International | Harry, meet Sally

Can men and women be just friends?

The answer matters more than you think

A collage of When Harry Met Sally with a skyline of Istanbul.
Illustration: James Hosking
|Istanbul and Seoul

“MEN AND women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.” This gloomy view, expressed by Harry in “When Harry Met Sally”, a romantic comedy released in 1989, is still widely shared. Turkey’s state religious authority recently issued a more scolding version of it, to be read out in the country’s 90,000 mosques: “Friendships between men and women, which begin with thoughts of companionship or confiding in one another, drag people into the pit of adultery.”

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