Turkey's president calls birth control 'treason'
Turkey president Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks about birth control during a educational foundation in Istanbul on Monday. / Courtesy of Yonhap News Agency
By Lee Han-soo
No Muslim families should use birth control or family planning, Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says.
In a speech broadcast live on TV he said: “We will multiply our descendants. They talk about population planning, birth control. No Muslim family can have such an approach. Nobody can interfere in God’s work.”
Although Turkey’s fertility rate is one of the highest in Europe, it has halved since the 1980s, with the Turkish Statistical Institute saying it was 2.14 children per woman in 2015.
Erdogan, a father of four, described birth control as “treason” in a wedding speech in 2014.
He also has advised women to have at least three children and said they cannot be equally treated with men.
Such comments have brought a severe backlash from the Turkish community.
Although Turkey has 80 million people and a relatively growing young population compared with its European Union counterparts, the United Nations Population Fund reported that Turkey has a “substantial” unmet need for quality family planning.