President Erdogan’s views about women should terrify European feminists

As I entered my 30s I remember thinking how lucky I was. I had a successful career, owned property and was enjoying life as a singleton. Many of my friends were already married, some with children, but the desire wasn’t quite there for me. I wasn’t ready. Now as I march towards my 40s, I’ve embarked on a new life in Turkey. I’m still single, childless and successful. I’m happy, but apparently I shouldn’t be, as according to the country’s President, I have behaved in the wrong way.

On the eve of Ramadan, the Muslim Holy month, President Erdogan gave all women something to think about during the fast. Addressing Turkey’s Women and Democracy Association in Istanbul he said a woman who rejects motherhood is ‘deficient’ and ‘incomplete’. By working,  she ‘is denying her femininity’. In the same breath as urging them to have at least three children, because apparently one alone isn’t enough to make you a woman, he also laughably said he supported their right to have a career.

It would be easy to shrug these remarks off if they had come from someone with less influence, but in Turkey the President grips the strings of the country tightly in his hands.