PM Erdoğan calls on all women to stand against terrorism

MARDİN - Hürriyet Daily News

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan (C), together with his wife Emine Erdoğan (2L) and Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Şahin (1L) visit a local shop in Mardin. AA photo

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called on mothers of militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to take a stand against terrorism, while speaking at Artuklu University in the southeastern province of Mardin on International Women’s Day March 8.

“I also declared this in my party’s group meeting on Tuesday [March 6]. Women of Van victimized by the quake deserve to be remembered on March 8 International Women’s Day this year, I said. The women who lost their spouses and children in Uludere deserve to be remembered,” he continued.

Erdoğan also drew upon the story of the now-deceased Hatice Belgin who jumped over a live suicide bomber to shield her children and called on the mothers of PKK militants to raise their voices in the same spirit against terrorism.

“The pain of a mother who lost her 13-year-old child to the mountains and its merciless caves, only to receive no news of him for five years, is a pain as tall as the mountains themselves. It is for this reason that mothers have an obligation to take these matters into their hands. It is due to these savage massacres that mothers have an obligation to claim their children and retrieve them from the grip of terrorism,” he said.

Erdoğan called on mothers, women and men of Kurdish origin to see the PKK’s true face and tell them to stay away from their kids.

“An organization that arms 13-year-old children, sends them to kill and to die, performs savage, vile executions within its own body, kills mothers before their children’s view and kills a pregnant mother beset with hopes now has to disappear from these lands without a trace,” he said. The prime minister also spoke to the public in an opening ceremony in Mardin and underlined that values such as discrimination and ostracizing were not on the agenda of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Solidarity with Syria
Erdoğan also commented on women of Arab Spring countries and said they should be remembered on International Women’s Day.

“The women of North Africa, of Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt more than deserve to be remembered on this March 8, I said. Now I hope and pray to seize and live the day when women in Syria are remembered,” Erdoğan said.

“I once more call upon the entire world, and all the world’s women in particular, to remember, empathize and show solidarity with women [living] in bleeding lands, primarily in Syria,” he said.
Erdoğan also spoke about the efforts undertaken by the AKP to increase women’s living standards.
“We have identified [those women] whose spouses have passed away and are in need. We are now beginning to hand out regular cash payments to these [women] of ours,” he said.

The government is now going to pay 500 Turkish Liras every two months to widowed women beginning in April, according to the prime minister.