Have ‘at least 3 kids’: Erdogan

Emiratis shop at the Deira Spice Souk ahead of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan on June 5 in Dubai. (AFP)

ISTANBUL, June 6, (Agencies): 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 attatched 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 women 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.

Erdogan has two daughters and two

sons with his wife Emine.

ISTANBUL:

Also:

Thousands of people participated in rallies organized by a pro-Kurdish, opposition party on Sunday to protest against the abolition of immunity of some Turkish members of parliament.

More than 1,000 demonstrators gathered in Istanbul and around 3,000 others convened in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in protests organized by the People’s Democratic Party, or HDP. Demonstrations in other cities were banned by authorities.

Last month, Turkey’s parliament approved amendments to the constitution that clear the way for the prosecution of nearly 140 legislators, many of them from the People’s Democratic Party, or HDP.

“In the coming days our trial is going to start,” HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtas said in Istanbul. “We aren’t afraid to be on trial, but it is our right to expect to be judged by a real judicial authority. Is there something like that? There is not.”