We have discussed the continuing practice of forced marriages and sexual abuse of girls in Muslim countries, including clerics who insist that girls as young as nine are ready for marriage. This law would effectively allow men to buy their way out of punishment by striking a deal with a victim’s family. Since many girls come from poor families, the opportunity to buy your way out of a rape case is high.

Not only has Erdogan destroyed the country’s secular traditions but eviscerated civil liberties and press freedoms. Women quickly felt the pressure of his Islamic parties. Erdogan himself declared that a woman who did not bear children was “incomplete” and that equality with men was “against nature.”

He declared bluntly: