Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is under fire for comments about child minimums and birth control during a wedding ceremony on Sunday.
Erdogan attended the wedding of businessman Mustafa Kefeli's son in Istanbul this weekend, and encouraged the couple to have many children.
"One or two (children) is not enough," he told the couple, according to the Dogan News Agency. "To make our nation stronger, we need a more dynamic and younger population. We need this to take Turkey above the level of modern civilisations.
"In this country, they (opponents) have been engaged in the treason of birth control for years and sought to dry up our generation," Erdogan continued.
"Lineage is very important both economically and spiritually. I have faith in you."
He went on to dictate how many children are necessary for Turkey to thrive.
"One (child) means loneliness, two means rivalry, three means balance and four means abundance," Erdogan insisted. "And God takes care of the rest."
The President, who has four children of his own, has been criticised in the past for stating that all women should have three children, and that women are unequal to men. Erdogan also opposes abortion, Caesarean-sections, and the morning-after pill.
"Erdogan has become the president but he continues to act like a guardian," Republican People's Party politician Aylin Nazliaka said in a statement. "Would he talk so blatantly about the female body if he was capable of giving birth to a child?"
Nazliaka said that Erdogan presents women as "incubators" rather than "individuals."
Health Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu also caused controversy this weekend when he said that mothers do not have the right to choose whether to have a Caesarean-section or not.
"It is the duty of the midwives and the doctors to prepare them for the birth," he insisted. "The patients cannot say 'I want a Caesarean'. They don't have such a right.
"The doctors' job is to fulfil their medical responsibilities not to follow the patients' demands," Muezzinoglu continued. "Doctors must give the medical treatment that the patients have a right to. The C-section is not one of those rights."
