On Dec. 22, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended a wedding ceremony of the son of businessman Mustafa Kefeli. Erdogan and his wife posed with the happy couple and their families in front of the cameras at a fancy Istanbul hotel. This would normally not have been more than a short and happy news item in a magazine or on a TV show, yet the ceremony ended up on the front-page of the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet. Erdogan did it again! He poked at one of the favorite nerve centers of the opposition, particularly the seculars and women. Yet, this time the results were less than satisfactory.
Erdogan directly looked into the eyes of the young couple and said, referring to the number of his children, “One [child] will be lonely; if there are two, they will be rivals; three will be a balance; four will bring abundance and for that I say Allah Kareem [God is generous].” His words could be regarded as well wishes from a family friend to a young couple, but Erdogan did not stop there. “For years, treason has been committed by means of the enforcement of birth control in this country. They aimed to dry up the bloodline of our nation,” he added.
As Erdogan continued his speech on the virtues of marriage and family, his opinion about birth control was what carried the simple wedding ceremony to the headlines.
The reactions from different sections of Turkish society and the media are interesting, to say the least. Both pro-Justice and Development Party (AKP) social media accounts and newspapers surprisingly ignored the issue in the first 18 hours. Trendsetting social media accounts, on the other hand, ridiculed Erdogan’s words and the opposition media reported almost exclusively the “mockery” rather than what Erdogan had actually said.
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