President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has called birth control a “betrayal” and his country’s falling birthrate a “disaster.”
For much of his 23 years as Turkey’s top politician, he has urged Turks to have more children and promoted traditional families, in which fathers provide and mothers focus on the home — with three children, if not more.
“Why not have at least four children, or five?” Mr. Erdogan said recently. More births, he said, would empower Turkey to “proceed into the future in a stronger fashion.”
His pitch is not working.
Turkey’s total fertility rate — or the average number of children a woman is expected to have — has been declining for more than a decade. It now sits significantly below the 2.1 needed to keep the population stable without migration, much less to increase it.
Demographers attribute the decline to factors common in countries around the world: urbanization, changing lifestyles and the spread of higher education, especially among women.
They also blame the economy shaped by Mr. Erdogan’s economic policies. Persistently high inflation and low wages have left many families struggling to afford housing, child care and other necessities.
“Food is very expensive,” said Cigdem Akyuz, 41, a mother of two in Istanbul.
She wanted a third child, she said, but found the prospect unaffordable. She considered Mr. Erdogan’s call for more children unrealistic.
“He keeps saying: ‘Have more children! Have three kids!’” she said. “How is that even possible?”
Many countries, including the United States and South Korea, are experiencing declines in fertility, raising fears among policymakers that aging populations will cause labor shortages, bankrupt pension funds and weaken economies.
But few of those countries have powerful heads of state who, like Mr. Erdogan, have made it a personal mission to persuade people to have more babies.
Driving Mr. Erdogan, analysts say, are not only economic concerns, but also a conservative Islamic vision for Turkish society. Mr. Erdogan’s objectives exclude couples who do not want children and L.G.B.T.Q. couples who do.
They also leave limited room for career-minded women, as Mr. Erdogan made clear before a large audience in Parliament while welcoming a new lawmaker to his party in 2022.
“Children, how many of them?” Mr. Erdogan asked the lawmaker, Mehmet Ali Celebi, in an exchange broadcast on television.
“One,” Mr. Celebi said.
The president frowned.
Mr. Celebi pointed to his wife, who was standing proudly next to him, and said she had a career — and a Ph.D.
The president was not impressed.
“Career is having children,” Mr. Erdogan said. “We have to increase the numbers.”
While Turkey’s fertility rate is not among the world’s lowest, its decline has been swift. In the early 2000s, it remained solidly over 2.1, which demographers call the replacement level.
The rate last peaked in 2014. In 2017, it fell below the replacement level. In 2024, the last year for which the government has released statistics, it reached an all-time low of 1.48.
Hoping to turn the demographic tide, Mr. Erdogan’s government has launched initiatives to encourage procreation. It declared 2025 the “Year of the Family.” This year begins the “Decade of Family and Population,” to last through 2035.
This month, the government extended parental leave for mothers to 24 weeks from 16 and for fathers to 10 days from five. Other new policies grant parents a payment of about $110 on the birth of their first child. Families can get monthly stipends if they have more than one child, $33 for the second and $110 for any others. Young couples can apply for interest-free loans to defray marriage costs.
Parents we interviewed said these incentives were too small to influence their family planning, given how expensive basics have become. Year-on-year inflation in Turkey has not dropped below 30 percent in more than four years, and it has at times soared above 80 percent, eroding family budgets.
“It’s only enough for diapers,” said Zahide Erte, 38, who receives $110 per month from the government for her fourth child, an 8-month-old boy. Her other children were born before the incentive program began.
She does not work outside the home, she said, and her husband, who works in a clothing factory, earns close to the minimum wage of $625 per month, like about half of working Turks. Last month, a large Turkish trade union said that inflation had rendered the minimum wage “insufficient to meet basic needs.”
Ms. Erte’s children attend free public schools, and the family owns a two-bedroom apartment, but the quarters are tight. The parents sleep with the baby in one room; their daughters, ages 6 and 16, sleep in the other; their son, 13, sleeps in the living room. They cannot afford to upgrade.
“We used to eat out once a month,” she said. “Now we can’t.”
Demographers expressed doubts that the government’s incentives would greatly affect the fertility rate.
“My expectation is that these will not change the game,” said Sutay Yavuz, a sociologist at Ankara Social Sciences University.
Turks today are more likely than their predecessors to live in cities, have university degrees and want to start careers before having children, he said. That has increased the marriage age and decreased the number of children couples have.
“The new Turkish families of the younger generation are turning into one-child families,” he said. “A dual income is the ideal, with one child.”
Mr. Erdogan, who has four children, has been calling on Turks to have at least three for many years. Even officials working on family policy have not obliged.
Turkey’s minister of family and social services, Mahinur Ozdemir Goktas, did not agree to be interviewed for this article. In a television interview in March, she called the population issue “a matter of survival.”
“Our strongest fortress is the family,” Ms. Goktas said, pointing out that in 27 years, Turkey had experienced a drop in birthrates that took nine decades in other countries.
She has two children.
In an interview with The New York Times, Leyla Sahin Usta, a senior lawmaker in Mr. Erdogan’s governing Justice and Development Party, called raising the birthrate a long-term challenge.
“We exist as a force with our young population and we want to keep it, in terms of labor force, economy and dynamism,” she said.
She acknowledged that more affluent people, like her, tended to have fewer children. A medical doctor turned politician, she has two children, she said, enough to replace her and her husband but not enough to increase the population.
Still, she said, others should have three children.
“People should embrace the consciousness that the country and the nation need this,” she said.
Parents who have followed Mr. Erdogan’s guidance said life was tough.
“We survive, but if you ask if we go on vacation, I’ll say no,” said Fatma Avci, 39, who has two sons, 10 and 14, and a daughter, 13.
Her husband is an electrician and she stopped working to raise the children, who are too old for the family to benefit from government payments.
Her family lives in a one-bedroom apartment, she said, the largest they can afford. She and her husband get the bedroom. The children sleep on couches and a bunk bed in the living room.
“We watch TV together in the evening and then we all go to sleep at the same time,” she said. “If you ask if I can receive guests, I can’t.”
How many children would she advise young couples to have?
“Two at most under the current circumstances,” she said. “Because it is very hard.”
