Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged Turkish women to have at least three children, saying a woman’s life is “incomplete” if she fails to have offspring.
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Notorious for controversial speeches about women, Erdogan made the remark on Sunday at the opening of a new building for Turkey’s Women and Democracy Association, right after his East African tour of Uganda, Kenya and Somalia.
“I would recommend having at least three children”, the father of four added.
He also equated the rejection of motherhood with the denial of femininity and the loss of freedom. “Rejecting motherhood means giving up on humanity”.
“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.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed a bill on Tuesday lifting lawmakers’ immunity from prosecution, his office said, a constitutional change likely to remove a pro-Kurdish opposition party from parliament.
Earlier, in a televised speech on May 30, the President said Muslim families should reject birth control and contraception.
About women who work, Erdogan said their work life could not become a handicap to their motherhood and recalled that the Turkish government had introduced key reforms to encourage working women to become mothers.
Turkey’s population rose at a rate of around 1.3 percent previous year, according to the statistics office.
The president, who is the leader of the orthodox Justice and Development Party, has repeatedly raised the ire of women advocates with his views on family planning.
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His younger daughter Sumeyye, who last month married defense industrialist Selcuk Bayraktar in a high-profile wedding, is the deputy chairman of KADEM.
