ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a meeting on women’s rights yesterday that gender equality was contrary to nature and said feminists did not recognise the value of motherhood.
Erdogan said women’s “delicate” nature meant it was impossible to place them on an equal footing with men.
“You can’t get a woman to work in every job that a man does, like they did in communist regimes in the past,” he told the meeting of Turkey’s Women and Democracy Association.
“You can’t put a pickaxe and a shovel in their hand and get them to work.”
He said women should be treated equally in the eyes of the law, but their different role in society had to be recognised.
“Our religion gave woman a station. What station is this? The station of motherhood ... Motherhood is something different and is the most unobtainable, the highest station,” he said.
“There are those who understand this, those who don’t. You can’t tell this to feminists, because they do not accept motherhood. They have no such concerns.”
“We know women are not physiologically equal. But equality is about having equal rights, equal status and equal opportunities,” said Gonul Karahanoglu, president of women’s rights group KA.DER. “He defines women only as mothers. It is discriminating against all the women who don’t have children. He always says the same things,” she said.REUTERS
