Emine Erdogan vakte opsikt da hun torsdag talte med rosende ordvalg om haremmerne som de ottomanske herskere holdt sig med. Det kunne være optil 400 kvinder, som levede strengt afsondret fra verden udenfor.

Men de lærte en hel masse, haremmet var også en uddannelsesinstitution, sagde Ermine, uden at specificere akkurat hvad slags uddannelse. Harms-kvindernes opgave var at være disponible til sex når sultanen ønskede det. Med 400 at vælge mellem kunne det blive længe at vente. Lede synes å ha været den fremherskende stemning bag murene i Topkapi. Fulgt af rygter og indtriger.

Emine Erdogan was speaking at an official event on Ottoman sultans in Ankara, say Turkish TV stations.

Her comments came a day after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a woman was “above all a mother” in a speech to mark International Women’s Day.

Family members, servants and concubines all lived in the imperial harem.

The sultans who ruled the Ottoman empire had a harem at Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace, which has been a museum since 1924.

The sultan spent his domestic life in the harem, where his wives lived, as well as female family members and concubines, who numbered into the hundreds.

Male staff were eunuchs.

Tyrkiet er ved at blive et splittet samfund. Mange moderne tyrkere finder udtalelser som Erdogans fuldstændig vanvittige. Samtidig skremmer det dem, for det sier noget om den ideologi Erdogan er fyldt af.

Det forhindrer ikke at ægteparret har sendt sine to døtre til USA for at studere.

“If the Ottoman harem was a scholarly institution then why were the men who worked there castrated?” asked @anlam75.

“Those who mention harem do not send their daughters to anything less than American universities,” tweeted @kizmonot, a reference to the fact that both the Erdogans’ daughters studied at Indiana University: