Turkish leader: Family key to keep population growing

ANKARA

Turkey's president on Friday stressed the importance of family as the country's population growth dropped almost by half.

"Though the population of our country is nearly 84 million, we've seen that our population growth rate has dropped by almost half," said Recep Tayyip Erdogan, addressing provincial congresses of his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party's women's branch via video link.

"With this trend, our population may even begin to drop in a not-too-distant time," Erdogan added.

Noting that European countries have been grappling with population decrease for a long time, Erdogan said he would not allow the same fate to befall Turkey.

"The way to maintain our population advantage is to take care of the family," he added.

The Turkish president also highlighted that Turkish women attained their highest rate of representation in parliament so far in the last general elections since AK Party came to power in 2002.

"Currently, there are 54 women deputies in the AK Party group in our Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Two female ministers work in the Cabinet."

"Our women have reached the highest employment rate in our period, including managerial positions in the bureaucracy," he underlined.

Erdogan added that 60% of teachers, almost half of academics and judicial staff, and 40% of total public employment comprise of women.

Noting that AK Party's women's branch has over 5 million members, he stressed that this was greater than the total of all other political parties in Turkey.

*Writing by Handan Kazanci