Turkey’s President Says Women Should Stick to Making Babies

Speaking to a conference on women and justice Sunday, possibly having teleported from the 1930s, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said women are simply not equal to men.

“You cannot bring women and men into equal positions; that is against nature because their nature is different,” he said, adding that it was the role of women to bear children. Women simply aren’t up to men’s work. In fact, the president cast female work as a form of exploitation by lazy men. “What women need is to be able to be equivalent, rather than equal,” he said. “Because equality turns the victim into an oppressor and vice versa.”

The working women of Turkey aren’t very happy about the speech. A female member of the opposition party said Erdogan committed a public hate crime. And a news anchor said on the air, “I am a feminist and thank God I’m a mum. I wouldn’t kiss my mother’s feet but I have great respect for her.”

That last line is a reference to Erdogan’s speech. He is reported to have said, “I would kiss my mother’s feet because they smelled of paradise. She would glance coyly and cry sometimes.”

— Posted by Peter Z. Scheer