TURKISH DELIGHT. Mecca of patriarchy

Journalists writing on Turkey often find themselves writing over and over about one subject: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This columnist certainly has written pages about Turkey’s most controversial figure. Every time we want to move on, Erdogan excels himself by coming up with something so outrageous that it can’t be ignored.

Sample his latest statement: Men and women cannot be treated equally “because it goes against the laws of nature”. Erdogan was ironically addressing a summit in Istanbul on justice for women. “Their characters, habits and physiques are different… You cannot place a mother breastfeeding her baby on an equal footing with men,” he said. “You cannot make women work in the same jobs as men do, as in communist regimes. You cannot give them a shovel and tell them to do their work. This is against their delicate nature.”

Turkish women’s groups reacted furiously. In a statement, a consortium of women’s groups said, “We believe that equality is not a bargaining chip but a democratic and universal right and that we will not give up on striving for equality. We reject the rhetoric which we believe is an effort to take back rights which were attained by women nearly 100 years ago.”

Meanwhile, in Istanbul, women’s groups took to the streets to protests. “We are living in a patriarchal world and this is the mecca of patriarchy,” said an angry woman protestor on CNN .

Many commentators, mostly men, have urged that Erdogan’s attention-getting statements be ignored. But it’s hard to do this in a country with such a terrible track record towards women. It’s even harder to ignore Erdogan’s repeated attempts to push women back into the family, not always a safe place for Turkish women.

In the first half of this year, over 184 women were killed by their husbands in domestic violence incidents. Actual figures are likely to be far higher. Like in India, women are often urged by courts, police and families to ignore domestic violence. Turkey ranks 120th of 136 nations in the World Economic Forum’s 2013 Gender Gap Index, down 15 places since 2006.

In the past, Erdogan has called for women to have at least three children, and tried to restrict abortions. “Our religion (Islam) has defined a position for women: motherhood,” Erdogan said at the summit. “You cannot explain this to feminists because they don’t accept the concept of motherhood. He recalled: “I would kiss my mother’s feet because they smelled of paradise.”

In July, Erdogan’s close aide, vice president Bulent Arinc, drew derision when he said women should be chaste, and not laugh in public. Turkish women instantly reacted by posting pictures of themselves laughing on social networks.

But it may be the shrewd Erdogan who has the last laugh. While urban Istanbul dwellers may protest, much of Turkey is still conservative, and there is no one who knows this demographic better than Erdogan. Cleverly, Erdogan appealed to rural voters’ sense of protectiveness. He complained that in the olden days in Turkey, women in Anatolian villages had done the back-breaking work, while the men remained idle.

“Wasn’t it the case in Anatolia? Our poor mothers suffered immensely and got hunchbacks while the men were playing cards and rolling dice at teahouses,” he said. This is likely to play well with both rural Turkish men and women, and Erdogan’s conservative support base outside Istanbul will probably lap up this chivalrous regard for the “weaker” sex.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul and Bangalore

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