Turkey\u2019s President Erdogan is a shrewd politician. Not only he knows how to manipulate the news agenda and to shift emphasis from embarrassing issues facing his administration, he also manages to turn controversy into a vote-winning, populist exercise.<\/p>\n
Once again, he has killed two birds with one stone. By declaring<\/a> that women should not be regarded as equal to men and condemning feminists for not understanding women\u2019s primary role as mothers, he got the country and the outside world talking about his world vision.<\/p>\n An awkward encounter<\/a> with the visiting US Vice President Joe Biden, several new licenses<\/a> issued for- yet more- giant construction projects, sweeping new powers<\/a> about to be granted to the police, the go-ahead given for the destruction<\/a> of another million or so trees did not even make it to the headlines.<\/p>\n While the rest of the world ridiculed and likened<\/a> the president to a \u201cdrunken uncle who shows up to a Thanksgiving dinner uninvited and makes everyone uncomfortable with his verbal bombshells\u201d, his loyal constituency has become a little more hateful of \u201cthe evil circles, which will make use of the slightest opportunity, have been doing all they can to erode the perceptions about our country<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n I have no doubt that millions of women toiling in hot and dusty fields of Anatolian heartlands agreed with his comments that they should not be doing the hard work while their husband whiled away their time in coffee houses. The applause<\/a> Mr. Erdogan received at the so-called feminist gathering he addressed had shown that not everyone found the president\u2019s proud recollections of kissing his late mother\u2019s heavenly feet altogether cringe worthy.<\/p>\n The reality is Mr. Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party government have long been taking their reference for their policies from the patriarchal traditions of Islam and they no longer feel the need to pretend otherwise. The basic tenets that guide the government\u2019s domestic and foreign policies are all grounded in their Islamist ideology. Every major speech delivered by the president and his prime minister contains clear references to Islam. The new language of the bureaucracy follows suit. Even the opposition feels compelled to pepper their public statements with religious euphemisms.<\/p>\n We did not need Mr. Erdogan\u2019s most recent proclamations in order to realize that Turkey is becoming one of the worst countries to be a woman.<\/p>\n Last year, The World Economic Forum data showed Turkey ranked 127th<\/sup> among 136 countries in the gender gap index of economic participation. Only 31 per cent of women are participating in economy and that is half of the OECD average. In 2006 Turkey was ranked 105th<\/sup>, so it has undisputedly gone backwards during the Justice and Development Party government.<\/p>\n In recent years, violence against women in Turkey has reached alarming levels.<\/p>\n Between 2002 and 2009, the murder rate of women went up by more than one thousand percent. Last year more than 28 thousand women were assaulted and more than 200 women murdered. According<\/a> to Aylin Yurdakul, President of the Women\u2019s Rights Commission at the Kirikkale Bar, 204 women have been murdered in 2014 so far. Women have faced violence at home and on the street. The child abuse has reached horrific dimensions. There are countless examples<\/a> of the courts being lenient towards men who use violence against women.<\/p>\n Underage marriage<\/a> for girls is on the rise. According to UNICEF<\/a>, Turkey has one of the highest rates of child marriage in Europe. A research<\/a> by Gaziantep University showed that almost 40% of marriages in Turkey are child marriages.<\/p>\n The status of women in Turkey has suffered both in the private realm and the public sphere during the 12 year-rule of the Justice and Development Party government.<\/p>\n It is sad to think that my 80-year old mother, a modern, secular woman of the Republic, have had better prospects and freedoms in her lifetime than my teenage niece, unfortunate enough to be a girl born in Turkey, during the era of a self-declared \u201cjust sultan\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Turkey\u2019s President Erdogan is a shrewd politician. Not only he knows how to manipulate the news agenda and to shift emphasis from embarrassing issues facing his administration, he also manages to turn controversy into a vote-winning, populist exercise. Once again, he has killed two birds with one stone. By declaring that women should not be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27507,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27505\/revisions\/27507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}