President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday urged Turkish women to have at least three children, saying a woman’s life was “incomplete” if she failed to have offspring.
Erdogan’s comments were the latest in a series of controversial remarks aimed at encouraging women to help boost Turkey’s population, which had already risen exponentially in the last years.
The president emphasised he was a strong supporter of women having careers but emphasised that this should not be an “obstacle” to having children.
“Rejecting motherhood means giving up on humanity,” Erdogan said in a speech marking the opening of the new building of Turkey’s Women’s and Democracy Association (KADEM).
“I would recommend having at least three children,” added the president.
“The fact that a woman is attached to her professional life should not prevent her from being a mother,” he added, saying that Turkey had taken “important steps” to support working mothers.
Erdogan had on Monday said that family planning and contraception were not for Muslim families, prompting fury among women’s activists.
In his speech Sunday he went on to add: “A woman who says ‘because I am working I will not be a mother’ is actually denying her feminity.”
“A woman who rejects motherhood, who refrains from being around the house, however successful her working life is, is deficient, is incomplete,” he added.
According to the statistics office, Turkey’s population rose to 78.741 million last year, a growth rate of around 1.3 percent. The population in 2000 was less than 68 million.
But Erdogan indicated he wanted more, saying Turkey is a country “with great goals” and to achieve them “every member of the nation should be mobilised.”
“Strong families lead to strong nations,” he said. (AFP)
