In Turkey, Erdogan , who does not believe in the equality of the sexes, is overturning the secularization of the country that followed the First World War.
A bill is before Parliament which would allow men accused of raping underage girls to be cleared if they marry the girl has been preliminarily backed by Turkish MPs. The government says the bill is aimed at pardoning men who did not realise they were engaging in underage sex (!).
Critics (that’s all of us!) say it legitimises rape and child marriage, and lets off men who are aware of their crime. Violence against women in Turkey has increased in the past decade – 40% of women report sexual or physical abuse and the murder rate of women increased by 1,400% between 2003 and 2010. If the bill passes in Parliament it will likely quash the convictions of some 3,000 men accused of assaulting an under-18, if their act was committed without “force or threat” and if the aggressor marries the victim with the consent of their family (what sensible woman would want to?)
“Sexual abuse is a crime and there is no consent in it. This is what the AKP fails to understand,” said Ozgur Ozel, MP for the opposition Republican People’s Party, according to AFP news agency. “Seeking the consent of a child is something that universal law does not provide for.”
But Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said it could help couples who have engaged in consensual sex and want to marry. “When a child is then born from this non-official union, the doctor warns the prosecutor and the man is sent to prison, putting the child and mother into financial difficulties,” he said.
Critics of the bill have blamed the Islamist government of President Erdogan for encouraging female subservience. Mr Erdogan has said women and men are not equal. But government supporters say Mr Erdogan has liberated religious women by repealing a ban on headscarves in public places. (based on a piece on the BBC website November 18).
Followers of Epicurus should be very disturbed by the increasing dominance of medieval religiosity in the Middle East. It seems to be spreading. These attitudes go back, I suspect, to well before the Prophet enshrined then in religious dogma. One hoped the world was getting away from these stupid cruelties. Apparently not. The idea that Erdogan can put women back into headscarves in 2016 and legally allow men to mistreat them is quite dreadful. Meanwhile, he is crushing all contrary opinion, imprisoning anyone suspected of holding liberal or Western views, a dictator gone bizarrely crazy. Hopefully, this will kill any idea of Turkey as a member of the EU.
I totally agree with everything you’ve said here. There’s only one thing I’d like to add. The Left often ascribes popular prejudices and bigotries as the products of a bourgeois elite, to distract the people from their true oppressors. That’s certainly true to an extent in Turkey- Erdogan has used religion and gender issues as a distraction from the real problems Turkey faces, like poverty or crime. But its also true that Turkey is an almost unanimously Muslim nation, and most Muslims are not secularists. While many oppose the sort of grandstanding and public moralising the AKP engage in, a sizable majority of Turks reject secularism in the Western sense, and would like Islam to play a greater role in politics. Now such opposition to secularism isn’t an exclusively Islamic phenomenon; Christians in Uganda and Hindus in India increasingly seem to want their respective religions highly involved in government. Nevertheless, its important to understand the rise of Turkish Islamism largely as a product of popular demand. Even in Germany, most Turks living there support Erdogan. As much as the Turkish elite ought to be criticised, the people must also be held to account, however unfashionable or politically incorrect it may be to do so.