Hollow secularism: Turkish males cannot share hotel room with non married female

Turks and their Western supporters like to harp greatly on the fact that Turkey is the only allegedly secular state in the Islamic world. However, the following by Ali Osman Egilmez, on his now defunct blog Twiceastranger.com, shows how hollow the Turkish conception of secularism is, as only an conscientious insider could describe(however most Turks lack his honesty and self-reflection):

... Turkey is a western oriented secular country that is in some practices, just a bullshit. There can be some secularist (be careful not secular, secularist) or westernist (be careful again not western but westernist) around but they are not the majority. Turkey is a conservative country. ...

... 

... In the mean time I wanted to take my beloved, a part of my soul, my girlfriend to show my country my beautiful my lovely bastard Istanbul to her. In the mean time I was afraid to show the ugly face that I wanted to forget all these times. I was afraid if she encounters with the unsuppressed sexual hunger and the obvious examples of it in the streets. (I believe the one of the reason of dis-ingenuousness of conservative stand of Turkish society is the unsatisfied sexuality of the men of the society which led them to be more wild in every manner of social life-from politics like being more nationalist to the obvious physical, verbal or just staring attacks to foreign or local girls in the streets, squares, or in police stations, etc. and of course as a result having a schizophrenic women race around calling themselves as the most western and modern, and trying to proof her western and modern character with drinking raki with men, having sex with men but until a point of virginity borders... [See the related post on this blog: Turk-Islamic sexual hypocrisy leads to anal fixation.] This is the girl who is modernist not modern. I am not talking about the conservative family girls at all)

... I couldn't a place to stay in my friends houses because of different reasons and started to search for hotels and hostels which would be reasonable for our student budgets. I couldnt find any. Not because of the full rooms but because of my passport. They all told me that I cannot stay in the same room with my girlfriend if I dont have marriage papers. Or I should show an other country passport which means as Turkish citizen, I cannot share a room with a woman in the same room. Or our surnames will be the same which means we should be sister and brother but I couldnt take myself to say to the reception after all these rules that 'If we would stay in Serbia little bit more we would all have the same surname since we Turks as you described are so dangerous for the women all around the world' he said ‘I didn’t say we Turks are dangerous’ then I replied to this vicious circle discussion ‘But you implied!’. Anyway, that is the reason pushed me to write all these things here. I made a very confused composition in the writing but the reader who is familiar with the topic will catch the main theme.

Shortly, I am going to Istanbul alone and thinking how to explain to my girlfriend this situation without creating a bad image of my country that I all the time tried to break the prejudices about her in the case of conservative, Islamist, eastern outlook. ...

Further sources that state that Turkish citizens cannot rent hotel rooms as couples when unmarried:  
http://merhabaforums.com/tourism-travel-sightseeing-f44/hotel-for-111-married-mixed-couples-t3911.html

 http://www.turkeytravelplanner.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3167



Related blog posts:
Turkish males misbehave amongst scantily clad female beach-goers
Turkish sexual morals and prostitution