DilanKaramanoğlu/JINHA

İSTANBUL – When Turkish President RecepTayyipErdoğan used anti-woman language to insult a group of women protesting his illegal election campaigning in the province of Iğdır, his sexist language sparked a campaign. Women in Turkey have announced that "we're turning our backs" on Erdoğan.

Women have started a campaign with the hashtag #SırtımızıDönüyoruz (We're Turning Our Backs). The campaign was sparked by the actions of a group of women in eastern Iğdır province who turned their backs on the passing convoy of the President, who was breaking the laws governing his office by undertaking elections campaigningin their city.

The President responded by calling the women protestors "immoral" and "impudent." This is not the first time he has used sexist languageto questionthe "honor" of women who protest him. Referring to a woman in the Gezi Park movement, Erdoğan questioned her virginity with the remark "is she a girl, is she a woman? I don't know."

The HDP's woman general co-chair, FigenYüksekdağ, shot back yesterday in her speech at an elections rally in nearby Ağrı province. "If people don't turn their backs on you, what should they do?"she said.

HavvaCuştan, an Istanbul activist in the group Free Young Women (ÖGK), is among the many women supporting the "back-turning campaign." "Erdoğan, the spokesperson for a power that can't tolerate women's existence in the public sphere, showed his anti-woman attitude once again in Iğdır." She called his remarks a demonstration of how uncomfortable it makes him for women's bodies to be anywhere but in the home.

"Because it's women—the ones he is the most scared of, the ones he has tried so hard to discipline. It's women who are using their right to civil disobedience. For them to be in the streets stretches the bounds of Erdoğan's tolerance," she said.

The Democratic Regions Party (DBP) Women's Assembly called on the President to apologize for the denigrating language, saying that "for the highest authority in the country to use this kind of discourseexplains the regression in the country's perspective on women."

(fk/zd/mg/