Isilay Saygin didn't stop there. She said she was unconcerned by the suicides of Turkish schoolgirls faced with taking such a test.

"Girls who have committed suicide because they were forced to take a virginity test would have committed suicide anyway," Saygin said. "I don't think this is really important. Five or three girls, it doesn't matter. A girl should not enter into such a dialogue with a man."

She added, "Let's skip the virginity issue. It doesn't bother me. I do whatever Turkish tradition and customs request and require of the family."

Saygin's remarks, made last December in the Turkish daily newspaper Yeni Yuzyil  drew a storm of protest from feminists who called for her resignation. Fusun Tayanc, head of the Turkish Women's Solidarity Foundation, accused Saygin of "having no other concern than to appeal to bigoted voters....Her repressive mentality and primitive knowledge make her unfit for the job," according to news reports.

Feminists were particularly dismayed that the Women's Affairs Ministry, established seven years ago after an uphill battle, has been severely undercut.

Saygin -- a veteran politician -- remains in office with little chance of being ousted. For most Turks, the controversy, which briefly made headlines, has been forgotten amid other government scandals. But for feminists it is a bitter reminder of how much work still needs to be done to improve the plight of women here.

Only 13 women currently serve in the 550-member Turkish parliament. With so few elected women representatives, and these dispersed among the various parties, it has always been a problem to find a good candidate to fill the Women's Affairs' Ministry, said Professor Yesim Arat, head of the International Affairs Department at Bosphorus University in Istanbul.

Saygin should have been one of the women doing credit to the office. She has dedicated her life to public service, even sacrificing her personal life.

"I don't have a private life. I am single," she once said publicly. "Maybe I wouldn't be this successful if I were married."

An architect by profession, Saygin entered politics 25 years ago when she was elected mayor of the town of Buca on the Aegean coast. She was only in her mid-20s. She was then elected a member of parliament from the center right True Path Party, now headed by Tansu Ciller. When Ciller became prime minister, Saygin became the Minister of Women's Affairs.

She was the only woman ever appointed to this ministry who "had an actual constituency and political support," said Arat.

But from the beginning she made statements inappropriate for her position. Several years ago, Saygin said that "Three women don't make a man."

Still Saygin was praised by feminists for pushing passage of legislation that would make wife-beating a criminal offense, punishable by up to three years in prison. Unfortunately, delegates from the Islamist Welfare Party prevented passage of this law through the parliamentary committee. Saygin later again clashed with the Welfare Party after lashing out against an Islamic mayor. A marriage guidance booklet he published stated Islam allows men to "gently"' beat their wives "if the measure is deemed effective."

In June 1996, Ciller made a controversial coalition with the Welfare Party in a bid to stay in power. Saygin was among several ministers who resigned, saying that "this government has dragged us into a period when the fundamental principles of the Turkish Republic are being disputed."

Saygin then joined the opposition Motherland Party. When it came to power last year, she was reappointed to the women's affairs post.

The recent controversial newspaper interview was conducted when Saygin had helped affect a change in the criminal code concerning adultery. In the original code, adultery was illegal for both married men and women and punishable by up to three years in prison. However, although it was enough for the woman to have had sex only once to be considered an adulteress it was only when the man had done the act repeatedly, and in his own house, that he was considered guilty of the crime.

The new law equalized punishment for both sexes and dropped the three years to two. But feminists, among others, argued that adultery should not be a criminal offense but only considered a cause for divorce.

Saygin disagreed: "It [adultery] should be punished, otherwise there will be so many [illegitimate children]," she told Yeni Yuzyil  "We have it because this is a conservative Muslim country. Men who commit adultery should be exposed so that they are ostracized by the whole society. If you make it only a cause for divorce, the streets would be full of divorced people because everybody does it, I know! Besides, the state has to take precautions about AIDS; if adultery no longer becomes a criminal offense, men will contract AIDS; do they have the right to pass the disease to their wives?"

But it is her comments about virginity tests that drew the most fire. Although such tests are not legal in Turkey, they are the custom in several regions. Last September, five teenage girls at an Ankara youth hostel swallowed rat poison after the head of the hostel ordered they be tested because they had returned "too late'" one evening. The girls survived, but were tested in their hospital beds.

Among those considering Saygin's support of the tests outrageous, was her own advisor, Selma Acuner, who disagreed publicly with her boss on this issue. Acuner's subsequent firing, argues Arat, is the worst outcome of the whole Saygin controversy.

Advisors and technical staff within the Women's Affairs Ministry like Acuner "kept the ship afloat in this patriarchal society to bring about change and help women," said Arat. Her ousting is "very discouraging and very dangerous....She might be replaced by someone who is distant to the issues the way the ministers [themselves] have always been."