World press on abortion debate in Turkey (June 14, 2012)

The Guardian published an article devoted to the vehement abortion debate that is taking place in Turkey, where the ruling AKP party suggested an abortion ban.

"Words can be explosive in Turkey. They set off chain reactions, which reach far and wide and deepen the existing polarisation of the country. This was the effect of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's recent statements on abortion," the author of the aticle, Elif Shafak, says.

"Any discussion on abortion in Turkey needs to take into account that this is a deeply patriarchal country with entrenched habits of gender discrimination. In this society, whenever there is the slightest sexual slander, it is women who are stigmatised and made to suffer. "Honour killings" are not unheard of. Incest, domestic violence and marital rape occur on a wide scale. To ban abortion (or to make it impossible by reducing it to four weeks) will have hugely harmful results for women," she underlines.

"In Turkey, a country where more than 40% of women experience some kind of violence in their lives, a country that ranks 122nd on World Economic Forum's gender gap index, banning abortion will only mean putting women's lives in danger. Now is the time we need to speak up, calmly, constructively but firmly. Now is the time to remember that our late Ottoman grandmothers, of all religions and ethnicities, worked incredibly hard for women's emancipation and equality. A hundred years later, let us not go back in time," the author concludes.