Pictures of Turkish women smiling and laughing were seen all over social media this week after the deputy prime minister sparked outrage by saying women should not laugh in public.

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc made the comments while expressing grief for society's moral decay in a Monday speech celebrating the end of Ramadan.

"A man should be moral but women should be moral as well, they should know what is decent and what is not decent," Arinc said according to AFP. "She should not laugh loudly in front of all the world and should preserve her decency at all times."

The day after Arinc's remarks, Twitter and Instagram were ablaze with pictures of women defiantly laughing in public, images of women smiling while driving with sunglasses on and others of women having a blast enjoying the nightlife.

"Laughing suits us #resistlaugh," reads the English translation of one Instagram post, The Telegraph reported.

Users also created the hashtag #kahkaha, the Turkish word for "laughter," much to the dismay of the deputy prime minister, who also lamented the amount of time women spend on cellphones.

"When it's banned, it seems so much sweeter," @hatunkizayse wrote in the caption for a smiling selfie she posted on Instagram.

In perhaps the ultimate challenge against Arinc, users posted images of Emine Erdogan, wife of Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Endrogan, laughing out loud and clapping her hands.

"Did someone make a comment on women who laugh and comment on her chastity?" @ptasana_ brazenly wrote in the caption, according to The Telegraph.

Arinc is one of the co-founders of the deeply religious ruling party Justice and Development, or AKP. Prime Minister Endrogan, the party's leader, has been accused of trying to impose Islamic laws over the state, according to the U.K.'s Channel 4.