Is a modern womans place in the harem?

Mar 11, 2016

The wife of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees the harem of the Ottoman sultans as having been a good place for females.

Emine Erdogan offered that view a day after the man in her life triggered protests by saying he believed “a woman is above all a mother” on International Women’s Day.

His government was already being buffeted by claims it wants strict Islamic values in Turkey and less liberties for women. For example, the president urges Turkish women to have at least three children and says the promotion of birth control is “treason.”

Emine isn’t put off by his words, saying at a cultural event in Ankara: “The harem was a school for members of the Ottoman dynasty and an educational establishment for preparing women for life.”

But others don’t like how she sees the Ottoman rule, which gave way to the modern Turkish state in 1923.

Among critics, Ozlem Kurumlar, a professor at an Istanbul university, says that when the Ottomans rode high “books were the only thing that never entered the harem.”

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/section-news.php?id=167142

Categories: Societal