It’s been a tense past month in Turkey. Islamic fundamentalists proposed the establishment of adultery laws, which would have actually made it criminally illegal for a spouse to cheat. While the Turkish parliament was recessed for the past few weeks, the media continued to cover the story and the public got quite whipped up about it. The nation is seeking admittance into the European Union, and the serious consideration of this law is sufficient to serve as a major threat to their chances: it paints the nation as one stuck in the dark ages, and not nearly sufficiently modern to join the EU.
Thankfully, the majority party has abandoned their plans to criminalize adultery, as Susan Sachs explains in today’s New York Times (“Adultery a Crime? The Turks Think Again and Say No“). Not only was the threat of isolation from the EU a serious deterrent, but the public backlash was enough to end the whole affair. It is Istanbul, not Constantinople, it seems. After all, what sort of a backwards, fundamentalist culture would criminalize adultery?