Since gender studies is in such fashion, I wish to remind my female readers that the Greek of the Antiquity were no feminists: They had officers called gynaikonomoi, charged with controlling the moral behaviour of the female part of the population. Wehrli, who studied the issue most deeply, concludes that they were a general moral police. I imagine them as the moral police existing in Saudi Arabia and Iran, beating women dressed inmodestly. We have a mild version in Jerusalem and Beyt Shemesh. The pic shows moral police in action in Turkey today.
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Often it is women themselves who patrol the perimeter in order to keep other women in line. Older women, overworked in kitchens and abused in by their inlaws, take it out on the next generation of daughter-in-laws. Sexual jealousy plays a role, sometimes leading to a fatal end. In Rwanda, Hutu women were infected with a jealous rage against the generally more attractive Tutsi women. They were among the leading perpetrators of the genocide against the Tutsis, taking particular pleasure in the cruel degradation of the womenfolk. A similar dynamic on a smaller scale was at work in Darfur where the the partly Arab women would come along and cheer the massacre of the African tribals. There is definately a two-cent Darwinian explanation behind much of this.
The picture is Iranian. In general if you wish to distinguish between Turkish and Iranian girls with headscarves: The Iranian unover the front of their hair. Don't know why. They just do. Like the girl in the picture likely did.
Although I understand how there can be confusion over where exactly in the Muslim world this picture could have been taken, a little research on it would have shown that Turkey does not have a moral police force (although there might be in a couple of years if Erdogan keeps getting his way). "Little" mistakes like this tend to encourage the misconception that all of the Middle East is the same.
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