Deputy PM Arınç objects to Turkish PM’s advice to have three children

İZMİR - Doğan News Agency

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s well-known and oft-repeated piece of advice for married couples to bring at least three offspring – if not more – into the world has been unexpectedly opposed by his own deputy, Bülent Arınç. 
 
A fellow founding member of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) like Erdoğan, Arınç is known for occasionally adopting dissenting positions, particularly on social issues. 
 
Arınç has this time expressed his disagreement with levity about what has become one of Erdoğan’s trademark lines during a wedding at which he was acting as a witness in İzmir Aug. 16.  
 
“I disagree with our prime minister’s recommendations on children,” Arınç said during the wedding ceremony of Selman Günaydın, an adviser to AKP İzmir deputy Aydın Şengül. “There are couples who don’t have children even though they set their heart on it. So I only say that I hope for the best for them,” Arınç said, while emphasizing the importance of families.
 
Erdoğan’s had said in January that two children equaled “bankruptcy” and three meant “we are not improving but not receding either.” His repeated remarks on the number of children families should have to procreate has drawn amusement and anger in equal measure while never dropping from Turkey’s agenda.