Erdogan’s rage at Nobel laureate Peter Handke, discussed in the last hour, is not singular. All over the world women celebrated International Woman’s Day on Friday, March 8. Large crowds of women, by the thousands and tens of thousands, marched through the center of cities in dozens of countries, holding signs aloft and chanting feminist demands and slogans. This year’s theme was #Balanceforbetter. Some signs, and chants, were about closing the “gender gap” in pay. Some were complaints about other kinds of gender gap: fewer female entrepreneurs than men (supposedly reflecting bias by investors in start-ups), fewer women in the boardroom, or working as CEOs. But there were also demands for women to be hired for jobs traditionally held by men lower down on the employment totem pole, such as truck drivers, construction workers, fishermen, miners.
There were still other signs, calling for more women in sports, and an end to the wide gap between what male and female athletes practicing the same sport — e.g. basketball — are paid. Others were about fewer chances globally for girls to receive an education, about gender discrepancies in access to health care. Still other marchers mentioned domestic violence suffered by women and the sexual exploitation of girls in the international sex trade.
The #MeToo movement was, unsurprisingly, much in evidence, too, in many marches, specifically aimed at the abuse and harassment women suffer in film, fashion, music, politics and art.
Many political leaders in the Western world, men as well as women, endorsed or even took part in these events in Paris, London, Washington, Rome, and other capitals. But in one city, Istanbul, the International Women’s Day March came up against the thin-skinned autocrat, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In Istanbul, thousands of Turkish, mostly secular, women marched to the edge of Taksim Square, in the very heart of the city. They did not pick the day, a Friday; rather, the day picked them, for March 8 has been the International Women’s Day since 1914, when it was first held. This year it fell on a Friday, the day when attending the mosque is particularly important for Muslims, the day when the khutba, or sermon, is given.
The women marched, carrying their signs, chanting their slogans. They continued to gather at the edge of Taksim Square, and their chants and whistles were now directed at the police who had come out in force to halt them close to a mosque, where they continued their chanting and whistling as the Call to Prayer was suddenly starting. The women did not, the videos show, raise their voices to drown out the Call to Prayer, nor did they suddenly stop their chanting; they simply continued as before. They were not trying to provoke trouble, but nor did they think they had some duty to suddenly silence themselves.
The police fired pepper spray and pellets containing tear gas to disperse the crowd, before they could enter the main pedestrian thoroughfare from Taksim Square, Istiqlal Caddesi, and scuffles broke out as they pursued the women into side streets. That, of course, made for a much noisier event, with yelling by the police, and chants from the marchers. it was clear, say the marchers, that they were protesting the attempt by the police to shut them down, and not trying to drown out the Adhan, or Call to Prayer,which most marchers may not even have heard. But the pro-government news reports manipulated the scene to make it appear that the marchers were shouting not against the police ban, but against the Call to Prayer, and thus against Islam itself, a very serious charge.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sitting in his 1,500 room palace, the Ak Saray, was enraged. At a Sunday rally, despite the video that clearly shows the marchers being tear-gassed and prevented from taking their intended route, and that records their calls for defiance of the police, he insisted that they “disrespected the Azan (call to prayer) by slogans, booing and whistling,” and thus were engaged, as he put it, in “disrespecting Islam.” He showed a video taken during the protest, with women appearing to chant while a nearby mosque was reciting the call to prayer.
Women who took part in the march said on Twitter that the chanting and whistling was part of the demonstration, had begun well before the call to prayer started, and had nothing to do with any protest against the Azan. Nor was there any “booing,” as Erdogan had charged. The video supports their version.
Erdogan is quick to see insults to Islam everywhere. And he was particularly incensed by those who took part in the International Woman’s March, because of what they represent and demand-that terrible thing, gender equality. He has a very different view of women from theirs. In 2014, he said that Muslim women should ideally stay home, and have many children. He repeated this theme in a speech he gave in 2016:
“A woman who refuses maternity and gives up housekeeping faces the threats of losing her freedom. She is lacking and is a half [a person] no matter how successful she is in the business world.” Women who go to work are “half-persons” in Erdogan’s view, which makes him the archenemy of those who demand more places for women, at every level, in the workplace.
But none of this should come as a surprise. Erdogan is a devout Muslim, intent on undoing the reforms of Kemal Ataturk and re-islamiziing Turkey under his wise rule. He is fully at home with the misogyny of Islam. That misogyny, as we know, is expressed in many ways. There is the Qur’anic verse (4:34) that declares men to be “superior” to women and necessarily their guardians; the same verse also tells Muslim husbands that they have a right to “beat” their wives if they suspect them of disobedience. A daughter inherits half of what comes to a son. A woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man because of what Muhammad himself described in a hadith as “the deficiency of her intelligence.” A Muslim man may have plural wives, but a Muslim wife only one husband. That husband may divorce his wife merely by reciting the triple-talaq, but a Muslim wife can divorce her husband only by returning to him the bride-price or mahr, and by providing a satisfactory reason for desiring the divorce. Erdogan, as a good Muslim, is familiar with all of this, does not appear to be offended by any of it, and as his comments about working women being “half-persons” shows, has a view of women distinctly at odds with that of the Turkish marchers for International Women’s Day.
