Turkish women react to deputy prime minister’s call for females not to smile in public

In a happy act of defiance Twitter in Turkey was yesterday flooded with pictures of smiling women laughing out loud.

The pictures were posted in response to comments made by Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç who on Monday said that women should not laugh out loud in public.

During a speech at an Eid el-Fitr - breaking of the fast - event in the northwestern city of Bursa he also urged them to stop talking about 'unnecessary' things on the phone and said Turks had 'abandoned their values'.