Handshakes involving women have a record of being problematic in Turkey ever since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002. In the early days of AKP rule, the paparazzi had a field day snapping photos of women’s hands left in midair when AKP members would refrain from shaking the women's hands. One of the most notable occasions was when former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s wife, Sare Davutoglu, experienced a moment of surprise when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law refused to shake hands with her; his action was seen as taking place for religious reasons.
The latest handshake controversy, however, is a variation on the recurrent theme, as this time, it was a liberal woman who refused to shake the hand of a man because he is an active supporter of the conservative AKP and Erdogan.
On Sept. 30, Meltem Cumbul, an actress who hosted the 24th Adana Film Festival, refused to shake the hand of filmmaker Semih Kaplanoglu, who won the best director award. Cumbul tweeted a statement explaining the reasons for her refusal to shake hands as a deliberate peaceful political protest. "I refuse to shake hands — which is a ritual of greeting and intimacy between equals — with those who marginalize people who are not like them or those who use the power of the rich against the poor, who side with the powerful and humiliate the weak. My eyes and hands cannot be friendly to those who are enemies of my heart and love," she tweeted, getting more than 7,600 retweets and 29,500 likes.
The reaction to her “peaceful political protest” occupied the mainstream and social media for days. Columnists of the pro-AKP media, unsurprisingly, condemned Cumbul. Daily Sabah columnist Hasmet Babaoglu tweeted, “Cumbul’s [act] is beyond rudeness, it is a hate crime,” urging the festival to publicly condemn her rudeness. In the daily Yeni Safak, Leyla Ipekci, a columnist and Kaplanoglu’s wife, said that greeting each other was a tradition of Islam and that Cumbul's act was one of hatred and polarization. Kaplanoglu, who took the pen himself, insisted that he had been a victim of a hate crime and that Cumbul’s refusal to shake hands was an act of fascism. “Those who want to continue the July 15 coup attempt through their hate crime, I defer those to the conscience of society,” he said in a press statement.
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