Turkey's President Calls Birth Control "Treason"

From NDTV:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described efforts to promote birth control as "treason", saying contraception risked causing a whole generation to "dry up", reports said today. 

Erdogan made the comments on Sunday, directly addressing the bride and groom at the Istanbul wedding ceremony of the son of businessman Mustafa Kefeli, who is one of his close allies. 

He told the newly-weds that using birth control was a betrayal of Turkey's ambition to make itself a flourishing nation with an expanding young population. 

"One or two (children) is not enough. To make our nation stronger, we need a more dynamic and younger population. We need this to take Turkey above the level of modern civilisations," Erdogan said. 

"In this country, they (opponents) have been engaged in the treason of birth control for years and sought to dry up our generation," Erdogan said.

Someone is worried about Turkey's demographics.

 That study found that the national fertility rate, at 2.08, remains more or less stable. The trend, however, isn’t uniform. In the country’s west, birth rates generally fall significantly below the 2.1 live births per woman needed for “replenishment.” Births in Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast, by contrast, are significantly higher. In other words, Turkey’s Kurdish minority is growing, while the rest of the country is not.

It is not just that Turkey's demographics are shifting to favor the Kurds (which are still a minority), but the social welfare demands of an aging population. It is no coincidence that the AKP is winning elections as a social-welfare party.