a wave of comments and criticism on Facebook and Twitter, Turkish Airlines banned red lipstick and nail polish for its flight attendants, continuing changes that some see as inline with an Islamic agenda for the airline that is 49% government owned.
Atilay Aycin, president of the airline’s Hava-Is labor union, told Reuters that “no one can deny that Turkey has become a more conservative, religious country.”
“This new guideline is totally down to Turkish Airlines management’s desire to shape the company to fit its own political and ideological stance,” he said.
The airline also recently stopped serving alcoholic beverages on domestic flights (a move the airline says is due to lack of demand) and made public a potential re-design of flight attendants’ uniforms that would place their hemlines well below the knee.
Mehves Evin, a journalist with the Turkish publication, The Daily Hurriyet wrote: “If the THY (Turkish Airways) administration, which meddles into the privacy of its staff to this extent, with funny excuses such as “the lipstick gets on the teeth,” were to spend this energy answering calls from trade unions, then we would feel safer.”
Other potential changes in Turkey such as the proposed conversion of historic buildings into mosques have been cited as evidence of an encroaching and thinly disguised Islamacism in the historically secular state. Supporters of the goverment say that the changes are evidence of a democratic relaxation of restrictions on Islamic choices largely favored by the working class as opposed to the secular side of the culture, which they characterize as the intellectual elite.
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