CNN Türk presenter Nevşin Mengü spoke out against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Sunday, after Erdoğan criticized women who “abstain from” being a mother, accusing them of “refusing their femininity” during an inauguration held at the Women and Democracy Association (KADEM) building.
“Women’s position in business life should not prevent her from being a mother. Women who abstain from being mothers due to their jobs are refusing their femininity. If a woman refuses to be a mother and abstains from managing her house, she is incomplete, no matter how successful she is in her job,” Erdoğan said on Sunday.
Reacting against Erdoğan’s statements on her Twitter account, Mengü said: “I just don’t want to be a mother. Do I have to? It is none of your business, it’s nobody’s business!”
In May 2015, Mengü joined a long list of foreign and national journalists who have been publicly singled out and attacked by Erdoğan after she shared Erdoğan’s weekly program on her Twitter account and made some comments about it.
Erdoğan’s weekly program among other things included a meeting with bus drivers in Ankara. Referring to the president’s earlier meetings with taxi drivers and muhtars (village headmen or elders), Mengü wrote: “Bus drivers and the presidential system, these two are inseparable. It is like two drivers cannot be on the same wheel. Muhtars, taxi drivers, bus drivers: holy trinity!”
Mengü was also referring to Erdoğan’s aspirations to switch Turkey’s parliamentary system to a presidential system and being the first president under the presidential system.
Speaking at the general assembly of the Bus Drivers’ Federation in Ankara on May 28, 2015, Erdoğan targeted Mengü without mentioning her name, accusing her of belittling bus drivers and the presidential system.
