A hatching machine and a free slave!
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has always been an ardent opponent of birth control. So has his political mentor Necmettin Erbakan Hodja and others subscribing to the political Islam ideology… Some say every family must have at least three kids, some go even further and say “Only God gives, God takes” the state should stop being concerned with population growth…
Had Turkey managed to overcome its economic problems; solved the immense unemployment problem; had overcome the schooling problem of our kids; achieved a high level of per capita income admired by the world and had the country faced a shrinking young population problem, perhaps like some European countries, Turkey should think of providing some incentives to encourage people to have babies. The situation in Turkey, however, is not at all comparable with, let’s say, the situation in some Nordic countries.
For the past six years, whenever he finds an opportunity to express his most valuable ideas about population growth, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan starts preaching that families must have at least three kids.
The premier is implying that the state could provide support to families with at least three kids… What support? Sacks of coal, rice, flour, sugar, beans as well as books, notebooks, pencils and such…
The prime minister wants votes of people, distributes coal, rice, flour and such… He wants more babies, intends to distribute flour, coal and such items… What is he doing? Intentionally creating a beggar society! Vote for the ruling AKP, get sacks of coal, have three or more babies, get free sugar, rice, books and notebooks.
Well, if we can teach our people how to read and write, and sufficiently encourage them to write in those notebooks at least from time the difficulties they are facing, perhaps the notebooks distributed may serve a purpose and illuminate the future generations about how we managed to create a conservative beggar society, unable to produce anything but babies and surviving on donations from others or from the state.
Those who accept remarks of the prime minister as if they are some divine order, are of course asking “Are you not aware that if we do not have three or more kids our future will be very bleak?”
More kids, more problems!Yes, indeed, those members of this society who have three, four, five or more kids are in very dire problems and with the latest deforms the AKP government has introduced to the social security system of the country and the worsening economic situation, their situation will be far worst tomorrow. Furthermore, due to the appalling situation of our education system, more kids will mean more illiterate people in our society.
Turkey has a population of around 70 million. How many families does that make? If we assume that a family has four or five members on average, that makes around 16 million families. If we accept the confession of the prime minister that currently through the social assistance fund and other state or municipal agencies, some two million families are receiving coal donations, that means one in every eight families is being turned into beggars by this government.
Right, one may say the state is indeed complying with the social state stipulation of the Constitution and providing coal for those needy families and that there should be nothing abnormal in that. Well, the best service a government can provide within the scope of the “social state” principle must be providing employment opportunities rather than distributing donations. The unemployment rate is still hovering around 10-11 percent, far worst than the rate that the AKP government took over in 2002 in the aftermath of the 1999 killer earthquake and the 2001 financial crisis that devastated the economy.
The prime minister is indeed suggesting that men should work and women should be confined to homes to deliver and raise babies… Why do we want our women to have a place in the society anyhow? Why should they be productive and self-sufficient? Let’s confine them into our homes to look after babies! Put aside the immense difficulty for any family in today’s Turkey to survive on the wage of the husband, is it justice to consider women some sort of hatching machines and free slaves?
By the way, can anyone know whether wives of any of our most benevolent and most prominent members of the AKP government are engaged in any sort of economic activity? Are they all housewives?
(Yusuf Kanlı can be contacted at ykanli@hotmail.com or yusufkanli@gmail.com)
