"You are headless. You go about with your heads in a plastic bag. You deplete our electricity, fuel and goods, and produce bigger waste. You disturb the order. Get married!” This seemed to be the message Turkey’s Family and Social Policies Ministry issued to bachelors in a campaign poster last week.

The ministry took its family-oriented mission to such extremes that it could not even manage the ensuing reaction. The campaign, promoting the ministry’s newly launched “battle against aloneness,” included a visual in which people living alone were depicted as black headless silhouettes. The image showed three adults — two men and a woman — scurrying about aimlessly, carrying their heads in plastic bags.

Hell broke loose as soon as the campaign was publicized on Twitter. The headless figures evoked the Islamic State (IS) savagery in neighboring Iraq and Syria, with Twitter users comparing the ministry’s attitude toward single people to the acts of terrorists.

The instant outburst of indignation forced the ministry to delete the posters from its official Twitter account. Yet, it made no statement in response to the criticism, as if the campaign had never existed. The speed of social media, however, made sure the controversy was in almost all newspapers the following day.