Whose mother is a dictator?

The question is not mine. It is not even a question. It is an open curse to womanhood. These are the gentler version of the words tweeted by one of the chief advisers of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in response to a Frenchjournalist who accused the president of being a "dictator." One expects a more sober and sensible response from the people that live on our tax payments, even a smarter approach if she is a seasoned journalist. But no, sometimes people lose their mental abilities in the hallways of power. 

So it is not surprising to see the latest attempt to legalize underage marriage even though the AK Party pulled it back at the last minute." The AK Party's women MPs claim the party has "done so much" for the betterment of girls and women in Turkish society. But the numbers do not agree. Women's participation in the workforce is stuck at 30 percent - an incredible shame to Turkey's secular republic. Childhood marriage has skyrocketed to 25 percent among the entire child population. According to Murat Gezici, a respected pollster, among the married children, 65 percent of them are between 15 and 18, and 35 percent of them are between 12 and 15 years old.

Let's put this into flesh and blood. Imagine a girl from a well-off, very conservative family from Üsküdar or Fatih in Istanbul, not rural Anatolia. If she is "voluntarily" getting married at the age of 15, she probably does not know anything about Turkey before the AK Party. She is probably clueless about how women fought for their rights and sometimes died for them, not only in the world but in Turkey as well. 

Despite the maneuver to pull it back to the commission, this administration has managed to raise a generation of young girls who would be happy staying at home, bearing a child...