Readers of Al-Monitor's Turkey Pulse know by now that the new national agenda of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is taking legal measures to prevent unmarried male and female students from sharing the same house, as that contradicts his conservative-democrat views. For those who haven’t familiarized themselves with the issue, I suggest they read the articles by Yavuz Baydar and Orhan Kemal Cengiz posted on this website.

Erdogan, in a joint news conference in Helsinki on Nov. 6 with his Finnish host, Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen, was asked about the measures against mixed male-female student housing.

A reporter from the Finnish state television asked Erdogan, "In recent days, you have been accused of interfering in private lives, particularly because of your opposition to male and female students living in the same house. Why do you see this as necessary?”

Apparently rattled by hearing such a question in Helsinki, Erdogan’s first reaction was to say, “My esteemed friend must have been put up to this by someone.” And then he said, in short: "The private lives of our people are under our guarantees. There is legitimate life and illegitimate life. Naturally, we have our duties about this. Those duties are defined by law. We will take our measures as required by law."