By Bethany Blankley and Jeff Dunetz
The BBC reports that in a speech on live television Monday, Erdogan said that “no Muslim family” should consider birth control or family planning and that women must have at least three children. “We will multiply our descendants.”
Erdogan’s AK Party has its roots in strict Islamist practice, and since he was elected into power he has moved the country from a western-type Democracy to more of an Islamic led government. Human rights groups say there has also been a dramatic rise in violence against women during Erdogan’s rule,
In Monday’s speech in Istanbul, the Turkish leader placed the onus on women, particularly on “well-educated future mothers”, to not use birth control and to ensure the continued growth of Turkey’s population.
Mr. Erdogan himself is a father of four. He has also urged women to have at least three children, and has said women cannot be treated as equal to men.
Erdogan was the prime minister of Turkey for 12 years and became its president in 2014. At a 2014 wedding he famously said:
“Contraception is Treason. Women are not equal to men. Muslims must multiply descendants.”
Also in the same year, at a meeting in Istanbul, he said, “You cannot put women and men on an equal footing. It is against nature.”
According to the Anadolu news agency, he added, “In the workplace, you cannot treat a man and a pregnant woman in the same way,” because women cannot perform the same work as men; doing so goes against their “delicate nature.”
“Our religion regards motherhood very highly,” he said. “Feminists don’t understand that, they reject motherhood.”
According to the Turkish Statistical Institute, Turkey’s fertility rate is slightly about 2.5 percent, which the BBC reports, is “slightly above the replacement level and half the rate in 1980.” Despite this however, Turkey’s fertility rate is one of the highest in Europe, and the U.N. reports that Turkey “has a substantially unmet need for family planning.”
Erdogan says this because of what Islam teaches about women, children, procreation, and global conquest. What he didn’t mention is the majority of Islamic controlled countries implement brutal human rights abuses specifically against women and girls including:
- Female genital mutilation (genitals being cut and sewn shut),
- Honor killings (fathers or brothers kill their daughters/sisters),
- Child marriage (girls under age 12 are married to adult men),
- Slavery (girls are sold for “protection” by their parents and/or kidnapped and sold at slave bazaars),
- Shari’a Councils (Imams marry girls – even for one hour– to men, then divorce them only to marry them to another man and divorce them again),
- Wife abuse and domestic violence (husbands are instructed to beat their wives as a form of punishment); husbands are permitted to rape their wives,
- Non-legal status for women who are considered property (a wife’s legal rights equate to only half of her husband’s),
- Discrimination, punishment, and death for everyone based on sexual and religious orientation, especially if they will not “convert” to Islam.
Anybody notice the same progressives that talk about a conservative “war on women,” never complain about the Turkish president’s real war on women (or the way Sharia law treats women)
Parts of this post originally appeared on Constitution.com