Erdogan is famously pugnacious, quick to anger, and harbors dreams, as many have noted during the last year, to become the leader of the Islamic world, perhaps even a new Caliph. Yes, I agree with you — it sounds crazy. His courting of Indian Muslims — India has the third largest number of Muslims (185 million), after Indonesia and Pakistan — has been interpreted by some commentators as an attempt to win over a very large number of Muslims to the idea of resuscitating the Ottoman caliph. Erdogan did publish a call in 2018 for the world’s Muslims to create a pan-Islamic army that could overwhelm and destroy Israel. Possibly he thought the Arabs would respond favorably. But the plan was met with silence. Erdogan now understands he has little hope of Arab support; they have a historic memory of mistreatment by the Turks, and Saudi Arabia in particular remains enraged about the Turkish role in uncovering the Khashoggi murder. Besides, if there were ever again to be a Caliph, he should, in the Arab view, naturally be an Arab. Having visited India’s Muslims, Erdogan now plans to go to Pakistan for “a historic visit” this March, heading a delegation of Turkish investors. No doubt he hopes that his own reputation among Pakistan’s nearly 200 million Muslims will soar.
But I think the virulence, even hysteria, of Erdogan’s response to the International Women’s Day March — “they disrespected Islam” — will have an effect quite different from what he hopes. He’s presented himself as a short-fused Defender of the Faith. Many Turks, and others around the world, can see for themselves the video of the marchers chanting and whistling against the police, can hear those sounds starting long before the Call to Prayer did, can recognize that they were never meant to show “disrespect” to Islam.
By making such a wild claim, Erdogan called his own judgment, not for the first time, into question. Perhaps now would be a good time for those in the E.U. to put Turkey’s application for membership out of its misery. And this would be a good time, too, for the Trump Administration to move to expel Erdogan’s Turkey, with its despotic sultan in the Ak Saray, his 1,500 room palace, from NATO, the military alliance that was set up, after all, to defend Western democracies. Turkey is no longer a democracy. Furthermore, Erdogan has drawn ever closer to NATO’s main enemy, Russia. He has bought the S-400 Triumf anti-missile and anti-aircraft defense system from Russia, ignoring repeated American attempts to prevent the sale from going through. Turkish and Russian troops now go on joint patrols in Syria; Russian and Turkish warships have participated in joint drills in the Black Sea, where Moscow’s navy seized three Ukrainian ships and their crew in November, causing new frictions between Russia and the U.S., which has provided military assistance to Ukraine. And then, of course, there is Erdogan’s plan for creating a pan-Islamic army to destroy Israel.
Anti-American, anti-Israel and antisemitic to boot, pro-Russian, a deeply devout Muslim, Erdogan is no friend of the West. His display of fury at an imagined slight (“they disrespected Islam”) to his beloved Islam, his palpable want of sympathy for Turkish women seeking gender equality, should have consequences. He has made Turkey, as a Russian ally, unfit for continued membership in NATO, and Islam has made Turkey unfit for membership in the E.U. Keeping Turkey out of the E.U. prevents 82 million Muslim Turks from becoming part of Europe overnight. And booting his country out of NATO would be a fitting fillip to the man who boasted that if the Americans didn’t stop supporting the Kurds in Syria, he would give them an “Ottoman slap.”
Stacy says
dumb egotistical bastard but that is what islam breeds
mortimer says
Erdogan’s backward mentality is typical, but many Muslim women agree with his misogyny.
gravenimage says
Also grimly true, Mortimer.
Michael Pillon says
Disney has already given us a very cute Baby Yoda. For inspiration regarding Dead and Zombified Yoda, please see picture, above.
The best solution to Turkey is blanket basting with cluster bombs. Or would that defeat the object?
elee says
Hey west, if you want to depose the bastard thats fine by me, but he seems to be BFF with Trump Giuliani & co. Just remember what Livy said: No gift brings so little thanks to the giver as the gift of liberty.
mortimer says
I disagree. Pres. Trump has sternly put Erdogan on notice.
mortimer says
Erdogan has a delusion of a revived Ottoman Empire. Muslims I have met despise Turkey and the Turkish arrogance. When presented with the option of a caliphate under an Arab Islamic scholar descended from Mohammed (al-Baghdadi), very few Muslims responded to sign up.
Muslims actually DON’T WANT a caliphate in actual fact. They voted with their feet.
gravenimage says
Plenty of Muslims did decamp to the Islamic State.
SAFI says
There’s been a massive increase in violence against women(including sexual violence) under AKP’s rule. Erdogan has been on record many times saying the men and women are not equal and women should stay at home.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15246/turkey-murder-of-women
seabird says
Get ready for Erdogan blowing his fuse.
Today, the Senate passed the Armenian Genocide resolution (150) bringing some justice for the Christian victims of Turkey’s
despicable mass murder(s).
A beautiful example of leadership and bi-partisan co-operation between Senators Robert Menendez and Ted Cruz (both of Cuban ancestry).
Today, America holds it head a little higher.
It now goes to the President for his signature.
Will he sign it?
The Istanbulian says
It isn’t thin skin, it’s a teeny weeny
gravenimage says
Thin-Skinned Erdogan Enraged at Women’s Day Marchers
………………
*Of course* Erdogan hates equal rights for women, and is particularly enraged at their protesting rape. This is how pious Muslims think.
jca reid says
Erdogan is well down the line to becoming a megalomaniac. Pakistan Premier, Imran Khan, is fast joining him.
Infidel says
Mahathir Mohammed, the long standing prime minister of Malaysia, was there first
OLD GUY says
Erdogan is just another BAD ACTOR! in a long line of muslim bad people.
Battle says
Buy nothing made in Turkey. Boycott.
SAFI says
Second that.