But the government, while working on these reforms, is giving contradicting signals on so many fronts that it is not always easy to figure out what amounts to real progress. Ruling party members, including the prime minister, are sometimes afflicted by outbreaks of foot-in-mouth that undermine their party’s reformist credentials.Thus the prime minister can at the same time claim it is seeking normalization with Armenia while threatening to expel illegal Armenian workers. Strong provisions are needed to improve women’s rights, but legal changes need to be accompanied by a change of mentality that sees women as individuals rather than just mothers.
That this shift has not yet taken place was evident again a few days ago when a new regulation banning women from seeking artificial insemination abroad was announced. Fertility clinics, now very popular in Turkey, need to be adequately regulated to ensure that greedy doctors, preying on the distress of couples unable to conceive, do not endanger the lives of mothers and unborn children.
But banning couples from seeking egg or sperm donation abroad, as well as in Turkey, is not only impractical to implement, it also prevents infertile couples from making use of technological advances based on a questionable need to protect the family and the bloodline. At its worst, this approach can be seen as racist. But even if it is, as the ministry claims, simply an attempt to protect paternity, it is a misguided one.
In this traditional society, women are under great pressure to produce children. We all remember Prime Minister Erdoğan’s call for them to bear at least three offspring. For years, I witnessed the trials and tribulations of a friend who was unable to conceive. She had to contend with the jibes of in-laws who viewed her as imperfect because of her inability to bring the heir they expected. Relatives would even urge her husband to swap her for a more fertile “broodmare.” Thankfully he resisted, but one of his uncles discarded four “sterile” wives, causing them untold misery, without ever admitting that he could have been the source of the problem.
Eventually my friend and her husband managed to conceive through IVF, but they had to seek medical help in secret because they feared relatives would disapprove or even reject their offspring.
At the heart of the matter lies a patriarchal definition of the family, linked by blood ties that need to be protected and kept pure no matter what. Taken to its extreme, this approach is responsible for most of the violent attacks reported against women in this country, whether it is a young girl killed for refusing to marry the partner chosen by her parents or a wife punished by a violent husband when she seeks to leave an abusive relationship. Such is the social pressure in some areas that only a few days ago, a woman whose ears and nose had just been chopped off by her spouse expressed the wish to reconcile with her torturer because “he is my husband.”
A different vision focuses on the family as a unit that does not rely only on genetic ties but is kept together by love and respect. Artificial insemination by unknown donors may offend some people’s beliefs. Conservative people may even view the union of unrelated sperm and egg in a test tube as a form of adultery and reject this option.
But to many couples, sperm donation is a solution of last resort which offers them a unique chance to bring a child into the world. As long as both partners agree, why should the state criminalize their legitimate desire to form a family? It is particularly ironic that the Ministry of Health should invoke Article 231, designed to force men to admit paternity and take responsibility for the children they have engendered, to deny couples this chance.
One step forward, one step sideways... Turkey is slowly changing and moving forward, but the government’s reforms would have greater impact if they were based on a more solid understanding of individual rights.
