Turkish women ‘know how to die like a man,’ says Family Minister Kaya

ANKARA

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Commenting on women who died on the night of the thwarted July 15 military coup attempt, Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya has said “Turkish women know how to die like a man.”

“Turkish women know very well how to die like a man. We showed this on July 15, when there were eight women martyrs,” Sayan Kaya said at parliament’s General Assembly, praising the women who went out onto the streets against coup plotting soldiers on July 15. 

“Turkish women challenged the tanks. Let’s remember the women on the bridge,” she added.

“Without discriminating between women and men, between young and old, all the women of this nation are under the roof of this parliament. As a female minister of this government, I sat under the bombs here, protecting the will of the people alongside other female lawmakers,” Kaya said, referring to the bombing of parliament during the coup attempt, believed to have been masterminded by followers of the U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen.

Minister Sayan Kaya’s remarks come after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently raised eyebrows by declaring that he and his supporters “will die like a man, not like a madam.” 

“The statement that our president used is an idiom in Anatolia. The value that our president gives to women, how he values us in politics, and how he tries to put us in the foremost positions is known by all those who do politics in the [ruling Justice and Development Party] AK Parti, as well as all the politicians in all parties,” Sayan Kaya also said, claiming that Erdoğan “supports women being active in politics.”