Filli Boya Paint, one of Turkey’s best-known brands of construction paints, produced a short video to celebrate International Women’s Day. Indeed, it has become a tradition in the last decade that male-dominated sectors, such as the construction industry and car manufacturing, honor women’s accomplishments in their field. This year's Filli Boya commercial was different, however.

For starters, most of the speakers in the clip were middle-aged or elderly residents from rural areas. On top of that, the video gave voice to women and men from different regions of the country, identifiable by their attire. The ad was also intriguingly anti-government, but without mentioning the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) or President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

One part of the video references the notorious statement by AKP co-founder Bulent Arinc, who said women should not laugh out loud in public. The video ridiculed Arinc’s assertion, highlighting that this is not what people in Anatolia believe. A man in the video says, “It would not be ok if women did not laugh. Then flowers should not bloom.”

The video also denounced physical and sexual violence against women and criticized efforts to legalize underage marriage. The AKP has long argued that the latter is an Anatolian tradition, and secular snobbish elites simply did not understand the customs and traditions of Turkey's small towns and villages. The clip stood as a stark reminder that this is not the case. At the end of the video, mention is made of the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, averring that people do not want to lose the rights they gained by the establishment of a republic.