Turkish Prime Minister Assaults Women's Rights

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has never been much of a feminist, but women in Turkey are enraged by his latest comments on abortion. Critics say he is trying to distract attention from a scandal involving a massacre of Kurdish civilians last year.

Six letters, each a few centimeters tall, written onto her naked skin -- that was Madonna's contribution to Turkey's culture wars. Anyone who saw the words "No fear" written on her back during her June 7 concert in Istanbul understood her message, which was to encourage the Turkish people to have no fear of the enemies of freedom, and of patriarchs, philistines and the morality police. The singer also exposed one of her breasts on stage, apparently as a gesture of solidarity.

For weeks, thousands of women have been protesting against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 58, after he announced his intention to crack down on abortions and Caesarean section births. Since then, a debate on the role of women in Turkey has erupted -- but not for the first time.

'I Don't Believe in Equality'

It's hard to say when exactly Erdogan threw away his opportunity to gain the support of the women's movement.

In 2008, he gave a speech in the provincial city of Usak to commemorate International Women's Day, in which he advised his "dear sisters" to have at least three, preferably five, children. After the speech, a Turkish daily suggested that perhaps Erdogan would like to see International Women's Day renamed "International Childbirth Day."

In 2010, he invited representatives of women's organizations to the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul and confessed: "I don't believe in equality between men and women."

A year later, on International Women's Day in 2011, Erdogan talked about violence against women and statistics stating that so-called honor killings had increased 14-fold in Turkey from 2002 to 2009. But that, said the premier, was only because more murders were being reported, and that there are basically few acts of violence against women. (...)