Order to ‘Dress According to Manners, Customs and Belief’ on Parliamentary Agenda

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Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) İstanbul MP Oya Ersoy has submitted a Parliamentary question about the circular letter sent by İstanbul Provincial Director of Health Kemal Memişoğlu to healthcare workers, instructing them to "get dressed according to manners, customs and belief."

The circular letter in question was apparently sent by the İstanbul Provincial Directorate of Health in February 2019 and extended till June 30, 2020.

In her Parliamentary question addressed to Minister of Health Fahrettin Koca, HDP MP Ersoy has emphasized that telling healthcare workers to "dress according to manners, customs and belief" is incompatible with secularism. The instructions listed in the circular letter especially target women healthcare workers, the MP has further underlined.

Oya Ersoy has briefly stated the following in her question:

Ersoy: It is especially an interference in women's clothes

"The pressure attempted to be exerted on the clothing of personnel is especially an interference in women's clothes.

"Such reactionary and male-dominant administrative practices and statements that exclude women women from social life and regard them as second-class citizens are turning women into targets of male violence.

"The recent pressures against women, especially in workplaces and the systematic attacks such as assaults targeting women because they wear mini skirts in bus or wear shorts in minibus and beating of a pregnant woman in a park are not independent from the misogynist statements or debates on morals and manners made through women.

'Was it done at the request of community leaders?'

"As it is also reported in the news that several [religious] communities have opened hospitals in health sector and the communities have staffed or have been appointed to senior positions, it is now debated by the public whether this letter was sent at the request of community leaders.

"Before this letter was sent to them, the women working in the institutions of İstanbul Provincial Directorate of Health had already known how to dress and they will also know it after that.

"This letter, which is a reflection of the misogynist policies that view being decent solely as clothing, is against gender equality.

"Moreover, the Provincial Directorate of Health cannot make any decisions on how women are supposed to dress in their workplaces."

Questions to Minister Koca

HDP İstanbul MP Oya Ersoy has asked Minister of Health Fahrettin Koca the following questions about the circular letter of the directorate:

1. How will İstanbul Provincial Directorate of Health reach world standards in health by 'adapting the clothes of the personnel according to belief'?

2. As the Ministry of Health, will you dismiss the Provincial Director of Health who sent this circular letter to the institutions?

3. Did the communities have any influence in sending this letter?

4. As the Ministry, will you cancel this practice?

5. The letter refers to "dressing according to belief". To which belief does the letter refer? Are the regulations on clothing in state institutions determined based on beliefs? (EKN/SD)