ISTANBUL: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told a meeting on women’s rights on Monday that gender equality was contrary to nature and said feminists did not recognise the value of motherhood.

Erdogan, whose Islamist ideology frequently raises hackles in more liberal segments of Turkish society, said women’s “delicate” nature meant it was impossible to place them on an equal footing with men.

“You can’t get a woman to work in every job that a man does, like they did in communist regimes in the past,” he told the meeting of Turkey’s Women and Democracy Association.

“You can’t put a pickaxe and a shovel in their hand and get them to work. That’s not the way.”

He said women should be treated equally in the eyes of the law, but their different role in society had to be recognised.

Erdogan’s critics in mostly Muslim but constitutionally secular Turkey have regularly accused him of puritanical intrusiveness into private life, from his advice to women on the number of children they should have to his views on abortion.

But his divisive rhetoric has won him the support of the country’s pious Anatolian heartlands, helping secure his victory in the first popular election for head of state in August after more than a decade as prime minister.

“Our religion gave woman a station. What station is this? The station of motherhood ... Motherhood is something different and is the most unobtainable, the highest station,” he said.

Published in Dawn, November 25th , 2014