Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday urged women not to let their careers become an “obstacle” to having children, claiming that a woman is “incomplete” if she doesn’t become a mother.
“A a woman who rejects motherhood, who refrains from being around the house, however successful her working life is, is deficient, is incomplete,” he said, adding that a woman who chooses to be childfree is “denying her femininity.”
Perhaps ironically, his remarks were part of a speech to open a new building of Turkey’s Women’s and Democracy Association – of which is daughter Sumeyye is deputy chairwoman.
Sunday’s bizarre comments are the latest in a spat of anti-feminist remarks by the president, a devout Muslim and longtime leader of Turkey's AKP Party. Last week in a speech, Erdogan claimed that “no Muslim family” could accept birth control – earlier in 2014, he likened birth control to “treason.” In March, the president marked International Women’s Day by saying he believes “a woman is above all else a mother.”
Erdogan’s streak of pro-motherhood and anti-birth control talk comes despite an already-growing population that has risen by 10 million in the past 15 years. Still, Turkey’s president seems to want even more, adding in Sundays speech: “I would recommend having at least three children.”
