Turkey’s demographic winter and Erdogan’s duplicity: Spengler

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Spengler has been worked up about the election and Neocon squabbles, lately, but here he returns to better form and talks about things he knows.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded that Turkish women abandon contraception in a televised address May 30, Reuters reported. “We will multiply our descendants. They talk about population planning, birth control. No Muslim family can have such an approach,” Erdogan said. The Turkish leader has denounced Turkish women for refusing to have more babies on many earlier occasions.

Erdogan has played every side of every issue, alternately courting and rejecting the European Union, claiming the United States as an ally against ISIS while aiding the terrorist army on the sly, succoring Hamas while proposing to rebuild relations with Israel, helping Iran run sanctions while claiming the Gulf States as Sunni allies. Christina Lin catalogued his double-dealings in a May 31 news analysis for this publication.

When he talks about Turkey’s failing demographics, though, Erdogan is speaking from the heart. Turkey’s Kurdish citizens continue to have three or four children while ethnic Turks have fewer than two. By the early 2040s, most of Turkey’s young people will come from Kurdish-speaking homes. The Kurdish-majority Southeast inevitably will break away. Erdogan’s hapless battle against the inevitable motivates the sometimes bewildering twists and turns of Turkish policy.

A review of the recently-released 2015 population data shows that the demographic scissors between Kurds and Turks continues to widen. Despite Erdogan’s exhortations on behalf of Turkish fertility, the baby bust in Turkish-majority provinces continues while Kurds sustain one of the world’s highest birth rates. Even worse, the marriage rate outside of the Kurdish Southeast of the country has collapsed, portending even lower fertility in the future.

http://atimes.com/2016/05/turkeys-demographic-winter-and-erdogans-duplicity/

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1. Turkey can do much better than Erdogan.

Turkey should get back to its Ataturk roots.

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2. Turkey’s Erdogan Calls Women Without Children “Incomplete”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has encouraged women in his country to have at least three children, calling those without any children “incomplete” and “deficient” Al Jazeera reports.

Erdogan has become infamous for presiding over a growing crackdown on opposition groups and freedom of speech in Turkey, and he has maintained an increasingly conservative rhetoric, especially on issues relating to women. He has repeatedly compared abortion to murder and said that it is “against nature” to treat men and women equally.

In May Erdogan called on Muslims to reject birth control, prompting criticism from women’s groups. In 2014 his deputy prime minister in his government prompted a social media trend of women posting smiling selfies of one another, after saying that women should be humble and not laugh in public.

On Sunday Erdogan added to the controversial series of remarks during his speech at the opening of the new offices of Turkey’s Women’s and Democracy Association (KADEM).

http://europe.newsweek.com/turkeys-erdogan-calls-women-without-children-incomplete-deficient-childless-466684