Abortion of Reason in Turkish Policymaking
Ridley Scott’s Prometheus showed me just how dangerous Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s recent war against abortion and caesarean births are for humanity.
Here’s the intro. to my Hurriyet Daily News column on the Turkish abortion debate back from early June. If you watched the movie, you probably guessed the scene I am referring to right away. Anyway, you can read the whole thing at the HDN website. By the way, I apologize for the wordplay in the title, but if you are a loyal reader, I guess you are already used to those:)..
For a change, I don’t have much to add to the column. But there is another dimension to this debate. Some have argued that the PM decided to bring up the abortion issue to attract attention from the Uludere scandal: There were reports at the time that the government and the army had been negligent (at best) when Turkish jets bombed Kurdish villagers smuggling goods from Northern Iraq to Turkey at the end of last year after having mistaken them for separatist PKK fighters. Interestingly enough, the fact that the pro-government dailies / TVs did not discuss the abortion issue a lot lends some support to this hypothesis.
By the way, the government has somewhat retreated: Although Health Minister Recep Akdag said today that the government is firm on abortion regulation, it seems like abortion will not be banned after all, “just” regulated more tightly…
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