Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdan mısınız?

The title is one of the longest words in Turkish, meaning: Are you one of those whom we could not Europeanize? [Insert joke about never-ending EU ascension process here].

Amid widespread claims that the West has "lost Turkey" (who knew we owned it?), a report published this morning made we wonder - are Turkish attitudes towards gender equality more European, or more similar to Turkey's Muslim neighbors to the east? The Pew Global Attitudes Project released a report on a survey of gender equality attitudes in 22 countries, with some surprising results, some less so.

In Turkey, 95% of respondents said women should be able to work outside the house (while only one-quarter of Turkish women actually do), but 67% said when jobs are scarce, men should have more of a right to jobs. So in the first question Turkey is on pace with its EU neighbors, but in the second question closer to the six other predominantly Muslim countries.

When asked if "women should have the right to decide if they wear a veil," 96% of Turks said yes! (see graph). What the survey does not get into is why people say yes. For a lot of Turks, perhaps this is a strong statement against the ban on headscarves in public spaces (including public and private universities, courts, and government buildings), which has been imposed on the public since Atatürk, and recently maintained by the secular constitutional court.

But the way the question is phrased, staunch secularists might agree as well. For them, perhaps they are imagining a protective father or husband forcing a woman to wear a headscarf. For these people, it is also, at least partially, an issue of women's freedom, but freedom from a woman's oppressive father or husband, not from the oppressive state.

Regardless, there is a large divide between Muslims in countries like Turkey, Indonesia, Lebanon (Muslim population is about 60%), and Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan and Nigeria. Interestingly, Pakistan is between the two extremes because 83% of women think it is their right, while only 47% of men do, the largest gender gap.

Another question in which Turkey stood out - do men have a better life than women? Without dividing the results between genders, Turkey was middle of the road. But Turkey had the biggest gender gap - only 19% of men said men have a better life (most men said both do), but 46% of women said men do (with most of the rest saying both, few saying women do).

So why does Turkey have the largest difference in perceptions between men and women?