Turkish Football Authorities Have Something to Say about Women’s Bodies
On the 13th of April as the players of Fenerbahce and Sivasspor were taking to the pitch fans noticed a banner being carried by the Sivasspor players. Nothing new there, you’d probably think, teams carry messages onto the pitch all the time, in various forms. From messages of solidarity with victims of war or natural disasters to protests against injustice.
So maybe the Sivasspor players displayed a message calling for peace in one of the myriads of conflicts claiming innocent lives across the world, or maybe the message was intended as a rallying cry for their fans as the team is currently locked in a relegation battle. Nope. Their banner said “Natural birth is natural”.
Apart from the obvious stupidity of saying something natural is natural it highlights how cheap populism is permeating the world of football, something that always goes unnoticed with the sort of crowd that thinks sports should not mix with politics. I mean after all, their nickname is Yiğidolar (The Braves), so they should have no problem standing up for what they believe in, or what the regime tells them to believe in this case.
And in a very poetic comparison, Sivasspor, a club with much bigger real-world problems, namely a relegation battle, decided to take a stand against a non-issue, Turkey’s dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has been facing massive protests since March 19th has decided that his country’s main issue lies with its birth rate.
In response to Turkey’s fertility rate that has dropped to an all-time low in 2023 Erdogan has declared 2025 to be the year of the family. Sadly, his plan of action of randomly declaring stuff and suggesting women have at least three children hasn’t panned out since most people don’t really listen to tinpot dictators when deciding to have a baby or not.
After having successfully not addressed all the issues preventing his people from having three or more kids, Erdogan has decided that the issue actually lies with C sections, more specifically CDMR or Caesarean delivery on maternal request. In short, CMDR is an elective procedure made at the request of the mother when no other complications are present.
Whether women choose this procedure due to its controlled and scheduled timeframe or to avoid the issues arising with a regular delivery, especially pain and pelvic floor damage is not important as people should be able to choose what happens to their own bodies.
Critics of this procedure have long viewed it as unnecessary health care citing higher costs, which is a moot point when you are paying out of pocket at a private clinic, a higher risk for infection and longer hospitalization times. The choice for this procedure mostly still stands even after women request a second opinion, since most people tend to have pretty strong opinions when making decisions about their own bodies.
Erdogan has apparently listened to these critics and has made a molehill out of this mound, enlisting the help of a relegation threatened football team to get his point across. Meanwhile Turkey is the world capital of the totally natural and necessary medical procedures of hair implants and getting fake teeth, whiter than the tiles of a Polish bathroom circa 1982.
Gokce Gokcen deputy chair of the main opposition party, the social democrat CHP, took to twitter to voice her displeasure with the banner stating “As if the country had no other problems, male football players are telling women how to give birth,” to which Erdogan responded stating that the banner was not meant to be insulting to women and that Turkey has no time for such nonsense amid their fertility crisis.
A crisis completely manufactured by the regime of course, probably meant as a diversion for a country who is reeling against an authoritarian regime whose approval rating has fallen below 40 percent last year. Despite its downturn, Turkey still has a higher fertility rate than countries like Germany or the United States.
But why is Sivasspor’s support of this issue a problem for you, you might ask? Aren’t you a proponent of footballers standing up for their beliefs? Sure I am, when the issue concerns them or humanity as a whole and is not directed by an autocrat, but simply put this issue concerns Turkish women and Sivasspor’s players, as far as I know are all male. Now if a Turkish women’s team had held that banner aloft, I would have no issues with it, but if that had happened no one would have seen it since Turkish women’s football is still at the status of a practical joke.
Whilst it is true that Turkey has the highest rate of cesarean births among the 38 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, it is also true that forcing women to give birth on your terms does wonders for their inclination to start a family. Oh no wait, I got that mixed up, it’s quite the opposite actually.
What’s more, there is a dangerously close step from trying to regulate so called normal ways of having children to arguing that interrupting a pregnancy in any form is unnatural and pulling the classic despot move of banning abortions. And if we look back at history, we have the perfect example of how this can turn out just one country over in Romania.
In 1966, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu banned abortions, as he was also concerned with fertility rates. The effect? After an initial increase in the fertility rate, the levels dropped back down to its previous levels, with the only effects of his decree being an increase in dangerous clandestine medical practices and a whole generation of unwanted children abandoned in orphanages.
So, if the arguments against CMDR are thinner than the hair on a flight to Istanbul let’s call this for what it is, restricting women’s choice. Banning a procedure that can be viewed as unnecessary but still has its benefits, in private clinics at the request of the patient, paid for by the patient’s own money, is nothing more and nothing less than a tyranny veiled as concern what is natural and what not.
If we are taking up this wholly natural and in harmony with nature approach why not go one step further. Ban all hair transplant clinics, ban all turkey teeth and more importantly, ban all of the incredibly advanced Turkish clinics where world class footballers treat their injuries. So Sivasspor players, the next time your ACLs burst you won’t get an operation, painkillers, antibiotics or any other form of medical care, you only get a wet rag to place on your knee and some kind words from Erdogan.
I mean, it’s only natural this way, isn’t it? Just as natural as it is for women to listen to a team with a -10-goal difference that has won only 9 games all season, losing 16. I’m sure that football players who aren’t even experts in their own field, as highlighted by their dismal league position, can form extremely pertinent opinions on women’s reproductive health.
By: Eduard Holdis / @He_Ftbl
Featured Image: @GabFoligno / Anadolu Agency