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| Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan |
Turkish president on Monday, May
30 said in a speech broadcast live on TV said "no Muslim family"
should consider birth control or family planning.
Reuters cited president Erdogan as
saying “We will multiply our descendants. They talk about population planning,
birth control. No Muslim family can have such approach. Nobody can interfere in
God s work. The first duty here belongs to mothers.
Devout Muslim families ought to
thrive without considering population planning and birth control, says Turkey’s
president. The president is known for previously equating birth control to
treason and harshly opposing gender equality.
On the International Women’s Day,
March 8, the president said he believes that “a woman is above all else a
mother,” stressing that women cannot be freed “by destroying the notion of
family,” in a speech full of quotes from Koran on the virtues of motherhood.
A couple of days later, Turkey’s
first lady praised the often-criticized harem of the Ottoman Empire as “a
school for preparing women for life.”
“The harem was a school for
members of the Ottoman dynasty and an educational establishment for preparing
women for life,” Emine Erdogan said at an official event on the Ottoman sultans
in Ankara, according to Turkish TV stations.
While urging his compatriots to
protect the family, the president also insisted that “women are not equal to
men.”
“Our religion [Islam] has defined
a position for women: motherhood,” the Guardian cited Erdogan as saying at a
summit on justice for women in Istanbul. The president’s daughter Sumeyye was
present among the audience.
“You cannot explain this to
feminists because they don’t accept the concept of motherhood,” Erdogan added.
Women and men are not equal
“because it goes against the laws of nature” and differences in their
“characters, habits and physiques,” believes the Turkish leader.
