Hale, a physician in her 40s, met her husband, the financial director of an international company, on the internet. She’d die rather than admit it.

“I just tell people that I met him when he came in as a patient,” said Hale (not her real name), unaware that in many cultures dating a patient would raise more eyebrows than meeting through online dating sites.

“Not in Turkey,” Eren Erkalkan, the CEO of Siberalem, Turkey’s largest online dating website, told Al-Monitor. “We have many thank you letters by people who have met and married through us. But very few of them want to make it public.”

Reading the local newspapers, a Turkey-watcher would think that Turks are spoiled for choice when it comes to methods of finding a spouse. Marriage programs, despite tighter controls and a partial ban that is yet to be implemented, continue to be broadcast on almost all of the TV channels. Politicians include matchmaking in their campaign speeches, and the Ministry of Family and Social Affairs helps couples obtain a marriage loan, free of interest, with most state banks. Only a week ago, the Army Aviation Command prosecutor’s indictment quoted by daily Hurriyet on June 2 claimed that US-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen’s organization had a catalog of suitable wives for male members to choose from. Add to this the long-standing tradition of arranged marriages in Turkey — the way more than half of the Turks marry, according to a 2013 report by the Ministry of Family and Social Affairs, which also says in 8.9% of these cases the person who will marry is not consulted. One would think that everyone, from the president down, wants to ensure that Turks do not stay single too long.