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New Turkish Airlines Uniform: Eye of the Beholder

A proposal for new flight attendant uniforms on Turkish Airlines strikes some as too conservative, writes Tulin Daloglu.
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As a rising star, Turkey has two popular brand names. The first is the country’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the other is Turkish Airlines. Whether or not one is critical of the ruling party’s policies, Erdogan’s name has worldwide recognition, and he sets the image for present day Turkey — a conservative family man, a pious Muslim and married to a woman dressed under Islamic code and covered from head to toe. In fact, since the Erdogan government came to power over a decade ago, the spouses of nearly all cabinet members follow Emine Erdogan's dress code, as does the first lady, President Abdullah Gul’s wife.

But Turks reacted fiercely last week when they suddenly learned that Turkish Airlines planned to change its flight attendants' uniforms. Although it's unclear how the airline decided to give the job to Dilek Hanif, a well-known haute couture designer, Turks active on social media, including Facebook and Twitter, first focused their criticism on the selection process of the designer. She was publicly slandered by other famous Turkish designers and ordinary people on the street, but it remains unclear what expectations Turkish Airlines set for her. Turkish media reported that Hanif says the uniforms are not yet finalized, and that she has no clue how pictures were leaked to the social media.

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