Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 61, current Prime Minister of Turkey.
It's hard to say when exactly Erdogan threw away his opportunity to gain the support of the women's movement.
In 2008, he gave a speech in the provincial city of Usak to commemorate International Women's Day, in which he advised his "dear sisters" to have at least three, preferably five, children. After the speech, a Turkish daily suggested that perhaps Erdogan would like to see International Women's Day renamed "International Childbirth Day."
In 2010, he invited representatives of women's organizations to the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul and confessed: "I don't believe in equality between men and women."
Frankly, Turkey is between a rock and a hard place. Erdogan got into office because "many liberal Turks entered into a pact with Erdogan, because they had a common enemy: the fossilized establishment consisting of the military, the judiciary and the government bureaucracy."
Erdogan seemingly promised to show a little respect for liberals and the way they lived life. He soon reneged on his promise by tinkering with Turkey's social structures such as education, "'We will raise a religious generation,' the prime minister said in the spring," furthering Erdogan's campaign to turn Turkey into a theocracy.
Erdogan hates artists, who writhe under the tyrannous pressure of his ongoing grasping clutch to retain power ... a sculpture depicting peace and cooperation between Turks and Armenians, The Statue of Humanity:
... a statue in Kars, Turkey created by Mehmet Aksoy. The monument, which depicted two human figures with hands reaching out to each other, stood 30 m (98 ft) high on Kazıktepe Hill across from the ancient Castle of Kars outside of the city and would have been visible from neighboring Armenia when completed. It was commissioned by Naif Alibeyoğlu, the former mayor of Kars, as a gesture of reconciliation in Armenia–Turkey relations following a 2009 accord to establish formal diplomatic recognition between the two.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan described the monument as a "freak" (Turkish: ucube) during a visit to Kars in January 2011. In spite of protests, the city authority decided to remove the statue. In April 2011, works began to demolish it. Erdoğan insists that this was merely a question of aesthetics, yet according to The Economist the demolition could have been an attempt to appeal to nationalist sentiment ahead of the 2011 general election.
"Turkey is getting more and more religious," says author Nedim Gürsel. "This policy is leading the country toward totalitarianism," says sculptor Mehmet Aksoy.
Also atheist pianist Fazil Say who had the audacity to tweet a verse from medieval Persian poet Omar Khayyam:
You say wine will flow from its rivers. Is heaven a pub?
You say two women per believer. Is heaven a brothel?
Erdogan had Say prosecuted for "insulting religious values".
Women. Honor killings in Turkey increased 14-fold.
Intellectuals. Artists. Atheists. Secularists.
And, don't forget the Kurds, below:
In a desperate move to battle against the ongoing legacy of George W. Bush/Dick B. Cheney, ISIS/ISIL/Da'esh, Obama negotiated rights to use Turkish air bases, convenietly forgetting about Recip Tayyip Erdogan's other agendas, the Kurds and political self-preservation:
No sooner had the agreement on bases been reached than Turkey's own aircraft began pounding Kurdish militant targets in northern Syria and Iraq.
The government, which still lacks a governing mandate after no party won a majority in the recent elections, has officially put the anti-ISIS PKK fighters on the same threat level as ISIS. In reality, Kurdish fighters appear to be a much bigger target of the Turkish Air Force than the ISIS fighters.
In the blinding desire to destroy ISIS, the White House forgot about Erdogan's dark side.
The point of all this maneuvering is that Erdogan hopes to leverage wartime fervor into a favorable nationalist coalition or a new election with a better outcome for himself.
Erdogan. Erdogan. It's all about Erdogan.