Turkish President Erdoğan declares birth control ‘treason’

ANKARA

Turkish President Erdoğan addresses the bride and groom at the wedding ceremony of the son of businessman Mustafa Kefeli on Dec. 22. DHA Photo

After expressing his staunch opposition against abortions, C-sections and morning-after pills, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has now tackled the contraception issue by declaring that it was “treason to the country,” in remarks that are likely to revive controversy on reproductive health.

“They betrayed this country for years by [promoting] birth control and attempting to dry up our [next] generations,” Erdoğan said.

Contraception is the latest network of treason to be discovered by the president in Turkey after declaring the Gülen movement last week to engaged in treachery.

Addressing the bride and groom at the wedding ceremony of the son of businessman Mustafa Kefeli on Dec. 21, he advised the newlyweds that using contraceptive methods was a betrayal to Turkey's ambition to make itself a flourishing nation with a growing young population.

“One [child] would be strange, two means rivalry, three means balance and four means abundance. And God takes care of the rest,” he said, relating ostensible words of wisdom from an elderly man in the Central Anatolian district of Beypazarı.

Erdoğan – who has two sons and two daughters – has drawn the ire of feminist groups for declaring that every woman should have at least three offspring, before informing the populace last month that women were not equal to men.

Erdoğan has previously suggested limits to abortion rights, the morning-after pill and Caesarian sections. He stood clear about slamming contraception, while criticizing women’s attempts to deter pregnancy.