Equality, equivalence, justice, "positive discrimination"

The gulf between what President Erdoğan said about gender equality at the International Women and Justice Summit organized by KADEM and the way those words were reflected shows how defenseless and fragile truth can be against "ill will" in our age, which has stood out for the dimensions of its communications revolution.

The events unfolding before our eyes cannot reach us as they are, but only in the form the media wishes to present them. The thick lens the media has placed between truth and our eyes can therefore turn what we hear into another voice and show what we see in another way.

Indeed, the President's speech, delivered to encourage positive discrimination in favor of women, was reflected as an anti-woman speech. And this despite the practices Erdoğan has put forward up to now to further empower women in social and political life. Erdoğan can be considered the person who turned the concept and practice of "positive discrimination" for women into a norm in Turkish political life.

His insistent stance and struggle on women's participation in politics, even at the cost of clashing with party cadres in many places, back in the Refah Partisi, is well known. The rise of the Refah Partisi ran in parallel with, and indeed came about thanks to, the rise of the devout woman in politics, and the first person to see this potential in women on the Refah Partisi's behalf and to make use of it was Erdoğan.

There are hundreds of thousands of women within the AK Parti who would share the testimony Ayşe Böhürler gave in her latest column, based on her own personal observations, about the effort Erdoğan has shown in empowering women in political and social life and in eliminating their disadvantages.

Erdoğan has carried out all these practices in favor of women up to now by establishing, and insisting on, an inequality again in favor of women, that is, positive discrimination. Saying that women and men are not equal is not a normative statement; it is a finding that emphasizes an inequality to which women are currently subjected. Without this finding being made, the grievances stemming from women's unequal situation cannot be redressed.

In fact Erdoğan argues that the existing concept of "equality" is not sufficient for women to take the places they deserve in social, political and working life as much as men, and that those who remain stuck on this concept increase women's victimhood still further. To eliminate women's inequality, he seeks "a little more equality" in women's favor. In his view, his questioning of the concept of equality is not a quest that would push women behind men; on the contrary, it is a quest to close the gap that actually exists between them and men.

When one proceeds from the assumption that women are equal to men, it is not possible to cope with the natural obstacles that women's circumstances arising from their womanhood may place in their way. Yet the provision in the 2010 referendum that enshrined in the constitution that certain arrangements to be made in favor of women cannot be challenged by appeal to the principle of equality before the law bears Erdoğan's signature.

In this framework, the arrangements made in favor of women during the AK Parti's 12 years in power bear precisely the traces of this understanding of positive discrimination.

To put it more plainly, Erdoğan's "inequality" discourse means "more equality" for women. For this equality to be realized, the difference must be taken into account. And this inevitably requires placing more emphasis on the concepts of "equivalence" and "justice," bearing in mind the possibility that the concept of "equality" can be abused against women.

Despite this, it has been very telling that Erdoğan's speech was reflected as misogynistic, especially to the foreign press. He met with exactly the same distortion as what happened earlier over Twitter and the internet, and even what he said last week about the discovery of America was subjected to.

Truth is very fragile and defenseless before the media, but it appears that some people's truth is a little more fragile. That Erdoğan's truth is so easily distorted is undoubtedly related to his position and his attitudes toward the world we live in.

His stance questioning the world order, and his outspoken and upright stand against injustices in the world, make him a target of the owners of this order. They can twist his speech in favor of women into an anti-woman message in a single stroke.