Turkey’s President has been slammed as “chauvinistic” for his insistence that motherhood must come before a career. Leave campaigners have repeated warnings that remaining within the European Union will lead to political union with Turkey. Speaking at the opening of Turkey’s new Women and Democracy Association, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asserted: “A woman who abstains from motherhood saying “I am working” means she is in fact rejecting motherhood. I absolutely don’t accept making business life [ie work] an alternative to motherhood,” the Daily Mail has reported. He continued: “Rejecting motherhood means giving up on humanity. I would recommend having at least three children. A woman who rejects motherhood, who refrains from being around the house, however successful her working life is, is deficient, is incomplete.” And although he said he supported a woman’s right to choose to have a career, he emphasised that it must not be at the cost of motherhood. “The fact that a woman is attached to her professional life should not prevent her from being a mother,” he said, adding that Turkey had taken “important steps” to support working mothers. His comments were slammed by the UK Independence Party’s employment spokesman Jane Collins, who called them “chauvinist,”